…@oxo
And so there we are. Him and me.
Me and him.
Me and NOT MR.
He met me outside the restaurant, pulled me straight out the taxi cab. He had kind of rough hands. He doesn’t moisturise. MR moisturises, his hands smell of pears. D&G smells of…that night, not D&G, something different. He has a kind of musky masculine scent on, but with a hint of fruit. I just wanted to bury my head in his shoulder, but I smiled sweetly and let him help me out the cab. It’s killing me. I want to know what it is. But for some reason at first I was unable to speak.
We took the elevator ride up to the Oxo Restaurant. It didn’t feel awkward. It felt, gentle, a short journey during which we smile at each other. He comments on my shoes. We both know we’ve never really spoken. Platitudes and comments about the weather (which as we all know is an English national past-time) have passed at work. Flirtation has been minimal. Conversations by SMS have been brief and never explored deep annals of greater meaning.
He has grey eyes.
I realised I was staring because the concept had dawned on me that I really didn’t know this man at all. I was working off pheromones here, fake pheromones, manufactured in a bottle and doused all over his impeccably tailored sweaters.
So when we exited the elevator I was about ready to make an excuse and leave, but I’d built no escape route, I hadn’t my cell, only one person knew where I was and that was because she spent 30 minutes attacking my nethers with wax and drinking my bubbly. And as far as she was concerned this was an anniversary diner for MR and I.
D&G took my coat and handed it to the server. That was it. Escape route erased. I was going to have to talk to him, flirt no doubt, say clever things, be funny and witty and all those things I am renowned for. But I kept thinking of MR, memories of our stupid fight, flashes of Claire and him, probably lying naked on each other. In my head she is snaffling popcorn and coke out of his crotch or reading something deftly intellectual like Nitche as she adjusts her expensive spex and they wax lyrical about the state of modern literature.
Fuck.
I smiled. All teeth and anxiety.
This was no way to start the show.
