by Indra Vaughn
She tucked her name in her purse, drained her wineglass, and held out her hand. “Dance with me,” she said to Imran, and Thomas and I watched them go.
“You going to dance?” I asked Thomas.
He gave me a light shrug. “Maybe later.” He sipped his beer. He’d let his beard grow a little bit, and his cheeks were scruffy and rough. A stark contrast to the soft swell of his full mouth. It made him look mysterious, and brought out the green in his brown eyes. He scooped his hair away from his face, and it drifted down again.
“Have you heard anything about the house?” he asked.
I made a face, not really wanting to talk about it. “I’ve been warned their lawyer will be in touch, apparently.”
Thomas frowned. “You should probably contact your own lawyer just in case. To get some information and stuff.”
“Yeah maybe,” I said and looked away.
Thomas took the hint. “So, you really thinking about dating again?”
I sighed and put my beer down. “I don’t know. I don’t want to, but I can see how it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try. I’m . . . I don’t want to move on. I don’t feel ready. But I know he’d want me to. And I don’t—” I fiddled with the label on my beer. The words stuck in my mouth. Even though I’d thought them over the past few weeks, they still felt like a huge betrayal.
“What?” Thomas asked gently.
“I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life,” I admitted.
He nodded and looked away. “No. Me neither.”
“You?” I sat up in surprise. “Why would you be alone? You’re Mr. Suave, with your door swinging both ways and the ‘I don’t want to settle down’ speech you gave that first Christmas you joined us.” He didn’t say anything, wouldn’t look at me. Unease made me shift in my seat. “Did you find someone?”
“No.” He drained his beer. “But maybe I realized that I’m waiting for something that’s never going to happen.”
I didn’t know what that meant. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the bathrooms, gave me an apologetic little smile, and left. I didn’t see him for the rest of the night.
“You look like you swallowed a lemon.”
I blinked and glared at Cleo, who pushed a cup of coffee across the counter and sat down on a barstool beside me. She and Imran lived in a large apartment on one of Antwerp’s boulevards, high enough not to be bothered by the noise or smell of traffic. Imran was out with friends playing tennis all Sunday morning, so Cleo had invited me over to prove dating sites really did suck donkey balls.
“‘My name is Johnny Deep,’” I read. “‘I’m a nineteen-year-old gay male interested in group casual.’ What does ‘group casual’ even mean? ‘Johnny Deep’? Really? And he’s nineteen! They’re all either nineteen or in their sixties.” I snapped the laptop shut. “I don’t want to date. I changed my mind. I’m getting a cat. Two cats!”
Cleo stopped stirring sugar into her coffee and made a big show of opening the laptop again. “What about this guy?” She clicked on the one guy I’d been trying to hide because I knew she’d zone in on him. “Peter, thirty, veterinarian with his own practice.” She whistled between her teeth. “And he’s the only one with clothes on in his profile picture. Bonus!”
“He’s got a big nose,” I said sullenly.
“That’s just a bad angle. And look! He’s from Antwerp. Perfect! Email him.”
“Cleo,” I whined.
“Email him!” she repeated as her doorbell rang. She stood and pointed a finger at me. “Do it.”
I huffed and I puffed and I clicked on the Contact Me button, dawdling as I heard her shuffle about the hallway, then muffled voices and pounding footsteps on the stairs.
Dear Peter, I wrote, and immediately deleted it. Hi, my name is Oliver and I saw your profile on BoysOnly. Ah, Jesus. Should I be judging him for making a profile on a site with a name that bad? He’d have to judge me for looking at it in the first place, and it wasn’t like the Belgian gay population was swimming in dating site options. I’d love to learn a bit more about you. Oh God, how awful. I backspaced.
“Tell him his profile looked interesting, and you wouldn’t mind learning more.”
I startled and turned around. “Um, hi, Thomas.” My cheeks flushed. He didn’t look much better, only he was scowling.
“Are you emailing the veterinarian? He’s a veterinarian,” Cleo added to Thomas as she wandered back in. His scowl deepened.
