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Rei
Iguess playing bass must burn a lot of calories.
Trine is starving. I drive her to the nearest big chain fast food restaurant and she demolishes a below average burger, a side of medium fries and a diet coke. I eat with her, though not nearly with as much gusto.
It’s nice. I don’t really know her yet, but I appreciate women whoenjoythings.
"So," she says, picking her head up to look at me. A group of teenagers in the booth behind us are giggling loudly. "Was that your first punk show?"
I smile. "No, but it’s been a while," I say. "After med school, live music kind of loses its appeal."
She furrows her brow. For a second, she looks genuinely concerned. "How upsetting," she says. "That sounds awful for you."
I wave her off. "Don’t worry. If anything, my interests have greatly expanded. I like to think my life is richer for it."
She cocks her head. "Depends," she says. "What’s the last show you went to? Before all this."
"The last punk show? Hm," I reply. "I went to see Blink 182 once when they were on tour. My high school girlfriend was really into them."
"How was it?" she asks, her eyes narrowing.
"Oh, the first set was great," I reply. "We got into a fight sometime before the second set, so I never got to see it. I heard they got really drunk, though, so apparently, I didn’t miss much."
She shakes her head. "Your girlfriend sounds fun."
"Ex-girlfriend," I say. "And yeah. I mean, it was a lifetime ago."
"So you wouldn’t do it again?"
"I didn’t say that."
Her gaze flits up to meet my eyes, and she smirks. "You’re full of surprises," she says.
"You have no idea."
Her cheeks turn a lovely shade of pink, but she doesn’t say anything. She chews on her plastic straw until it’s destroyed, tiny holes in it until I’m sure there’s absolutely no liquid getting to her mouth. "So if you’re not into punk," she says, picking up her head to look at me, her brown eyes narrowing. "And you’re here for work, why did you come to my show?"
"Do you really need me to spell it out for you?" I ask. I’m just teasing her, she clearly wants to hear it, and I want to tell her. I stick a chicken nugget in my mouth and chew it slowly, until she rolls her eyes, a smile on her face.
"Yes," she says when I swallow. "I need everything to be spelled out for me."
I cocked my head, inching closer to her. I can smell the sugar on her breath, and whatever perfume she uses—it’s something citrusy, with a floral afternote. Maybe that’s her shampoo. "I have a lot of questions for you," I say. "And I wanted to make sure I had a chance to ask you."
"Work-related questions?" she says after a beat.
"Maybe. I don’t know yet," I immediately say.
She softens at that, her shoulders slumping. "Okay," she says. She takes off her denim jacket—the same one she wore to meet us at the restaurant. Under it, she’s wearing a buttoned pastel pink halter top. It’s collared, sleeveless, and low-cut. It’s hard for me to keep looking right at her face, since her cleavage is magnetic.
She’s smiling at me when I meet her gaze again. "Do you like it?" she asks. "I thought it was a little preppy, but…"
"It’s good," I say.
She smiles, and I let my gaze slide down her long neck, past a swirl of black ink on her shoulder that’s covered almost entirely by her blonde hair. I pick up my head to look at her face again, and she’s smiling, her face turning a darker shade of pink. When I meet her eyes again, her pupils dilate, and her eyes are the only thing I can see in the industrially lit restaurant. "You don’t have to stop looking," she says.
"Unless you explicitly ask me to look, I won’t," I say. "My mother raised me right."
Something flickers in her eye, but she says nothing. She shifts her weight instead, pushing her drink away. "Thank you for dinner."
