It’s my turn to blush now. He said it again. Hot chick.
“Oh look,” he points at me. “Now you’re cute blushing.”
“I guess we’re just a bunch of cute blushers.”
He smiles again, and then places his palm on my wrist, and that single gesture of his hand on my skin melts me. And while there’s a part of me that wants the kitchen table fantasy with Chris, I also want the other side with him too. The part where I let him into my heart and my soul, the part where we get to know each other. Because right now, I want to lean forward and taste his sweet lips. I want to hop into his lap and wrap my arms around his neck and smother him in kisses. I haven’t felt this way in years. I don’t even know what to do with all this wanting. I want to spend the day with him. To wander around the city, and stop in shops, and grab a coffee, and talk, and get to know him, and ignore my phone because he’s so much more interesting than any text message could ever be. I look at his hand, resting on me, and it’s almost enough for me to throw the whole Trophy Husband quest away, to just ask this guy to spend more time with me. But I don’t know how to back down, or how to let go. Most of all, I don’t know how to begin to let someone into my wounded heart. I don’t even know if my heart is healed, or if the scar tissue has just grown so thick and knotty that no one can ever touch me again.
So I return to a subject I can handle. Games. “Speaking of games, I kicked ass at Qbert when I was a kid. My parents were totally into this retro bowling alley near our house, and it had all the classic arcade games.”
“I was a Mario Brothers man myself.”
I reach for a fry and dip it into a lime-ginger sauce. “I loved that game. I used to play for hours, bouncing from square to square, trying to avoid Coily and the gremlins, trying to jump on discs. I went from level to level, to the white and green level, then to the ones where you just saw the tops of the squares…” I take a bite of the French fry. “I miss Qbert. And I mean the real Qbert, with the diagonal joystick, the pixilated graphics, the funky sounds.”
I notice Chris has a devilish little smile on his face, that one side of his mouth is curled up.
“What?”
“I have Qbert.”
“For the Playstation, you mean?”
Chris shakes his head. “I have the real Qbert.”
“The arcade Qbert?”
He nods proudly a few times.
“You have Qbert, arcade Qbert?”
“The real deal. In my living room.”
“I am having visions of eighth grade now. I am having visions of Silverspinner Lanes and me getting the high score, punching my initials in for all the world to see.”
“Bet you can’t beat my high score.”
“Oh, you think you can take me on in Qbert?”
“I do.”
“You are on.”
He holds out a hand to shake, and I have to wonder if he’s trying to find ways to touch me too. If he’s liking this little flirty stuff as much as I do. If he’s imagined more than flirting, more than lunches, more than kissing too.
“You’ll have to come over sometime and we’ll have a Qbert match,” he announces and then digs back into his chicken sandwich.
Now, take me to your house now. Show me Qbert, and let me play, and kiss my neck as I move the joystick. Then brush my hair aside and flick your tongue against my earlobe, and make me shiver so much that Qbert dies and I don’t care, because all I want to do is turn around and have you kiss me so deeply and so much that I can feel your kiss all the way through my veins.
* * *
After we finish, we leave the restaurant. As we walk down Union Street, I notice that Chris is a few inches taller than I am. I don’t often meet men who are much taller. I like the feeling of being next to someone who is.
“You know something about those fries?”
“What about those fries, Chris?”
“I will eat them in the rain. And in the dark. And on a train. And in a car. And in a tree.”
“They are so good, so good, you see.”
Chapter Nine
I close the blinds in my bedroom and slip into bed. I pull my computer onto my lap, settling under the covers. It’s been ten hours since my lunch with Chris and I know one thing for certain: I want to see him again.
I knew pretty much the second I sat down with him, the instant we started talking, that I wanted to see him again. I think it works that way more often than not. The whole idea of liking someone. You just kind of know, right away, within minutes usually. There was a moment, maybe when he was talking about having looked me up online, when he paused and then moved on to something else. It was almost as if he was going to say that he thought I was cute, or something. Or maybe it was when he said it’s a shame. It felt like something went unsaid, something good went unsaid there at our lunch.
Maybe I’m fooling myself. Maybe I’m just wishing and hoping for things I won’t have. Things I don’t even know how to deal with. Even if he does like me, what would I do with that? How would I fit that into my grand scheme?
I don’t have the answers though, so I focus on the here and now. On the feeling. On the wish and the hope that I might see him again.
I open an email message to him and start it in medias res.
So that one time I played Guitar Hero I only made it through two songs. I think I have two left hands.
I hit send, then slide out of bed to brush my teeth. Once they are scrubbed and buffed and clean as can be, I turn off the light in the bathroom, then the bedroom, telling myself to close my computer for the night, to resist hitting “send and receive.” But self-restraint has never been my strong suit. So I hit that tantalizing little button in my email program, just in case.
The icon whirs and a few seconds later, I’m rewarded.
That is so not OK on so many levels. I will teach you. Meet me at that electronics store on Thursday at 2 p.m. for a lesson.
I write back.
Lesson? You teach at the computer store?
His response comes moments later.
That’s why I was there when I met you. I teach newbies how to play video games once a week. Like yourself, evidently. Go ahead and say it. I am a full-fledged Internet geek.
I reply.
You are indeed. But then again, so am I. I will see you there in two days.
Then I do shut my computer down for the night, as Ms. Pac-Man sleeps at the foot of the bed. My laptop occupies the left half of the bed, the side Todd used to sleep on. I sleep alone, haven’t shared a bed for the last year. Except with a computer and a dog.