Gavin's Big Date

Gavin’s Big Date

  By Melinda Bardon

  This was all my fault, really. I know everyone wants to blame her, but she can’t help it. It’s just her nature, you know? Me, on the other hand, I had a choice. Every step of the way, I chose wrong. Everything’s clearer in hindsight, right? Maybe if you’d been there you would have done things differently. Maybe not.

  So there I was, at this sushi place downtown. Thursday nights are usually pretty quiet for me. I didn’t have a lot to look forward to besides a cat box due for a cleaning and mid-season television. But that night, I was restless, so I ignored the drizzle, huddled into a hoodie, and walked down for some hot miso and rainbow rolls. It was moderately busy, but not too crowded. I seated myself in a lonely corner of the oval track that surrounded the chef station and started piling up the plates.

  It wasn’t until my third helping that I happened to glance up and see her. No not her... a different girl. A beautiful, fresh-faced, girl with faded streaks of pink through her razor-straight blonde hair. She flickered in and out of my view as the sushi chefs moved back and forth between us, and every time I caught a glimpse of her smile, it was like the sun was peeking out at me through soy sauce clouds. Maybe it wasn’t love, but it was certainly a blossoming infatuation.

  She was with a group of friends of mixed genders, but none seemed overly attached to her in a romantic sense. Did I dare go up and introduce myself? I grabbed a fourth and fifth plate off the conveyer belt and dared not. It’s not that I’m a coward or anything, I’ve introduced myself to plenty of girls. But here, under the flourescent lights of a train sushi shack, in front of half a dozen of her quite sober friends did not seem like the time or the place. Still, I couldn’t just let her slip away without making at least a small effort.

  I fished around my messenger bag and pulled out a pen and and a pad of yellow sticky notes and wrote in careful block script:

  “Pink: You’re adorable. Drinks sometime? 555-943-2891”

  There was no time for careful deliberation of words. Some of her friends were standing up and gathering their coats and hats, and I only prayed that she was hungry enough to stick around for one more pass of the train. I hastily tagged the note onto the first plate and watched it go. Then the chefs passed by again, pausing right in front of me to gather some ingredients. When they finally moved on, the girl of my dreams and her friends were paying their bill and walking out the door. I’d lost my shot.

  Or had I? The train was rolling back around to my side of the track with no sign of yellow anywhere. Had she seen it? Maybe one of her friends had given it to her as they left? Or more likely it had fallen off on the way around. I stood up and scanned the floor--no note. She must have taken it. Someone had to have. Did she think it was creepy and throw it away? Knowing it was a long shot, I futilely checked my phone for texts. There were none.

  Defeated, I paid my check and walked home. The drizzle had turned into full-on rain, and by the time I got to my bed I was drenched and a little more aware of how lonely my life had become. I fell asleep among hazy visions of pink-blonde hair and neon street signs in the rain.

  Three a.m. What was I doing awake at three in the morning? My cat jumped off the bed irately as I turned over. There were no sounds of sirens, no fire alarms, not even a bum screaming in the street below my window. I was so unused to getting a phone call that it took me almost four rings to realize I’d been woken up by the sound of my phone. I dove for it and managed to answer before it went to voicemail.

  “Hello?” I answered, trying my best to sound calm and manly.

  “Finally,” a woman’s voice purred from the other end. “I’ve been trying this number for an hour.”

  Perhaps if I had been fully awake, or if she hadn’t sounded quite so deliriously sexy, I might have realized how creepy that sentence was. Like I said, everything’s so much clearer in hindsight.

  “Uh, an hour, huh?” I said, very smooth. “You must be a real night owl.”

  That is not what I meant to say. My mind said: “And they say dreams never come true.” and “I should probably be fined for keeping such a lovely woman waiting for so long by the phone.” and “Why, hello there, sexy mama, what can I do for you at this hour?” My mouth said none of these things, because my mouth is an idiot. I winced, expecting to hear the call drop, but she just laughed.

  “You might say that, yes. What’s your name?”

  “Gavin,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  “Do you know where the Wakefield bridge is, Gavin?” She asked.

