by Young, M. L.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I replied, before giving her a hug, her arms already starting to open before I could even lean in.
I unbuttoned my jacket, slipping it off and hanging it on the back of the wooden chair, the blisteringly hot sun almost too much to bear today. She looked good, and that made this that much harder for me.
“Have you been waiting long?” I asked.
“No, only a few minutes before you got here. How have you been?” she asked.
“I’ve been well, I guess. Just working a lot, you know, trying to make money,” I said, smiling.
“Yeah, as if you don’t have enough of that,” she said, winking slyly.
“Hi, my name is Bailey and I’ll be your waitress today. We have a beautiful fish taco with cilantro lime slaw and avocado slices, drizzled with a chipotle ranch, as our special today. It comes with your choice of side. I’ll give you two some time to look over your menus, and please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions,” our waitress, a bubbly girl, said, before walking away, leaving menus on the table.
“How have you been?” I asked as I picked up my menu.
“I’ve been well. Just going on with my usual stuff. I guess there isn’t anything too much out of the ordinary,” she said.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I replied.
Things seemed weird between us, but I wasn’t sure it was bad weird. It wasn’t good weird either, like the kind of weird that brings you closer together, when you have a bond from something obscure and strange, but it definitely wasn’t bad. There seemed to be some tension, but not enough by any stretch of the imagination to turn things between us sour. It was more like a desire to learn why we were here, sitting across from one another, our motives not yet clear to either of us.
“Let’s just cut to the chase,” I said, setting down my menu. “We need to talk about what happened between us, and we need to talk about it now.”
Chapter Three
Alexis
I almost felt a little trepidation to be sitting here with Chase. He was an imposing figure, a mountain of a man, but not in the traditional hulking sense. He had this air about him—something you could never quite figure out, but you knew it was there, floating around his body. He didn’t even have to say anything. You just knew he was different, and that was what made this so difficult.
To be honest, I didn’t think I ever really believed I would be sitting here across from him, at least not again. I thought he was like a whisper in a windstorm, gone before you could turn around and catch it.
“What’s there to talk about?” I asked.
“Well, what would you like to see happen?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, cautiously mulling it over for a few seconds, “I wouldn’t be opposed to going out again. I just…”
“You just what?” he asked inquisitively.
“I just don’t know if he’ll like it,” I said, looking away, as I caught him shifting in his seat.
I wasn’t seeing anybody else. My last date was a total disaster with a man who would be lucky if he could get a blowup doll to fuck him. I didn’t want to tell Chase that, though. I wanted him to think I might have a side guy, one who wasn’t my boyfriend, but who was enchanting enough to make me second-guess going on another date with him. I guess you could say there was still a little residual annoyance from what happened between us.
“Who wouldn’t like it?” he asked.
“A guy I was, well, am, seeing. He’s pretty nice. He also doesn’t ignore me,” I said.
Chase chuckled, his pearly whites flashing, as if he thought this was a game. I panicked a little, though not visibly, and started to wonder if he knew I was making it all up. Far from it.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You’re just messing with me and trying to get me back for our conversational hiatus, Alexis. We meet up and start talking about more dates, and all of the sudden you’ve been seeing some random guy? I don’t believe it,” he said.
I paused for a second, looking into his eyes. My blank face and stare pierced him, I could tell, because his demeanor changed, as if a massive storm had just dropped on top of him. Come on, Alexis, show him your bluffing face.
“Is that a risk you want to take?” I asked.
“What risk?” he replied.
“Not believing me. You said it yourself. What if I’m telling the truth, though? Are you willing to take that chance?” I asked.
He clasped his fingers together, setting them on top of his glossy menu, and I saw him starting to give my words a lot of thought. I had him where I wanted him, and I liked it.
“I’m sorry things became rocky between us, Alexis. It was my fault I didn’t communicate properly with you, and I accept responsibility for it,” he said.
“It’s nice to hear that,” I said.
“So, have you two decided, or do you need more time?” the waitress asked, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
“I’ll have the mango chicken salad and an iced tea,” Chase said, handing her the menu.
“I’ll do the same,” I said.
“I’ll get that right in for you two,” she said.
“So, is he better than me?” Chase asked.
“Who?” I asked, playing coy.
“Whatever loser you’re dating,” he said, acting nonchalant about it like he wasn’t jealous and fuming on the inside.
“I’m not sure. I haven’t slept with him yet. I can tell he’s antsy to, though,” I replied casually.
Chase shifted in his seat, my admission obviously not sitting well with him, as it shouldn’t. I loved seeing him squirm. It made me realize that he was human, and had real feelings underneath that rough exterior.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said in a soft tone.
“I can do whatever I please with my body,” I replied.
“I never said you couldn’t, Alexis. I’m still allowed to have my opinion and wants, even if they clash with yours. It just makes me uncomfortable, I guess,” he said.
“Well, whose fault is that?” I asked, my head slightly tilted and my hands resting firmly in my lap.
“Mine,” he replied, as our waitress brought us our drinks.
