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Instead, I switched out the CD and turned up the volume. The sweet tones of Judas Priest washed out the inevitable barrage of shouted cursing. Much of it was sexual in nature. It was always sexual in nature, the lack of creativity bordered on the farcical.
After a few minutes of torture, I inched up further in the gridlocked traffic, gaining a whole ten inches from where I had started out. A massive achievement in terms of WWI troop advancement.
Another honk came to my right, from yet another driver of a city bus under the impression they were a god among mere mortals who were all meant to get out of their damn way. Adding insult to absurdity, the advertisement plastered across the side of the metal behemoth was for a new dating site.
I could remember my last date like it was yesterday, even though it was actually five years before. I had used a site like that advertised, only one of the newer versions of what was going about in that brave new world. Back in the olden days of match percentages and actual questions about actual interests. The guy I was meeting that balmy July night had scored a 98 percent match, according to the algorithms.
The suit should have been a red flag. It was so new that it still had some of the tags on it. It was expensive but not tailored, combined with a pair of boots that looked like they had once been used to kick someone to death, polished to a mirror glow.
I had foolishly put my actual job at that time into my bio on the app. Most of the men on the site avoided me like the plague. The few who actually messaged me were more taken with my tits than my profile.
To be fair, my tits were quite impressive, and the guys were barely out of their teens and clearly virgins, laid bare by their bravado as much as anything else. A few of the guys seemed cool and even messaged me a few times like normal people before sending me dick pics. I forwarded them immediately to Amy, who made me feel better about the whole thing by writing funny captions under them.
Mike had done none of that. He wrote extensively and eloquently, discovering as much about me as I had about him. He seemed genuinely interested in me and my life.
He didn’t even flinch when the subject turned to kids. He was the oldest of five and had been around younger kids most of his life.
He also offered to pay for the entire bill and left a generous tip. He was such a gentleman. One might even say he was the supreme gentleman.
It was when we were back at my apartment that tragedy struck. I had honestly enjoyed myself and his company. So, I didn’t hesitate when he went in for a kiss.
That was when he grabbed me. I tried to say no, but his tongue was already in my mouth, making it difficult to speak. This was followed by a hand up my skirt. Switching into fight mode, I just did what came naturally.
The ambulance arrived fairly quickly. The taste of his blood was still in my mouth. It was going to be a while before he could walk straight again, and I had apparently broken his nose, which explained my splitting headache.
The cops took me in for questioning, of course. They were charming as ever, making sure I didn’t even get water before I had told them what happened at least five times so they could go through it and look for inconsistencies. Which, of course, there were. After all, only a carefully rehearsed lie could be the same every time, and I wasn’t lying.
It was only after they retrieved the security footage from the hall security camera that they actually believed me and let me go. My parents wanted me to press charges, but I wasn’t in a hurry to see him again. There also wasn’t much worry about him hurting anyone else. Or about perpetuating his assault-prone genes by having kids.
I had Kingsley to thank. Like so many of the other most useful things I knew, he was the one who taught me how to fight. His reputation was so notorious that even the bullies steered clear, having a good idea of what might happen if they didn’t. Bullying in general, quite a scandal up to that point, took a dip his junior year when it was made abundantly clear that “Killer” Kingsley would be having none of it.
Once I finally arrived at the office, I jolted back into the present, reminding myself that I had better things to focus on than bad dates of the past, and I found that parking was almost as bad as the traffic had been. The investment firm had a parking garage all to itself, but even so, space was at a premium and only the executive spots were assigned. Everything else was a free-for-all.
