“The service does seem exceptionally slow,” I respond.
He’s looking over my shoulder to try and spot our waiter, and I’m thinking this might not be better than suffering through Jana’s mom and the thick, dark cloud that follows her everywhere. Sure, it’s a dark cloud made up of pot smoke and patchouli oil, but a dark cloud it remains.
“You’re really giving up that easily?” I ask.
“Well, if you’re not interested, you’re not interested,” he answers. “If it’s all the same to you, though, I really am pretty hungry, so I’m going to stay and eat. You’re welcome to stay too, of course,” he adds. “I promise I won’t take it as some kind of encouragement of my high-risk lifestyle choices.”
I chuckle softly.
“You know,” I tell him, “for a meathead, you’ve got a decent brain on you.”
“You really don’t hear the term ‘meathead’ as much as you used to, have you noticed that?” he asks.
“So, what was it like dating my roommate?” I ask. “I’ve always imagined it’d be the sort of thing where you have to sign a waiver. I’ve gotta tell you, long have I been interested in learning the rationalizations that could lead a man to make such an odd choice for himself.”
“You two are friends, huh?” he asks.
“Yeah, we’re friends,” I tell him. “Not just that, we’ve been friends forever. I mean, so long that neither one of us really remembers why we started hanging out in the first place, you know?”
“You’ve got a lot of baggage,” he says. “It’s really hot.”
“A girl’s got a work with what she’s been given,” I tell him. “Do you do anything besides flirt with the roommates of ex-girlfriends and get the brains you’ve got beat in?”
“Actually, I spend about as much time adding to the contents of my skull as I do having them pounded out of me,” he says. “I’m going to college.”
“You’re a scholar,” I say, nodding. “I’m actually not surprised.”
“Oh, you’re not?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “You’ve got the frat guy thing down solid.”
“You’re pretty when you’re being unreasonably judgmental,” he says, putting his elbows on the table and his jaw onto his hands like a child.
I’m just afraid the mixture of giggling, blushing and trying to hide my face a little might give him the wrong idea.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” a voice comes from a few feet behind me and I turn to see our waiter coming to the table. “We’ve had a bit of an issue with the breadsticks, but we would be happy to offer you stuffed portabella mushrooms instead, free of charge of course, as an apology for the inconvenience.”
“Pretty diverse menu you guys have here,” Mason says. “I have a problem with mushrooms, though.”
“What’s your problem with mushrooms?” I ask.
Mason looks over at me, and I swear the actual words coming out of his mouth are, “It’s personal.”
“Oh god,” I groan.
“My apologies,” Mason says. “It seems the lady would like a few minutes to consider her order.”
“Very good, sir,” the waiter says and cheerily walks away.
“They really do have a very diverse menu here,” Mason says. “I’m not sure if that means the chef can actually pull off Taiwanese, Spanish, French, and American-greasy-spoon all at once or if he just doesn’t have the common sense to know it’s a terrible approach to running a restaurant, but I’m very excited to find out, aren’t you?”
“Would you like to know what your problem is?” I ask.
“That I try way too hard, especially for someone who’s been told in very clear terms that I have no chance of making any kind of headway with you whatsoever?” he asks. “I have been made aware of this fact, but I don’t see much sense in trying to change it now. Maybe I’m a bit set in my ways, but that’s how I roll.”
“No,” I tell him. “You told the waiter I needed a few minutes, but I love me some stuffed portabellas, and I’m beginning to think they never actually gave our order to the kitchen. So, we’re just going to end up picking at salad and slurping down our drinks when I could have something delicious on my plate.”
“I am very sorry I got between you and your mushrooms,” he says. “It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t,” I tell him, just hinting at a smile.
Even with the bandage, he’s a good-looking guy. I just don’t know that I want to taint myself by getting too friendly with Jana’s former scratching post.
“Married?” he asks.
“No,” I tell him. “Why would I go to dinner with you if I was married?”
“Oh, it’s not that I think you would, although it sounds like you’d do a lot of things to get away from your friend’s mom,” he says.
“So you’ve got some kind of relationship going on?” I ask.
“Nope,” he says. “I just think it’s good to ask. You know, that way everybody’s cards are on the table from the start.”
“Had some bad experiences?” I ask. “Seen some things?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” he says, taking another drink of his soda. “You wouldn’t sleep right and I’d feel bad and it’d be this whole thing that’d just end up getting in the way of our torrid love affair.”
“You enjoy getting ahead of yourself, don’t you?” I ask.
“Just think about it,” he says. “We’re both young, available, absolutely stunning…” he takes a moment to run his fingers through his short, dirty blond hair before going on. “I know just how these things go.”
“Oh really?” I ask. “Please, do tell. How exactly are you going to sweep me off my feet and onto your beat-up futon?”
“Well, if I told you then it might not work right,” he says with a smirk and nod. “You know, I think we’re gonna be buddies, you and I.”
He is pretty attractive. I don’t usually go for the whole peacocking thing, but he’s amusing. He might even be charming if he’d just stop trying so hard to act like he’s not trying so hard.
Or is that what I’m doing?
I don’t know—I didn’t expect him to be witty, much less engaging. I expected the quasi-adolescent behavior. Still though, if nothing else, going out with him would give me the opportunity to get some more practice treating wounds. But is a relationship built upon gratuitous violence and the healthcare training possibilities it affords really worth the effort?
“You’re funny,” I tell him. “You bother Jana, so that’s a plus.”
“These are positive-sounding words,” he says. “Very positive, I like that.”
“You’re not as phenomenal a specimen as you so clearly would like to think you are, but you’re not the person I’m least thrilled about spending time with in the next twenty-four hours, so you’ve got that going for you,” I say, really trying to sell it as a compliment with my chipper tone and my generally ensorcelling demeanor.