Fifth & Washington

We drank a bottle of red wine poured sloppily into beer glasses directly imported from Italy in a suitcase. If I allowed awkward moments to be a part of my life, this would have been one. He told me stories about the cities he visited in Europe this summer. Amsterdam, Prague, and Budapest (which is actually two cities), I am so jealous. We watched Sideways, which is incidentally about wine, because apparently all video rental emporiums close before 11:00pm. We finished the bottle of red that I never bothered to read the label of and wished I had, because it was good. I thought later about calling him and asking him about it, would that be weird? I decided yes.

I made the quickest exit I could in an effort to avoid the "we don't have much to talk about but we'll try to drag it on anyway" conversation that seems to frequent our get togethers. I was bored, really and normally I wouldn't drive all the way down town to see a boy and only stay a few hours...but I did. He didn't offer to walk me to my car and even though I would have refused the escort, it made me sort of irritated.

I was unusually awake for 1:00am, slightly bored, and slightly inebriated so I returned the two missed calls and one text message all sent by the same person. We talked the entire way home, good thing too because I needed an excuse for swerving and occupying two highway lanes simultaneously.

Under the usual pretense of our meetings, I let myself in and we proceeded to watch two movies we'd both seen ad naseum. Old School and something I don't remember the name of. Then the routine attempts of clothing removal ensued. "Why are you so unrelenting?", I demanded. "Seven years of the same game have taught me to be like that". And that’s so true. Like Pavlov trained his dogs with a varied schedule reward system, I've trained him. That's fine, because it leaves me in control. Then he begged me to stay the night and I gave in, mostly (really) because I hadn't slept next to a warm body in at least a year (yes, that's sad).

I tried to sneak out at 5:00am after realizing that I preferred my own bed, my own pillows (5), and my blankets. He caught me and his attempts at clothing removal continued, and yes I was impressed at this dedication even at 5:00am. I feigned sleep and made it out complete with my clothing around 8:00am and drove around the empty city and went to the slowest Starbucks I've ever been to. I wonder if the mom-like-baristas could tell I was still wearing yesterday's make-up and clothes. I think I would be depressed in my mom had to work at a coffee shop feeding pretentious teenagers their frappucinos.