The glasses were chilled and making any eye contact in the process. I could tell it bothered him, the imaginary guy I was seeing. The question was, should I keep going, or give him a break and know that he learned his lesson?
“I’m just not sure I can forgive you,” I said.
“Oh?” he replied.
Truthfully, I had no idea if I could trust him not to do what he did again. He hurt me, embarrassed me, and made me look like some kind of clingy woman who couldn’t let him go after just one night together. After all that, I wanted to put him through the same thing. I wanted him to feel helpless and stupid. I wanted Chase to know what it was like to be one of his girls. I was going to play him the same way he played me. Well, not quite.
I wanted to string him along, make him sweat, and not give him the amount of attention he craved and expected. I wasn’t mean enough to not ever talk to him again, or to beat around the bush for too long, but he needed to think I could be gone in the blink of an eye if things didn’t go how I wanted them to. He needed to feel the mental torture he put women through, even if only for one night.
“But,” I said, before clearing my throat. “I suppose I might be open to giving it a try.”
“Here are your salads. If you need anything else, anything at all, please let me know,” our waitress said, after she set our food in front of us.
“Maybe we should go on a date. A proper date. This seems too…informal and friend-like, you know? We can get to know each other better,” Chase said.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked, as I stuck my fork through some lettuce and a piece of chicken.
“Maybe dinner at my place? I can cook, you know,” he said.
“Your place, huh? Trying that again?” I asked.
; “No, not at all. Nothing has to happen. We can just…talk. I’m a pretty good cook. I know how to order gourmet food and put it on my own plates,” he said, ending with a smile.
“I’m down. I think it will be nice to have some privacy, with nothing else there to break our conversation. Who knows,” I said.
“Are you free this Friday?” he asked.
“Yeah, I am,” I replied, flashing a short but sweet smile.
“Then it’s a date,” he said.
It was at that moment, once we had confirmed it as a date, that things changed with him, and for the better. He seemed more upbeat, more receptive, and a lot happier. The dazed and somewhat anxious vibe he’d been giving off was fading away, and he was actually…pleasant, which was something he hadn’t really been yet.
It was strange to me, thinking that this headache, this hoopla, had been happening with a man I barely knew, though I desperately wanted to know him. We had been on one date, slept together once, and we talked a few times, but I felt like we had been dating a year and had hit a rock in the road that was our relationship. We had this connection, and even if we didn’t understand it, there was no denying it.
We continued to talk throughout our lunch date, though not really about anything in particular. I liked that, it was like the way I was with my friends, comfortable and safe. There wasn’t any putting on appearances or trying to suck in your stomach and sit up straight for fear of looking like a slumped over slob. There was just a sudden propensity to be normal, and not like the typical daters that Los Angeles fostered and nurtured.
As our salads grew more desolate and our stomachs fuller, I almost felt a sense of despair, as if I didn’t want this moment, this date, to end just yet. I knew we had plans soon, great plans, but still, I wanted to sit across from just a little bit longer, even if I did have a class I couldn’t miss.
I guessed I’d just have to wait until Friday.
“Well, I better get going before class starts and I lose points for not being there on time,” I said.
“Ah, to be young again,” Chase said.
“Hey, you aren’t that much older than me, you know,” I said.
“Old enough to know that school is a waste of time,” he said, smirking.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say,” I replied, pushing my chair out behind me as I stood up.
“Do you need a ride to school? It isn’t too far away, I wouldn’t mind,” Chase said.
“No,” I said, pushing my chair in. “I’ll be fine. I have this stupid bus card that I paid a lot of money for, so I might as well use it.”
Chase and I walked through the restaurant. The inside of the building was a little more crowded than it was when I first got here. The clinking of glasses and silverware on plates polluted the air even more than the famous Los Angeles smog that loomed over the city outside, obscuring an otherwise picture-perfect view of downtown.
The air seemed warmer in the front of the building as we walked outside in comparison to when we were on the back patio. It made it harder to breathe, my eyes shriveling up and squinting as I rushed to get my sunglasses on to protect them.
“Well, I’m over here,” Chase said, pointing to the parking lot behind him.
“The bus stop is down the road a little bit, so I guess this is where we part ways. I really had a nice lunch, and I’m excited to see you Friday. Let’s just hope this time you actually reply to any messages I might send,” I said, giving him a little bit of a hard time.
“Not going to let that go, are you?” he asked.
“Not until you prove to me that I should,” I quickly retorted.
“You’ll get all the proof you’ll need soon. Until then, keep in touch,” he said, leaning in.
I nixed his kiss, instead hugging him, as I tried to keep some bit of mystery and an element of chase to me. He might have gotten in my pants pretty damn easily the first time, but this time he was going to have to work for even a peck on the lips. I wasn’t playing around with him anymore, and I thought he was starting to get the hint.
We said our goodbyes and I walked to the bus stop. A gangly-looking man behind the sheltered area begged for money, holding a crumpled and bent cardboard sign blessing everyone who helped him.
