A waitress came over and said, “Hello, Lucas.”
“Hey, Stella, what’s up?”
“Just the usual. I’m good. I haven’t seen you around in a while.”
She looked like she was hanging on his every word as he responded, “I’ve been busy. The restaurant is insane right now.”
“That’s summer for you,” she told him. “Do you know what you two want?”
Lucas looked over at me, but I shook my head and told him to pick.
“Yeah, we’ll take two Big, Big Tits, but easy on the tequila.”
Of course, I cracked up again, and Lucas did, too—I’m pretty sure he ordered those drinks with the express intent of making me feel ridiculous—and when we calmed down, we found ourselves looking at each other, and I felt almost weak in the knees. I started fiddling with my hair to distract myself, but his eyes wouldn’t leave me in peace. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied, but I couldn’t help noticing how he glanced down at my lips just then. His pupils were like two black holes in a very blue ocean. Something clicked in that moment, and we saw each other as the people we truly were.
Attraction—it’s a mystery, right? Every day you pass people by, and people pass you by in turn. You meet eyes for just a second, you talk, and none of it matters. You don’t feel anything.
But then there’s a change. Unpredictable. Instinctive. Something makes you shiver. A look that’s different from the others, and your pupils dilate. You get a tickle in your stomach. The air thins. Your mouth dries out. Your stomach contracts until it hurts. And that’s attraction. It’s not the same as love. Love germinates and grows. Attraction explodes.
It was like feeling the ground shift beneath you. I’d never felt anything that intense before.
The waitress brought our drinks. I sipped mine through a strawand started coughing. My throat burned. I wasn’t used to drinking at all, and certainly not anything that strong.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded and winked. He looked over at the cocktail menu again and made fun of me for when I said the list of drink names was a bit much. “It sounds like a porno-movie catalog,” I told him. He accused me of thinking about sex, and I protested that I wasn’t.
He whispered back to me, “I am. I think about it all the time.”
Taking another drink through my straw, I tried to pretend he wasn’t staring at me. But it went on for what felt like an eternity. I was feeling uncomfortable. I needed to think of something else. Right then. So I remarked, “You didn’t tell anyone anything about me. Not even Catalina. Why not?”
He shrugged. “You could have lied to me just to make a good impression and get the apartment… But instead, you were sincere in a way I absolutely did not see coming. The stuff you told me was personal. And I respect that.” He ran his finger meditatively around the rim of his glass as I thanked him. Then he confessed bashfully, “I looked you up on the internet. There wasn’t much there, but enough to give me some ideas about you.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I know you’re good. At what you do, I mean. Why am I saying good? You’re amazing! And I’d guess if you can dance like that, you’re probably good at everything else, too. You seem methodical.”
“If by methodical you mean an unbearable perfectionist, then yeah, that’s me. That’s one of the other things I think I’d like to get away from.”
“I find you pretty bearable,” he said.
I flicked a bit of my drink at him with my fingers, making him smirk. “Anyway, I’m not that good anymore,” I replied.
“Don’t be stupid. Talent is something you’re born with, notsomething you pick up and then lose. Maybe you can’t show it the same way you could before, but it’s still there.”
“You can say that again,” I told him. “Still, though, it’s hard to accept.”
“Did you really like it that much? It’s just a job, right?”
“It’s not, though, Lucas. It’s a way of life. I was going to dance at the American Ballet Theatre! I was going to go live in New York! Forty dancers from all over the world came to my audition and they picked me for the one open spot. Me!”
He grinned as he edged closer to me. “That sounds incredible.”
“I’d devoted every minute of my existence to achieving it. You can’t imagine the sacrifice and effort something like that takes.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” he told me.
