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“Where do you work?” I say, making an attempt to be nicer as I slice my steak. She already knows more about me than I do about her, and it’s probably time to remedy that.
“I’m a florist,” she says with a grin, showing that she obviously enjoys her job, but part of being a good date, I’m sure, is asking questions instead of just making assumptions.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s actually really fun,” she gushes, and the pink-margarita-drinking girl looks cute suddenly. Or maybe I’m getting a buzz from the whiskey I’ve been guzzling. “I could never work in a stuffy office, and I get to make pretty arrangements on the best and worst days of peoples’ lives. Most people don’t pay much attention to the flowers, but the wrong ones can make everything feel off. I like getting to take that stress off their plate and do something I enjoy at the same time.”
“That does sound fun.” I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I believe that she does. I enjoy my ‘stuffy office’. I’ll like it even better when I get my own office with a door I can shut to keep people and their annoying voices out. So many people have this obsession with talking, and they do it so incessantly.
“It can be.”
The silence makes me feel awkward this time. I want to keep her talking. I feel like I’m ruining her evening by being rude. “So you’re probably a pretty hard person to buy flowers for.”
She giggles, but the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.. “Probably not, because I can find beauty and magic in all flowers. I’d be happy to get any of them, but I wouldn’t know. No one’s ever gotten me flowers. Everyone probably assumes the same thing.”
No one buys flowers for the girl who loves flowers so much she decided to do it for work. I don’t like that. She’s got shitty friends, she’s afraid of feeding her body, and nobody asks her what she likes. No one is looking out for Brittany- not even Brittany. “Why do you agree to these dates, Brittany? What are you looking to get out of sitting down across from a stranger and sharing a meal?”
A pink blush rises to the surface of her cheeks, and she looks down as she bites her lip. “I have this fantasy that one day, on one of these dates, the stranger I sit across from will be ‘the one’. They’ll be… whatever it is that I need. That the stranger and I will build something beautiful together. That’s the goal of all dates, isn’t it? To find the person you’ll spend the rest of your life with?”
“I guess so. I’ve never dated before.” I’ve never been interested in ‘the one’ either. I’ve seen what relationships do to people. My parents were never happy. My sister ran off with some guy she thought she loved. All he did was beat the shit out of her and kill our oldest brother. I’d never put my hands on a woman in anger, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t tear each other to shreds in other ways.
Brittany’s eyes go wide, and her attention swings back to me.“Never? Haven’t you had a girlfriend?”
“I’ve been in school my entire life. I’ve never needed to go on blind dates. Everyone I know was always within a mile of me.” I went to parties instead of fancy restaurants. The parties were normally full of people I knew, and if I bumped into someone attractive that seemed interested in me, maybe we’d make our way off to a quiet place. There weren’t many requests for dates, just hook-ups. Maybe I have a ‘fatal flaw’, like she worries about herself.
Is it that I’m pressuring? I don’t always mean to come off surly and sour, but I can’t deny I probably do. This bright and shiny girl certainly won’t want to be the first to ask me for a second date, especially since I’ve been such an ass on this one.
Brittany covers her lips with her fingers to hide her grin, but hiding something so beautiful should be illegal. “Is this your first date?”
I know she’s teasing me, but I don’t care. Something about her is drawing me in. “I guess it is.”
“Well, then we better turn this date around,” she says resolutely. “I’ll give you a break since it’s your first time, but we need to make this better. I know better places we can try when you’re done eating your ‘fully balanced meal’.”
She’s wasting her time. She wants to give me a chance to show her a better side of me, but there isn’t one. I don’t have a good side to show her, but I’m too frustrated with her low self-esteem to tell her no. After tonight, I won’t come out with her or my coworkers again, but I’m not going to run from her now. She deserves at least that much respect.
