Days 3 and 4 - 1727 Words

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hi, Elaine. This is Miles.”

“Hi, Miles. How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. So I was wondering. Tomorrow is the midterm.”

“Yeah. Are you ready? I am so not ready.”

“I... I’m feeling alright about it. Look, Elaine, I was thinking...”

“It’s making me crazy. This is one of my major requirements, you know.”

“Uh huh. Anyway. Getting it out of the way will be good, right? Like, a big deal. I know you have class right afterwards but I thought maybe we could go out to dinner to celebrate finishing it, you know?” I’d set up a careful plan with Cassie for this one, too, though we’d done it all by email. I hadn’t really had time to talk on the phone with studying, and I was floundering a bit less after my and Elaine’s successful yet awkward study date.

Silence.

“Are you asking me out on a date?”

“I... Whichever answer will get you to say yes, you’d love to go out to dinner.”

“We can go on a date. Where did you have in mind?”

“I thought I’d let you choose where we went. My treat, of course.”

“Of course.” She laughed. “Why don’t I surprise you? Meet me at my dorm tomorrow at six, and then I’ll tell you where I’d like to go.”

“Okay,” I said. “See you then?”

“It’s a date,” she said. After I hung up I sighed probably the biggest sigh I had ever sighed.

I sent a quick email to Cassie to tell her of my success and then got back to studying. Soon I heard the Imperial March from Star Wars, which was my email notification sound.

“Retard,” Cassie had said. “Now you won’t know what you should wear.”

“Does it matter?” I typed back. Then to hit the books again.

“Of course it matters,” she responded. “If she wants to go someplace fancy and you wear normal clothes, you’re underdressed. If you dress for a night out on the town and then she asks to go to a pizza joint you’re far overdressed. You just signed your own death warrant, pal.”

“Studying. I’ll worry about it tomorrow,” was my reply.

And worry I did. I’m not much for appearances; I always figure if my clothes aren’t stained and don’t smell it’s good enough. Cassie sent me a long tirade informing me of how wrong I was, complete with suggestions for what to wear so I’d be ready for any occasion. She suggested khakis and a polo shirt. I owned neither of those things. I settled for jeans and a solid colored t-shirt. It was the best I had short of a suit, and I was not going to wear a suit.

I got to Elaine’s dorm at quarter to six. I was afraid something terrible would happen to me on the way there so I gave myself twice as much time as I needed to get there. I wasn’t sure whether I should call her now, or wait until six. Some other girls who lived in the dorm walked by. They offered to let me in. I thought about taking them up on it and surprising her but I decided that was kind of creepy for a first date. So I waited until five til and then called up.

“Hello!” She sounded like she knew it was me.

“Hi Elaine, it’s Miles. I’m down here, so whenever you’re ready –“

“Okay, I’ll be right out!”

“No rush.” I didn’t want to inconvenience her. I would’ve bent over backwards for her, really, and I’m not very flexible so it would’ve been difficult.

She was downstairs inside of a minute. She looked amazing. She was wearing a short black dress that clung to her body without looking trashy and high heels that made her legs look even more amazing than they normally did. It occurred to me that this was the first time I’d actually seen her legs. She always wore long pants or flowy skirts to class. I hope my jaw didn’t drop, but I think it must have. “Sorry I’m early,” I said after I recovered.

“Not a problem!”

“So... where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise!” She grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards the campus’s main drag. We walked a few blocks and then she ducked into an alley and dragged me down a narrow staircase. I thought the place was kind of sketchy, but then we arrived at the doorway to a restaurant. The sign said “Restaurant Name.” All around the door were white Christmas lights. “Come on,” Elaine said as she pushed the door open.

I had never seen a place like this. It could have been a library, there were so many books. Couches were in the corners and cafe tables in the center. There seemed to be a thousand nooks and crannies where you could go read in absolute peace. The lights were dim enough to be relaxing but bright enough for reading. There was a bar with espresso machines behind it. Soft jazz wafted out of the speakers and seemed to hover in the air. Atmospheric was the buzzword.