“Yes, fine, whatever.” I wrote something approximating Thomas’s suggestion and hit Send, mostly because I wanted to stop these two gawking over my shoulder. “There. Done. If I get ax-murdered, it’ll be your fault, Cleo.”
She blanched, and Thomas gently hit my shoulder. “That’s not funny. And if you do meet up with him, you need to text me where you are and where you’re going if you’re going anywhere.”
“I’m not going to go anywhere with anyone on a first date!” I almost yelled, scandalized. “Oh my God.” I clasped my hands over my mouth as something occurred to me.
“What?” Cleo asked. She seemed concerned, but I knew that sparkle in her eyes. I sometimes thought she was psychic.
“I have literally,” I said slowly, eyeing first her, then Thomas, “never kissed anyone but Sam. In my life. Never mind . . .” Sex, I thought. Oh God. Sex with someone else. How could I even contemplate it?
“You should practice!” Cleo squealed gleefully.
“I’m not twelve, Cleo. And besides, you have too much going on up here and not enough down there”—I indicated the areas in question.
She zeroed in on Thomas, who looked like he was about to jump out of a window.
“I am not going to smooch my friends for practice. I’m just going to have to deal. Right?”
“Right,” she said.
Somehow it felt like Sam was laughing at me.
We didn’t talk about practice kissing anyone after that. Cleo dragged Thomas and me out on a reluctant shopping trip. We only agreed to go because we had Christmas gifts to take care of, and the weather was fairly mild for the beginning of December, so now or never.
I still had no clue what to get Thomas for secret Santa, but I got my mother and my secretary sorted out. Rather sadly, I thought I’d actually miss the excruciating task of buying something for Sam. Maybe Thomas saw what I was thinking, because he squeezed my shoulder as we waited for Cleo to try on her fourth set of boots. He gave me a lopsided smile.
“Anyone would be lucky to date you,” he told me. “Whether you’re out of practice with kissing or not.”
“Hey!” I elbowed him, and he sniggered. “I’m a very good kisser, I’ll have you know.”
His hair slipped across the left side of his face, casting it in shadow. “Oh, I don’t doubt it.”
“What do you think?” Cleo demanded. We obediently looked down at her feet. The boots looked more like lethal weapons than footwear.
“I liked the other ones better,” Thomas said.
She looked at the boot graveyard surrounding her. “Which ones?”
“Any that don’t have metal studs and fifteen leather straps,” I said, and Thomas laughed even though Cleo looked really offended. “No, but seriously. No studs, Cleo. I liked those brown ones actually. With the smaller heel.”
“Me too,” Thomas said.
She looked mutinous for a second, then relented and sighed before she sank down and began to tug off the boots. “And they say you should go shopping with a gay man,” she mumbled.
Thomas rolled his eyes at me, and I grinned.
I had really enjoyed myself that afternoon. The sadness had hardly crept in and chilled the air.
I hate you, I texted Cleo.
If that’s what it takes, I’m okay with that.
I gritted my teeth and warily eyed the door of the Irish pub as it opened. An old man with a red nose shuffled inside and closed it on the torrential rain.
An Irish pub, Cleo. Of all places.
We can’t all be trendy like you. May
be this is a good thing.
I huffed and sipped my sparkling water. I hadn’t wanted to sit there with a beer before knowing what Peter the veterinarian was going to drink, but in my extreme caution I was half an hour early and as nervous as a Victorian bride on her wedding night.
You’ll let us know if you go home with him, won’t you?
I AM NOT GOING HOME WITH HIM!
All right, calm down. Just be yourself. He’ll love you.
But did I want him to love me? Well, I sure as shit didn’t want him to hate me. I sighed and stuffed my phone in my pocket. I loathed dating already and my first one hadn’t even started yet. I’d gone through my entire wardrobe, hadn’t found a single piece of clothing that didn’t remind me in some way of Sam, and had hurried into town for a last-minute, freaked-out shopping trip.
In hindsight, the jeans I’d bought might’ve been a smidgen too tight.