The bus came just in time, giving me barely enough time to get to campus and into class before the doors would shut and lock in front of me. I looked out of the window on the drive there at the palm trees sprinkled on the sidewalks, a smile gracing my face, not because of the view, but because of my date. Maybe we could salvage something. Maybe I wouldn’t be just another pretty face.
Chapter Four
Chase
I was a changing man.
Just a short time ago I was a crass, rude, misogynistic man who used and played women because of the things they had done to me. I was vengeful, I only wanted what I wanted, not what anybody else needed. There was something a tad crippling about being like that, being so grey and shut out, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a way out. There was a way out, and I couldn’t believe I was pulling that emergency chute to float myself down to safety before I had wrecked myself and splattered across the ground.
For once I felt excited about a date, and for the right reasons. I wasn’t excited to get my dick wet or dominate yet another flirty co-ed, but because I was going to spend time with somebody whom I enjoyed spending time with. I’d get to be around a woman who didn’t put up with me like everybody else had. A woman who could break my shell and make me the person who I always wanted to be, a person who I’d thought was very much lost, never to be found again.
Even though things were going great, though, I knew that they weren’t perfect, and I wasn’t clear out of the woods. I still had her trust to contend with, something I wasn’t going to just toss around and not care if it broke. I could tell that even though our lunch went great, she still didn’t fully trust everything I had to say. I had to show her that I could be different, that the other person she met wasn’t really me, but was just something crazy that inhabited my body, like some kind of maniacal sex-bent demon.
That would be my biggest challenge.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t show her I was different, I definitely planned to, but how? I knew that the part of me she didn’t like, the part most people didn’t like, wasn’t fully gone. I was a man, and sex was something that I not only enjoyed, but something that I’d had for so long and was now going without. That part of me, that primal, caveman urge, could spring up during a close, intimate moment together, and I was afraid that urge would take it too far. She would feel like that was all I wanted and then I’d be back to square one again. I could control it enough, maybe, but I was still scared that my mind would become clouded and my hands might move without me realizing it.
I didn’t know why, but I knew I had to know her, date her, and spend time with her. She brought out a side of me I didn’t know existed anymore, and I was damned if I were going to let that side of me die and go away, bringing back Chase, the womanizer, and not Matthew Chase, the man who was destroying who I had been for so long.
•••
It was Friday night and I was terrified, but not for the reasons you’d think. The dinner, the one I was going to make for her, burnt to a crisp like a hotdog left in a campfire all night long. What was I going to feed her? I had promised a nice dinner, and all I had in the house now was water, granola, and some fruit. I could always play it off like we were having a campfire dinner, roughing it, as they say. It would make me seem more in touch with nature and “normal” people. No, who was I kidding? She’d think I was an idiot, and besides, I didn’t want to eat granola and bananas. I was far too hungry for that.
Okay, Chase, think. What can you do in forty-five minutes? I got it! Takeout! I had joked around with her and told her I was a master at dumping takeout food onto my own plates and china. Instead of it being some half-thought-out joke, I could say I was serious. Yeah, that was it. The question became what did I order? Forty-five minute
s was seriously not enough time, especially since it was Friday night and I’d have to order it, have them cook it, get it delivered, and plate it all before she got here. No place in town, at least not the great places nearby, would be able to do it in time. It didn’t matter who I was. It was impossible.
I opened a kitchen drawer that had been stuffed with takeout inserts that I got every now and again. I sifted through them, trying to find something acceptable nearby. I pulled one out, a mustard yellow, for Shanghai Imperial Palace, a somewhat cheap Chinese place in a strip mall only ten minutes or so away. Could I really serve her cheap Chinese food? Everyone likes Chinese, but it didn’t exactly scream, “hey, I’m romantic, please like me.”
I didn’t have another choice. I called them, getting a man who I didn’t understand, ordering everything on the menu that looked halfway decent and which I knew wouldn’t look like I got it in the freezer aisle. The man said it would be delivered in twenty-five minutes, which was just enough time to get it, plate it, and throw away all of the bags, cartons, and evidence of a cheap Chinese meal for two, or twelve, considering the amount of food I’d ordered.
Alexis and I had been texting somewhat regularly, though not excessively, since our date in the café. I sent a car for her, not wanting her to take the bus or sit in a scuzzy taxi, especially since I was trying to impress her.
The food came thirty minutes later, the delivery guy in a tan windbreaker apologizing and saying he couldn’t find the place, which was ridiculous, but I still gave him a hundred-dollar bill on a sixty-dollar tab, letting him keep the change, as I didn’t have time to fiddle around with him. He kept thanking me, telling me how generous I was and how I would have good fortune, yada yada yada, and I shut the door, rushing to the kitchen counter to unpack everything.
I pulled out every plate, bowl, and serving utensil I could as I opened the cartons of rice and noodles, dumping them in any bowl that was clean and empty. Little bits of food dropped on the counter and ground, exasperating me as the time grew near and I could almost hear her coming up the road.