  “Uh, yeah, sure. That’s like a ten minute walk from my place.” There was silence on her end, so I pressed forward with another question. “Are you there now? Do you want to come over?”

  “Meet me at the bridge in fifteen?” Apparently she would be the one asking the questions.

  “Sure, fifteen. At the middle of the bridge, or the base or something?”

  The phone beeped twice and “call ended” flashed across the screen.

  Now, come on. Yes, it was strange (not to mention rude) for a woman to be calling me in the middle of the night on a weeknight. Yes, it was even stranger that she wouldn’t give me her name and asked me to meet her, a total stranger, on a bridge, in the rain. But you can’t convince me that you wouldn’t have been a little curious, too. I tossed on some jeans and a better smelling shirt, grabbed my rain jacket, and went back outside. The rain was now a downpour, and the wind had joined in on the fun. It was a miserable ten minute walk to the bridge.

  I didn’t see anyone at the base on my side of the river, so I figured I’d keep walking and maybe meet her halfway. She was waiting for me at the very top, bundled in a rain slicker that hugged every curve of her well-formed body instead of poofing out and adding a virtual ten pounds, like every other mortal’s jacket does. Like mine did. Her black leather pants were tucked into a pair of shiny black rain boots, her face was obscured by the hood pulled up to protect her from the rain. I saw strands of hair flying loose around the edges, though, and they were not blonde or pink. It dawned on me that this was not the girl I meant to give my number to.

  The weather, coupled with the fact that there was absolutely zero traffic at this time in the morning, made it seem like we were the only two people in the world, and suddenly that was terrifying to me. Who was this woman? Why did she take a note addressed to ‘Pink?’ I didn’t remember seeing her at the sushi place, but there were a lot of faces I hadn’t been paying attention to. She took a hand out of her jacket pockets and waved at me. Instead of turning around, walking back home, shutting my phone off, and going back to sleep, I waved back.

  “You made it,” she said as I joined her by the railing.

  “Yep,” I replied. “Listen, I’m not sure how you got my number, but this is all kind of weird, don’t you think?”

  She turned and leaned over the railing on her forearms, looking down at the water.

  “You seemed like a man who could handle a little adventure,” she said, and I caught a heartbreaking trace of disappointment in her voice. “Was I wrong?”

  My brain officially gave up and let little brain take over. A gorgeous, mysterious woman wanted me to go on an adventure with her in the middle of the night. Shut up, brain, the answer is yes.

  “No,” I said hastily, “no you’re not wrong. I love adventure. Love it. Where do you want to go?”

  She grinned at me and jerked her head towards the river far below us.

  “What, like, on a boat?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, “not on a boat.”

  “Oh,” I said. Big brain came running back to the helm. “Um, listen. I’m sure you’re a great girl, and I’d love to go on some thrilling adventures with you—maybe somewhere dry and warm wi
th a full bar and a pool table? But I don’t think jumping off a bridge in a rainstorm is the best idea.”

  She leaned in and put a hand on my shoulder, nuzzling her face against my chest. My heart beat faster, trying to keep up with the blood that was now rushing away from my head.

  “But I was thinking afterwards, we could dry off at your place,” she said. I detected a girlish pout in her tone, at odds with the jazz singer smokiness of her voice. “Maybe curl up naked under your blankets to warm up, basking in the thrill of the looooong fall?”

  “Leave him alone, Arla,” a man’s voice cut through the rain just as my mysterious lady started grinding suggestively against my hips.

  She let me go with a scoff, practically pushing away, and put her hands on her hips. I turned to see who this intruder was. A Nordic action figure gazed back at us, some twenty feet away. Like Arla, his rain jacket and jeans looked like they had been designed to specifically show off every impressive muscle and sewn onto his body. His long mane of blonde hair blew behind him in the wind, framing his chiseled jaw perfectly.

  They’re Swedish, my mind informed me. They’re a couple of Swedes on vacation and the girlfriend got mad about something and decided to take some poor jackass local out on a joyride to piss off the boyfriend.

  “Stay out of this, Agamedes,” Arla said. “You don’t get a say in my