The What Could Have Been

"Alright," she thought as she headed out for her first blind date since her horrifically emotionally saturated break-up two weeks prior. She brushed herself off, more metaphorical that literal, but a definitive gesture all the same. 

"Here I go again on my own."

He nipped the endless choruses of Whitesnake in the bud with his kiss on the cheek.

"Hey Cait," he said, red hair a-fluttering in the late winter wind. "It's great to meet you."

"It's great to find this place," she joked, referencing the fact the New York cocktail lounges, if anywhere you'd ever want to find yourself, where rarely in locations you could ever honestly find by yourself. This one, in particular, was relatively easy. Four plywood doors on a deserted street in the last bastion of uncool Lower East Side, marked only by a gold shrunken name-tag. "East Side Company Bar," it whispered.

She felt lucky she had even arrived at all.

"Funny thing you chose here," he said, pulling back from the slightly pre-emptive hug he'd given her. "This is the one place I can get us in."

Apparently he had thought her profession as a publicist enabled her city-wide access. She thought this over, quietly. Maybe he was right. She planned to storm Milk & Honey should there be a date two. All the cards on the table, she thought, feeling slightly empty-handed.

They went inside.

She ordered a gin gimlet; he ordered something far too feminine with enough rum to bring back her PTSD of tiki cocktails. She told him the story of Waikiki Wally's, and immediatly wished she hadn't. She was now that drunk girl with publicity access, she reasoned. All her secrets were out and none of them were even all that true. "It's a bitch when your subtext is all lies," she thought.

They both ordered round two. The same. He ordered for her. "Hot," she thought. "Damn hot."

He put his hand on her leg. She laughed at his jokes. They talked about Los Angeles, why she hated it, why he loved it. He owned a Vespa. She loved Vespas. He aspired to cars. She hated cars. Hot / cold / hot / cold.

Third round.

They talked about jobs, Manhattan. He lived in a duplex in Soho. "A duplex in Soho," she thought, "is probably worth more than my honor."

She was drunk enough to think she had honor, and in a solely monetary sense, no less.

They left the bar to get arepas.

"I was raised Mormon," he confessed.

"Are the magic dundies on then?" she asked, three gimlets to the wind, sheets far from mind.

"Of course not. I'm lasped. I have a very estranged relationship with my family."

"Oh. Well, mine is full of heretics. So you'd all get along just fine."

He smiled, apparently finding her future fire and brimstone beguiling.

"Would you like dessert?" the waitress offered after three rounds of arepas and wine. It was late, and half the tables had cleared. She was praying for a "no thanks just the check."

"Yes!" he said, ordering the chocolate pudding.

He fed Cait with his spoon.

"I would like to see you again," she said, between him feeding her those dainty mouthfuls. She felt like a bride on the sly, but couldn't resist the automatic intimacy implied in such a simple gesture.

"Yes," he said, his fingers smoothing over her right knee.

He walked her home, kissed her with intentions as dark as the chocolate, and she responded just as deep, but braced with a bitterness, too.

This wasn't a connection, but a glimpse into something dangled. The carrot the rabbit will never bite. The rabbit the greyhound will never capture. Something in the chase of things, the pudding one arm's length away. The open mouth, the dish-washed spoon.

A possibility un-pursued.

He will call four days later. She won't pick up. She won't know why, but even know, fumbling with keys outside her front gate, she has a strange, specific sense of what will happen. She also knows what won't.

And somehow she find solace in this ::

Here I go again on my own
goin' down the only road I've ever known.
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time,
but here I go again, here I go again,
here I go again, here I go,
here I go again