7
Eli
I openthe door with my heart pounding. I haven’t been able to sit still since sheleft.
“Hey.”
She’s standing in front of me in a baby blue dress that conforms to her curves like it was made for her. Her blond hair is pulled away from her face and her lips look like these glistening wet pieces of candy that I need totaste.
A black ribbon is tied around her neck, gesturing toward an innate sensuality that’s both subtle if you don’t know what you’re looking at and overtly sexual if you do. To me, she looks so fucking hot that the ribbon borders onvulgar.
She looks perfect and she looks like she was fucking made for me. From the way she’s peering up at me with these big blue eyes and the way she looks so innocent standing in front of me, I’m about to go out of my fuckingmind.
“Get inhere.”
She walks inside and heads straight for the kitchen, grabs two glasses from the rack over the sink and puts them next to the bottle of red I have on the counter. I grab the corkscrew and uncork thebottle.
“I didn’t know whether you’d come,” I say as I pour the wine. “I wanted to call you. I made the mistake of not getting your number when I gave youmine.”
“Let’s fix that right now,” she says. I give her my phone and she punches in her name and number. Cindy. Just having her name there makes my heartache.
“Oh, hey,” she says, taking a piece of paper out of her purse. “Check it out. This was the party I was attonight.”
“Takes me back,” I say, noting the letters scrawled at the top. “This is the kind of thing they handed out when some shitty band wanted you to come to their basementshow.”
“Yeah, well, this was barely a step up from this. This party was at this crappy apartment at the end of a crappy row ofapartments.”
“Thatbad?”
She takes a sip of her wine and heads toward thecouch.
“It just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like it was where I was supposed to be tonight, youknow?”
“No guysthere?”
She lowers hereyes.
“No. No guys.” She perks up. “Oh! Yes, there was oneguy.”
I feel my fist clench as I take a sip of mywine.
“The guy who gave me the flier,” she continues. “I didn’t have any expectations going into it but I thought at least since he wanted to see me there I wouldn’t find him with another girl. I can see that you’re about to start rolling your eyes, so just hear meout.”
I take a long sip of my wine. I don’t know how much longer I can sit here and take this while she talks about some other guy. I made a mistake by asking. That was my first mistake.Asking.
“I’mlistening.”
“Okay, so I can see that you’re rolling your eyes. But just hear me out. It’s not like I want a commitment from the first guy who asks me to meet him somewhere, but I think it’s common decency to at leasttalkto the person if you’ve told them you want to see them. Right? I mean, if you say you want to see someone, then you should mean it. You should want to actually seethem.”
“Did you sayfirstguy?”
“Yeah,” she says, sitting back into the couch. “This is the first guy who showed any interest in me. How will I know when the guy really meansit?”
“When the right man comes along,” I say, cutting a glance toward her, “you willknow.”
“How am I going toknow?”
“The right man will never make you doubt how he feels. The right man will put you first, always. And the man who is right for you will show you.” I inch toward her and cup her hand, sliding my thumb across herlips.