“Wow,” I said. “This place... amazing. It’s a bookstore?”

“Used books.” Elaine sniffed deeply. “Oh, I love the smell of old books.” I almost proposed to her right there. Then I thought the better of it. Maybe I should get through the whole date before doing something that crazy. “Let’s order,” she said. She led me over to the counter and handed me a menu. “You order up here and then they bring you your food,” she told me. We ordered and then sat down to eat. Our conversation rambled, but by the end of dinner I knew more than ever that Elaine was, in fact, the perfect woman. I had already known that her major was in medieval history; I had not known that her hobbies involved reading fantasy novels, playing computer games, and visiting museums. We compared our glasses prescriptions and we talked about people who had broken our hearts in middle and high school. Cassie had told me to ask her a lot of questions because people like to talk about themselves and are more interested in people willing to listen to them talk about themselves, and it wasn’t hard, because I really did find her fascinating.

It turned out Elaine had really been wanting to see this TV series that had been cancelled before its time that I happened to have on DVD. I thought about inviting her back to my room to watch it after dinner but then I decided she might think I was being too pushy or something. I really wanted to keep up the perfection of the evening, so after dinner I just walked her back to her dorm.

There was a slight breeze and we could see the stars somewhat despite the lights of campus. Elaine held my hand the whole walk back. I tried to memorize everything she said, every movement she made, so I could recall it later when I was by myself. We got to the door of her dorm room. I could feel my palms sweating. Please don’t let me ruin this now, I thought.

Elaine turned to face me. “I had a really nice time tonight, Miles,” she said looking into my eyes. I wanted to look away. I was afraid she would see through this cool semblance of a person with some aptitude for social interaction, that by somehow looking into my eyes she could see into my heart where I was just a ridiculous loser. But I didn’t look away, because at the same time, as much as I feared some bizarre revealing of my soul might occur, I really wanted to look into her eyes, too.

Then an amazing thing happened. You know how in “The Princess Bride” they talk about the five greatest kisses ever? Well, yeah. Elaine leaned over, and we kissed. And it was just a small kiss, it was not hot and heavy, it was not very long, it did not require coming up for air or anything of that sort. It was just a kiss, a short, normal kiss. And it was the most amazing thing I had ever experienced. I felt a chill run down my spine, all the way into my toes.

I smiled.

“Good night, Miles.” She kissed me on the cheek this time and then went inside.

I stood there in stunned silence. I had not anticipated that it would go at all this well. I ran all the way back to my dorm room. I had triumphed! This was something I needed to announce to the internet. I logged into the game and went into chat and started talking about my amazing evening.

“Take it to IRC, Gloriosus,” a player named UrMomIzMyWomn said. Gloriosus was my username. I didn’t care if that guy wanted me to take it elsewhere, I was going to share my victory with the world. I looked at my buddy list. Cassie was on, but she hadn’t messaged me. That was weird. I messaged her.

“Hey,” I typed.

“Hi,” came the reply. That was short, for Cassie.

“What’s up?”

“Very little. You?”

“Did you see about my date?”

“Yup. Congrats, stud.” That was really short for Cassie. The problem with the internet is that there’s no inflection. People sometimes try to accomplish it with various smilies, substituting clever configurations of punctuation marks for real expression of emotion. Cassie was one of the few people who actually typed like a person might speak or write outside of an online context. Was she angry at me? Had I done something wrong? Was I supposed to call her? Would she care if I was supposed to and didn’t?

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said.

“Do you want me to call you?”

“Whatever.” Something was definitely wrong.

“I’m exhausted,” I told her. “I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you all about it.”

“Great,” she said. I was getting really worried.

“Take care of yourself, alright?”

“Not a problem.”

“Night.”

“Sweet dreams.”

I logged off, changed into my pajamas, and got in bed. I fell asleep and had dreams all night wherein Elaine and I spent amazing time together, but we were always followed by a gloomy dark elf.