“Have you dated much since—” Margo broke off her question quickly, fidgeting in her seat and taking a suspiciously long sip of her Diet Pepsi. Almost as if she couldn’t believe she had brought it up.
IT.
I had something in my past that had become anit. The thing everybody thought they had to dance around when, really, I wanteditto either be forgotten completely or shouted from the rooftop. It was the whispers I hated. It had been a year. I had been to therapy. I could handle talking aboutitwith an old friend. Nowit was just embarrassing—the biggest reason I had been reluctant to come back to Eugene. To the very town whereittook place.
“A few dates. Nothing serious,” I said.
A few actually meant two. Both had been blind dates. Both had been a disaster. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about dating. I had boldly declared to my therapist at our last appointment that I had healed and was ready to start dating again. But that may have been more the fact that I no longer wanted to pay the hefty monthly bill for a therapist, because if I was honest with myself, the thought of getting close to somebody like that again was enough to make me want to get those claws back out and scurry up a tree to hide.
“I’m not opposed to dating,” I lied, bent on proving to Margo that I was completely fine to say his name. To giveita name. “After Tyler, I just haven’t found a guy I trust enough to pursue anything.” I laughed, giving my best impression that all was okay on that front.
Margo didn’t press for anything else but instead said, “It looks like you might get that date.” Her eyes followed something past my shoulder. “One of them just stood up and is looking over at us.”
“I’m not the one they’ve been drooling over all this time,” I said. It was true. My back was to their table.
“What do we do?” Margo asked, sitting up straighter, a look of panic dashing across her face.
“You could start with, ‘Is your name Google? Because you’ve got everything I’ve been searching for.’”
She kicked me under the table. “I’m serious. He’s probably coming for you, but just in case. This stuff doesn’t happen to me.”
“If he asks you out, and you want to go, go. As long as he doesn’t give you Ted Bundy vibes.”
“Ted Bundy acted like a normal guy,” she whispered frantically. “He fooled everybody.”
“Alright, bad example. Maybe Godzilla?”
“He could be coming to askyouout, you know.”
“Nope. This is all you,” I said, taking another sip of my water.
“I’m going back to Virginia in three days. He’s not going to want me.”
“I’m still waiting for the Eugene old-lady gossip channels to die down from the last time I dated and almost married a local boy.” Tyler wasn’t technically local, but two towns over in Salmon was close enough.
“Wait.” Margo leaned across the table, looking past my shoulder and clearly trying not to seem disheartened. “Oh. He’s leaving. He wasn’t coming over here.”
I glanced behind me, and sure enough, I caught the back of a man’s head before the door closed. I turned back to Margo, our eyes immediately going to our plates of food. I picked at my pizza. She ate a fry. We both took a drink. The wind had left our sails. I didn’t think I had wanted him to come over, but I found myself strangely disappointed. Where there had been anticipation and intrigue only a moment ago, now we were just two girls feeling foolish. I made it a long moment before a snort shot out of my nose. Margo’s face broke into a grin, and hushed laughter burst out of us.
“We were so sure he was coming for us,” Margo whisper-howled, wiping her eyes with her fingers.
“Do you think he got a closer look and changed his mind?” This made us bend over once more, crouching over our plates of below-average food and wheezing until we were out of breath.
“I knew I should have showered today,” I said much louder than I had intended.
“Hey, ladies.”
My eyes widened as a voice approached us from behind me. Margo’s head popped up from her folded arms on the table, no trace of the mirth that was showing on her face only seconds before.
An average-build man in a red-and-gray plaid shirt with brown hair spilling out of a baseball hat smiled down at us, holding out his hand as he stopped at our table. “I’m Briggs.”
His gaze swept over us both but rested on Margo. My cute, innocent friend looked like she was caught in a hunter's snare, eyes darting wildly and hands constantly in motion. She did manage to tell him her name, but hearing the catcalls and ‘Yeah, Briggs!’ behind us probably didn’t help her anxiety. To his credit, Briggs looked embarrassed and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. As for me, my eyes narrowed as I shifted into full mama-bear mode, sniffing for something foul in the woods.
“We’d like to buy you girls a drink.” He motioned toward the guys in the back. It was just like in the movies where the guy at the bar offers to buy the leading lady a drink. I glanced around the dingy room with the perpetually sticky tables, booths with rips in the seats, and old tables and chairs strewn about the room. This movie set needed some work.
I leaned forward. “So, are you the brave one, or did you lose a bet?”
A sheepish smile lit his face. “Brave, though I definitely had some encouragement.”