The door opened again, and I held my breath. To be honest, it was like a scene from a horror movie—which felt pretty accurate. Thunder rolled in, a flicker of lightning outlined a tall, dark shape, the few patrons in the bar seemed to pause their murmured conversations, and then the door closed. Fire crackled in the hearth, its orange light returned, and the room felt cozy all over again.
I didn’t notice. My eyes were locked on the stranger who’d walked through the door. He was tall—oh God, was he tall—and handsome. I could see that from my little nook in the corner. He cautiously scanned the room as he unwrapped a huge scarf from around his neck. He took his coat off, fished his phone and wallet out of it, and hung it on the coatrack by the door. He shivered lightly, shook out his hair, and I could see the water flying. He was soaked through, poor guy. He checked the bar, checked his watch. His shoulders drooped a little. Almost knocking over my glass, I rose to my feet and hurried up to him.
“Peter?” I asked. He spun around. His tawny gaze landed on my face, and he didn’t try the hide the pleased little flicker in them when he took me in. “Hi.” I held out my hand. “I’m—”
“Oliver. Gosh.” He wrapped my hand in his wet one.
Gosh? “My friends call me Ollie, actually. Um, I’m sitting over there if you want to join me.” I tilted my head in the direction of the little table with the wraparound bench.
His eyes followed the movement, then landed on me again. He let go of my hand. “Sure. I’m sorry I’m late. There wasn’t a tram for twenty minutes, and it’s a fifteen-minute walk, so I figured I’d risk it.”
“You’re soaked,” I said. Why? Why did I say that? In case he hadn’t noticed?
“That I am.” He was staring at me.
“Shall we, um, sit down?”
“Okay.” He laughed a little bit when I turned and walked away, and I gave him a quizzical look as we sat down. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head and folded his hands in his lap. A droplet of rainwater ran down his fringe and plopped onto the table. “I quite honestly didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never been on one of these dates before, and you didn’t have a profile picture up or anything. I almost didn’t come.”
“Me neither,” I admitted. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
He laughed. “The online dating? It feels so awkward.”
“Well, any kind of dating really.”
His eyebrows rose quizzically, but he didn’t ask when I didn’t explain. I appreciated that. “So how about we pretend we ran into each other here and you didn’t see my painfully awkward profile on that dumb site?”
“Oh, I didn’t think it was painfully awkward. I mean, you’re no Johnny Deep, but . . .”
He threw his head back and laughed again. It was a nice sound with a fluid move. He looked exactly like the kind of guy who laughed a lot.
“I’m going to get a beer,” he said. “Do you want one?”
“Oh, sure, yes. I’ll have whatever you’re having. And the next one’s on me.”
He gave me a shy little smile and rose to his feet. I took advantage of his distraction with the bartender and subjected him to some scrutiny. Tall, yes, absolutely. A cheap haircut. His hair was dark with rain now, but I knew from the photo on his profile that it was blonder than mine. He had very broad shoulders and thick thighs stuck in a pair of comfortable jeans. He wore an off-white woolly sweater that looked prickly. Nothing like Sam with his tailored suits and manicured hands. I imagined Peter’s hands would be rough and slightly callused, and oh my God, what was I doing thinking of his hands?
He came back with two Blonde Leffes and slid one over to me. “This okay?”
“Perfect.” We touched glasses and sipped. “So how does this go? Do I ask you to tell me a little bit about yourself or is that a job interview?”
He smiled and leaned forward. The firelight beside us caught his face, and oh dear, his eyes were very blue. “In a way this is a job interview, isn’t it? So yes, sure, ask away.”
“Okay.” I straightened my back, imagined what my boss had looked like all those years ago when I’d been interviewed, and asked him in a stern voice, “Well, Peter, why don’t you start with telling me why you think you’re perfect for this job.”
Peter snorted in his beer and had to reach for a napkin to dab his chin. “Nice,” he said. “Look what you made me do.” My face heated but I stuck with the moment and raised one eyebrow at him. “Okay. Jeez, um. I think I’m a catch, all right? I own a house with a veterinary practice attached to it, I have two dogs and a cat, no kids, no skeletons in my closet, and only a mildly nosy family.”
