I See You
I overheard him, on the phone with his friend.
“Yeah, man, you know, the mousy girl?”
Mousy.
I suppose there are worse things you could be referred to as. Slutty. Stupid. Bitchy.
Forever mousy. I’ll never get that out of my head.
I suppose I *am* a little mousy.
One day, the mousy girl (me) found herself at his house. No, not the mousy-girl commenting guy, I mean Dan. Dan’s house.
Dan was a beautiful, slender, sandy-haired man who walked right out of my my sister’s Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. Of course it wasn’t my catalog. Are you crazy?
Dan played Lacrosse in college.
And studied things like The Humanities and Engineering and other pretty-boy stuff like that.
Dan was perfect. Submissive, yet cocky. It was a nice mix.
I found myself mingling at Dan’s house one evening. He and a few buddies had stopped at my bus stop.
I had been waiting for the 16 to take me home.
Dan wasn’t a stranger. He had taken me out a few times before.
One of those dates was at this restaurant that shimmered with rainbow glass and pink champagne.
Every meal with pink champagne.
And basil. I love basil.
He tucked his pinkie behind my short black hair, settling it behind my right ear. It was sweet. And delicate. And terribly out of the ordinary for men who were out on dates with me.
Dan refused to sleep with me.
Which was fine, I guess.
Maybe I was too mousy, after all.
Dan and his friends saw me standing on the side of the road, waiting for the bus. They stopped the Jeep, and slid onto the shoulder in front of me.
“Hey Sweetheart,” Dan serenaded me from the window.
“Heeeey, Dan,” I cooed back at him.
“Whatchya doing on the side of the road, Maggie?”
I rocked back and forth on my heels, acting coy, “Oh, I’m waiting.”
“Wanna ride, Sweetheart?”
“Where ya going?”
They were throwing a party. At Dan’s house. I liked the way his forearm pulsed thickly along the rolled-down window ledge of the truck. So I got in.
The back seat was filled with the smell of jocks (the people, not the straps) and twenty-something year old guys. I had to climb over two to get to a six inch gap on the bench in between two of the quieter looking boys. My boxy purse followed me into the vehicle, and I kept looking behind me to make sure I wasn’t smacking any of those boys in the face with it.
“It’s really too big, isn’t it!” I worried aloud.
The boys chuckled and one retorted, “Baby it’s never too big, is it?”
I guess they were right. A purse can never be too big.
I snuck my left butt cheek onto the tiny gap they left for me and thanked the driver for the ride. Dan reached his hand back to my knee and said, “How are you, Sweetheart?”
I liked how he sounded so genuine when he asked. He was really sweet. I blushed, dropped my chin and said, “I’m doing alright.”
We wound back to his place and the boys rapidly unfolded themselves out of the car. I was the last one to scootch over to the door, and Dan was standing there, ready to give me a hand.
“Such a gentleman,” I drawled.
Inside, there were handfuls of couples scattered throughout Dan’s apartment. I stepped into the doorway and felt eyes glance towards me. “The mousy girl’s here!” they whispered in chorus. There I stood, lipstick red skirt flat to my knees, plain old black t-shirt, and me. Self-consciously, I tucked my short hair behind my ears, and remembered how it felt when Dan did it for me.
‘So much going on,’ I thought. Ice cubes crackled in drinks, trains of conversations crashed into the walls, into the bookshelves, into the couches. Either I was stuck to the floor at this very spot or I was gliding to the kitchen without knowing it.
I slid around the corner, slunk around the stove, and ran right smack into Dan. I stammered, “Oh, oh!”
“Sorry Dan, I just–”
“Don’t be sorry, Sweetheart–”
I like it when he calls me Sweetheart.
“–I was just gonna offer you a drink.”
So I took his drink. It was cold, iced. In a sepia rocks glass. Like the one I use for short candles that cast diamond patterns on the walls when the lights are out.
I held it with both hands, and I looked at Dan.
His eyes were laughter.
His eyes were the ocean.
His eyes told stories. I made love to his eyes right there in the kitchen.
“Don’t look at me like that, Maggie,” he scolded and turned his eyes away.
“Like what, Dan? I was just lookin at ya.”
“No, you weren’t. You were looking at me like you could see right into my soul.”
He turned to wipe the counter with a dark rag.
“And what if I was?”
“What if you were what?”
“Seein right into your soul, Dan.”
“Well then, I don’t like it.”
“Oh.”
I turned slowly on my heel, threw a smile over my shoulder at Dan, and I went into the living room to ‘mingle.’
I walked home that night.
Alone.
Dan was nice.
He was dreamy, even.
But when I looked into his soul that night, I can’t say I liked what I saw.
