‘I’m usually early too,’ she says. ‘You know what they say, the early bird catches the wriggly worm.’ She arches a dark eyebrow suggestively, and I almost choke on the mouthful of Scotch I’ve just taken.
I swallow painfully as my brain processes the fact that she’s openly flirting with me. And that I don’t have any condoms ... Wait, why am I even thinking like that? Even if I am attracted to her, we would need to go out on a few dates at least before anything physical happened. I’m not the kind of guy that has one-night stands. I prefer to wait and see if there’s relationship potential there first. It’s a rigid rule for me. So I’m not going to have sex with someone I just met.
‘What do you want to drink?’ I rasp, trying not to let any of my inner turmoil show as I slide the menu over to Florence.
‘Hmm, let’s see.’ She peruses the menu thoughtfully, tapping her plump lower lip with a long purple fingernail.
I stare unabashedly, my cock twitching in my jeans.So much for not thinking about sex.
‘I think I’ll have a Bloody Mary.’ She winks at me conspiratorially, but I don’t get the joke.
‘Right. Back in a tick.’
I saunter up to the bar to order, feeling more confident now that she’s here. It could also be the two drams of whisky—I’m slightly fried.
‘Can I get a Bloody Mary and a large glass of water? Thanks.’
The barman smirks. ‘Pacing yourself, mate?’
I don’t think he should be commenting on my drinking habits, but he’s right. What if I need to perform?Stop it, Damian. You are not having sex tonight.
‘Something like that,’ I reply with a thin smile.
Florence is busily messaging someone on her phone and smiling to herself when I head back to the table, carrying the drinks, and my chest tightens in alarm.I knew it, she’s way too pretty not to have other options. Or maybe she’s got a boyfriend and is considering this a ‘just friends’ type of date?
‘Here you go.’ I place the red aromatic cocktail in front of her, trying not to show I’m bothered.
‘Thanks.’
We clink glasses and say ‘slainte’. She eyes my drink of choice curiously but doesn’t comment.
I take several gulps of water to clear my head, which is suddenly fuzzy as fuck, while she takes a small sip of herBloody Mary and places it back on the table.
I know I shouldn’t ask who she was messaging, but the question is burning a hole in my brain.Do you have a boyfriend? Do you have a boyfriend?
‘Do you know the history of the Bloody Mary?’ Florence says conversationally. ‘It’s quite interesting.’
I shake my head. ‘Nope.’
‘Well, Bloody Mary was the nickname given to Mary Tudor in the sixteenth century because when she became queen, she burned over 300 Protestants at the stake.’ Florence twirls the swizzle stick around in her drink.
‘So it was named after her?’
‘No, it originated in Paris in 1921, thanks to a bartender, Fernand Petiot—or Pete, as he told me to call him. He had Americans visiting his bar with their canned tomato juice and Russians fleeing the revolution, bringing in vodka. One night, someone wanted a hangover cure. So he mixed them together, added some spice, and voilà! It was a match made in heaven.’
She smiles at me and takes the tiniest sip of her drink. The ruby liquid merely moistens her lips. For all her talk about Bloody Marys, she doesn’t seem that keen about drinking her own.
‘You seem clued-up. Do you have a history degree or something?’ I ask.
She hitches a shoulder and smiles. ‘I’m just interested in learning about the past, and I read a lot of historical novels. What about you? Do you read?’
‘Ah, yeah, I’m mainly into horror and Gothic fiction.’
Florence perks up. ‘Oooh yes, me too. The darker and spookier, the better.’
A somewhat competitive discussion ensues on different titles, but I have to concede defeat. She’s read far more than I have, and I’m impressed by the way she can condense a plot into two or three sentences, essentially plucking out the heart of the story and making me intrigued to read it. I make a note on my phone of several books to download later on. Our conversation flows easily. As well as being attractive, Florence is intelligent, witty, and confidently flirtatious. It’s early days, but she’s ticking all the right boxes for me, which is surprising.
It’s only when I’ve excused myself to use the men’s and running through what we’ve said (being a dentist, I have a good memory for small talk) that I realise she’s said something a bit off. Florence made it sound like she knew the guy who invented the Bloody Mary—‘Pete, as he told me to call him,’ she’d said. But she would have to be over 100 years old now if she knew him back then. I chuckle a little to myself as I finish and zip up my jeans. A slip of the tongue. She’s so into her history that she’s imagined herselfthere in Paris. That’s quite endearing.