He looked so awkward I took pity on him. “What’s your family like?”
He relaxed a little. “I have two older sisters and one younger brother. My parents are still together and we get along really fine.” He shrugged. “Nothing out of the ordinary. What about you?”
“I work as a medical software consultant here in Antwerp.”
“Oh. What does that mean?”
“I install medical software and help nurses and doctors become familiar with it.” There was more to it than that, but I didn’t want to go into the boring details. “It’s fun, although I could do with less getting stuck in traffic.”
“Do you live around here?”
“Yes, I live on the south side, close to the hospital.”
“Nice. What about your family? Did you grow up in the neighborhood?”
“I did. I have a brother who’s ten years older,” I said. “My dad died when I was eighteen.”
His face softened. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been hard.” A lull fell in the conversation, and we drank our beers. Now what? Did I tell him about Samuel? Was that a second-date discussion? A third one? I had no idea. He frowned a little. “What’s up?”
“I . . .” Well, this loss was part of me now. A big part. And while I didn’t know whether I’d ever see Peter again, I didn’t want to keep this a secret. The idea of talking about this to a stranger also appealed. I wouldn’t have to worry about making him feel sad by mentioning Sam, since he hadn’t known Sam and didn’t know me. “The thing is . . . my friends made me go on that dating site. I was in a relationship for a really long time. Since I was sixteen, actually.” My voice faltered a little, and I reached for my water.
“Wow, that’s a long time. You broke up?” he asked me gently.
Oh, he was a good guy. I could tell. He’d be gentle with animals, and he’d be a sweet boyfriend. My heart lurched uncomfortably, and I began to sweat.
“He died,” I said and wiped my palms on my too-tight jeans. “He was murdered six months ago.”
Peter gasped. “Oh my God. I read about that. On the docks? The parking lot?”
I nodded. “Yes.” Shit, I was about to lose it. I took a shuddery breath and wedged my hands between my knees. Behind him, the bar had started to fill up, and Peter looked around.
“Look, do you want to get out of here? Nothing . . . nothing like that,” he quickly added when I gave him a sharp look. “We can talk about this some other time, if you want. Or we can ha
ve coffee at my place. I live close. I promise I won’t try anything, but you look like you don’t want to be here anymore. I’d suggest going for a walk but—” He snapped his mouth shut, maybe realizing he was babbling. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine.” I thought about it for two seconds. The buzz of the other patrons grated on me. “Getting out of here sounds perfect. Tell me your address though, so I can warn my friends I might be ax-murdered tonight.”
He laughed and winced at the same time. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t find that funny under the circumstances.” He rattled off his address, and I typed it in, sending it to Thomas instead of Cleo because I could count on him not to send me twenty squeeing messages.
“It’s fine,” I said. I stood and shrugged into my jacket. “It’s been really hard, but it’s getting better. Oh, I didn’t buy you a drink in return!”
He’d been about to turn to the door, but he looked back and smiled. “Next time.”
On the doorstep of the pub, I lost my courage. We stood under a dripping awning, watching the rain. It had lessened, but we were still about to get soaked.
“I don’t think I can do it.” I hugged myself nervously. “Go home with you, I mean.” I felt like an idiot and startled when he gently touched my arm.
“I understand. And it’s completely up to you, obviously, but I do like you and I wouldn’t mind seeing you again.”
“Okay,” I said, the relief so huge it came out in a deep breath. “Give me your number and I’ll text you mine. And maybe . . . next Saturday? Or am I supposed to play it cool and not contact you for three days and then check in?”
He laughed softly as he pulled a business card out of his wallet. His hair had started to dry, and it curled around his ears. “Next Saturday would be great. I am on call though, so I might have to leave early. Same time, same place?” He jerked his thumb at the Irish pub behind us.
I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
Peter bit his lip. For a split second I thought he was going to lean in and kiss me, but instead he held out his hand and I took it. It was warm this time. I was right. Rough with the gentle scrape of calluses.