Blind Date

In the quiet, she could hear the party continuing in the living room. She turned her eyes to the dim outline of the door and heard Chloe direct, “No, no!

Kitchen is off limits!”

Annie smiled gratefully. At least the door was being guarded for a while.

“Hey, are you still there?” She cringed, mentally slapping herself for asking such a stupid question.

“Yeah.”

Something in his voice drew her to him. There was a strength in it, a certainty that shouldn’t be coming from underneath a kitchen table. She moved away from the door and back toward the voice, getting down on her knees to peer underneath. She thought she saw the shimmer of a pair of glasses. She saw his hands resting in his lap and found herself searching for the glint of a ring.

A moment later, she smiled at her effort.

“So…why are you in here? Why don’t you want me to turn on the light?”

“I don’t…” He cleared his throat. It was the first time she had heard him hesitate. “I don’t want you to see me.”

Annie sat back on her heels, unmindful of her skirt. There was no reason to worry about him glimpsing her panties in the dark! She let out her breath, feeling unsure and a little ambivalent about her sudden desire to reach out to him, this strange guy sitting alone in her sister’s kitchen. Empathic by nature, she knew what it was like to want to get away from a party like this.

“Can I join you?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure, come on.” He patted the tile floor and she crawled under, leaning against the wall next to him. It wasn’t a big table, pressed into a little breakfast nook. It only sported two chairs since only Chloe and David lived in the huge old Victorian house, but Annie and the stranger both fit comfortably enough underneath.

“So… you just wanted a break from all of that?” She waved her hand toward the door.

“Something like that.”

“Me, too.” Annie sighed and leaned her head back against the wall. She had forgotten about the bump and winced when she made contact. She brought her hand up to rub the sore spot-at least it was something to feel.

“I noticed.” He chuckled.

She flushed. “You didn’t hear what I said out there, did you?” That thought made her cringe with embarrassment.

“Yeah.” He sounded sad, but she didn’t sense a lot of judgment or a big guilt trip coming.

“Whoops. I was hoping you didn’t know what a bitch I can be,” she admitted. “First impressions and all…”

“Maybe it’s better if we all start out knowing who we really are. Wouldn’t that be a great change? Instead of just looking at people and assuming you know who they are…”

Annie waited for him to finish, but he didn’t, so she went on. “Actually, I’m not really like that. Most of the time. I mean, sometimes, sure, aren’t we all? But tonight, well, let’s just say there were extenuating circumstances.” Annie remembered John crawling across the circle, his eyes flickering between the hemline of her skirt and the V of her blouse. She couldn’t recall if he was licking his lips, but she could have sworn he was. It was always the same-even with her own brother-in-law.

“Were there?” He sounded interested, but Annie didn’t want to go there.

“Something like that.” They sat in silence for a moment, but it was a comfortable one. “I know what it’s like, not wanting people to judge you on appearances.”

“Do you?”

Whenever he asked a question like that, he seemed to want to know more. A man with a genuine interest in what she had to say was something Annie was unfamiliar with. Perhaps it was just that she found it hard to believe a man when he was looking at her. “Maybe not like you,” she said. “I mean, maybe it’s not the same, but I’ve spent my whole life being the beautiful one, and it’s just as hard as being unattractive. At least, you know, by society’s standards, or whatever…” Her voice trailed off and she wondered how that had sounded out loud.

“So I shouldn’t hate you because you’re beautiful?” She laughed, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have made that comparison. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but maybe I am, a little. Maybe you can’t help it when everyone looks at you a certain way.”

“So, how is it the same?” Again, there was that interest.

Annie glanced once more at his hands. She loved a man’s hands-large, strong, yet capable of being so soft, so caring. His long legs were stretched out beyond the table’s edge, and she could see he was wearing boots. Darkness was funny. The way your mind used shapes and lines to fill in the blanks, how you could see some things and not others.

“Well,” she began, “it doesn’t matter, attractive or unattractive, really. At either end of the spectrum, people still judge you. They make assumptions about you based on how you look. They treat you differently. Do you know what I mean?” She found herself eager for him to understand. Her heart raced with the wanting.