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“Then let’s play. Who is going to break?” Lee asks.
I take a coin out of my purse and tell him we should flip for it. I call heads just as it lands heads facing upwards and with as sexy a shimmy as I’m capable of; I go to stand at the head of the table. As I lean over to line up the white ball, I’m suddenly very glad I wore my good bra—and given the direction of Lee’s gaze right now, I think he feels the same.
I smack the cue ball with as much power as I can, absolutely no skill involved, just brute strength and sheer dumb luck. Thankfully, two balls with stripes on them go straight into the pockets and I hold two fingers up at Lee, making sure they are the right way around, so he doesn’t think I’m swearing at him. “That’s two questions you owe me.”
He leans against his cue with one hand, while he takes a sip from his cider in the other. “Okay, first question.”
I make a big deal, pretending like I’m thinking hard about what to ask him. Actually, I’m not pretending all that much. Obviously, it’s the first question, so I can’t go in with anything too personal, and I can’t turn it sexual—yet.
“Okay, so let’s make it an easy one. Tell me a secret that nobody else knows about you.”
He ponders that for a moment, and we look at each other in companionable silence while I wonder if he’s going to answer or not. “I don’t want to be an adult.” Well, that’s not quite what I was expecting him to say.
“What do you mean? And no, that isn’t the second question,” I clarify, before he cheats me out of my second question on a technicality. He chuckles like that’s exactly what he had been thinking.
“I don’t like the responsibility that comes with being an adult. Everyone agrees, but nobody says it out loud. I can barely take care of myself. I don’t want the added responsibility of having to look after or care about someone else. That’s why I never want to get married or have kids,” he says firmly, but I can tell he’s a little wary about bringing up such a heavy subject on our first date. I might not know how I feel about his answer, given that I very much do want to get married and have kids, but I appreciate his honesty. I like that I know I’m getting the truth whenever I talk to him.
“Does that mean you aren’t looking for a relationship?” I ask. I don’t mean to, it just kinda slipped out, and I can’t take it back. Fuck, I’m going to look like a stage four clinger asking about relationships when we aren’t even an hour into our first date.
Lee just laughs. “If I answer, I’m counting this as your second question,” he explains, and so I nod my head in confirmation, my heart racing as I wait to hear his reply.
I don’t know what it is about him. I mean, I only met him less than an hour ago, and already I’ve got butterflies in my stomach, and my heart is racing while I wait to find out if he’s looking for a relationship. Is that what I want? Do I want to date Lee? What if he doesn’t want a relationship? Would I be happy with a friends-with-benefits type situation? Fuck, all these things are going through my head, and I try to quieten them down so I can actually hear his reply.
“Honestly, I don’t know. For the right girl, I think I would, but it would take a fair bit to get me there. I would want to just be friends first and see how that goes,” Lee explains, and I see his cheeks flush slightly as he answers. I mean, it’s not a bad answer. I guess there’s always hope for us!
I take my next shots and pot nothing, but when Lee steps up, he nets a spot on his first try, doing a very cute little happy dance to celebrate. “Okay, now I need to come up with a good first question that doesn’t make me sound too pervy,” he muses aloud, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Oh, we can go straight for the sexy questions if you want.” I wink before giving him a cheeky grin. Where the fuck did that come from? I absolutely don’t need to be telling him about the shittiest sexy times that have come before him.
“We will get there, there’s plenty of balls after all.” We both laugh at his double entendre before taking drinks from our glass. “Right, I’ve got a good one. If your mum could change anything about you, what would it be?”
“What kind of a question is that?” I ask, confused by why I need to tell him about my mum’s thought process.
“Well, we all have stuff that we hate about ourselves. So, if I ask what you would change, that would be easy. But mum’s love everything about their kids, even sometimes blindly. So, I want to know what your mum would change.”
I laugh because he’s right. I have a list as long as my arm that I would change, but Mum loves all of it. Except for maybe one or two things. “I guess it would probably be one of two. She would either say my mouth because I can be incredibly bossy and I talk a lot. Or she would say my clumsiness. My body has this incredible ability to fail me at the worst possible times, leading to me injuring myself more times than I can count. The broken foot was just one in a long line of issues. In fact, Mum used to be scared every time she took me to the hospital that social services would ask questions. In today’s world, they definitely would have.”
He laughs, and the rest of the date flows easily from there. We spend the next couple of hours just playing pool, asking each other funny or personal questions, having a laugh, and just generally getting to know each other.
As the pool games progressed, we got more touchy feely. I would try to distract him by running my foot up his leg, or leaning over the opposite side of the table so all he could see was my cleavage. He would retaliate by blowing in my ear, or covering my back with his front, pressing himself against me to put me off. It worked.
By the time the date was coming to a close, I knew I liked him. My face ached from the amount of smiling. My heart was racing just being near him, and I didn’t want the date to end. I knew I wanted to see him again, but that brought up the awkward question of how he felt about me.
“Would you like me to walk you back to your car?” he asks, after I explain it’s a few streets away because there was no parking nearby. I only had the first cider, swapping over to Coke after that first drink, so I knew I was fine to drive. It turns out Lee only lives around the corner from where I parked, so I take him up on his offer to walk me to my car. I’m actually glad about it, as I don’t want the night to end yet.
As we leave the pub, Lee takes hold of my hand in his and it’s like bolts of electricity are shooting through my arm. My whole body feels like it’s on fire, all because I’m near him. I let Lee lead the way, this is his town and he knows it much better than me. I only live about thirty minutes away, and since my best friend lives in this town, I know where I’m going, yet he still seems to show me new routes.
We stop in front of a thin alley that barely looks wide enough to fit us both in side by side. It’s completely dark, the moonlight that had been aiding the street lamps on our journey so far is no longer visible. There are no street lamps lighting the way, and the darkness is so pitch black, we can’t even see the other end of the alley.
Lee goes to move towards the alley, but I hesitate. He looks between the alley and me, and eventually I see the moment the realisation hits. He can see I’m apprehensive about going down a dark alley, with a complete stranger, who I may or may not be very fucking into. “Okay, so this is the ultimate test. I like to call it the dark alley test. Do you trust me enough to let me lead you down a dark alley, all alone at night? I promise you it will come out right beside the street where you parked your car, but you have to trust my word. Do you trust I’m not lying to you and do you trust me?”
His bright blue eyes fix on mine, and I take a moment to appreciate how gorgeous the colour blue is. It’s like looking into a stunning clear sea. I don’t know how I know, and I certainly can’t explain it, but I do trust him. I’m the girl who never trusts, who never takes a chance on anyone but herself. Yet, right now, I want to go with him.
“Do you often lead young girls down dark alleys at night?” I joke, and Lee laughs.
“None as beautiful as you,” he winks, before moving towards the alley, keeping hold of my hand. Though he never pulls me, he just keeps hold to guide me.
I follow behind him, trying to ignore the way my heart races when he says I’m beautiful. The deeper we get into the tunnel, the darker it gets. I trust Lee, but that doesn’t mean there are no other murderers and rapists lying in wait in the damn alley. Just as I’m thinking that, street light shines on Lee’s face, and as we come out of the other end of the alley, he throws a bright smile my way.
