“You make sweats look good. Anyway, look at me. I’m a grease monkey. And it’s a brewery: they don’t care.”
Once we were seated, we ordered a flight of beer to split. “So tell me about Kim and Carissa.”
“Kimber? Well, that tattoo was a mistake for sure because we only dated for five minutes. Impulse purchase, I guess you could say.”
“Next week you’re probably going to say that about my phone number on your hand.”
He smiled. “Never.” He swiveled on his barstool and turned to face me while putting his hand on my knee, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Carissa was different. I would have married that girl, but we were young. She broke up with me on my twenty-first birthday. She invited me to a restaurant for my birthday dinner and—”
“Wait, when is your birthday?”
“November eighth. I’m a Scorpio, can’t you tell?”
It was true, I would have guessed that. “Yes, Scorpio, I can tell. I’m a Taurus.”
“We’re perfect together!” he shouted, practically loud enough for everyone in the brewery to hear.
“No, I actually think those two signs are totally incompatible,” I said.
“Anyway, so she invited me to a birthday dinner, and when I walked into the restaurant I found her sitting at a table alone. I thought she’d invite some friends to celebrate, but it was just her. She was also wearing a do-rag, which I found peculiar.”
He was looking up at the ceiling in deep thought.
“And then what...?” I asked.
He took a sip of beer. “And then she said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t be with you. I’m wearing this do-rag so you won’t be attracted to me and won’t be sad about us breaking up.’?”
“What?” I said.
“Yeah, I swear. That’s what I loved about her. She was a freakin’ weirdo.”
“So how did you react?”
“I just stood up and walked out, and then I went and got drunk and showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night. I thought I would serenade her with my guitar, but she called the police on me.”
I started laughing but his frown didn’t crack. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“She ruined me. I mean, really broke my heart. I have no idea why she did it; she just said we were too young.”
“How old were you?” I took a sip of beer.
“Twelve,” he deadpanned.
Beer literally came out of my nose. “What?”
“I told you, it was my twenty-first birthday. Don’t you listen?” He handed me a napkin. I wasn’t even remotely embarrassed for some reason. He went on, “She graduated and wanted to move to Denver. She’s a writer... so she’s totally whack. She got an English lit degree and wanted to be a performance artist in the city. She’ll probably write about how she broke my heart. Then she’ll reenact it onstage dressed as a fucking grasshopper or something.”
“I still don’t get the whole do-rag thing.”
“That was just Carissa. Everything had to be for the sake of something else. I’m telling you, she’ll write a book about it. This extremely feminine and beautiful girl shows up to her boyfriend’s birthday dinner to break up with him while she’s wearing a dirty wife-beater, paint-splattered overalls, and a do-rag. She just wants to be able to tell the story over and over again with all the embellishments, you know? And, like, who the fuck does that?”
“And you liked this girl?”
“I loved her. The only one so far.”
Maybe Gavin didn’t have the best taste in women, which had me wondering what he thought of me. I needed to be responsible. I was not his type.
“I hate that Ouija board game, just FYI.”
