I have been HOPING I'd draw that second one since I first saw it.
Anyway, two titles for your weekend. As always, thank you for writing.
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I post a random title. You write a random story to go with it.
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'A Simple Little Question'
Andrew Mellencamp was sitting across from me gazing into my eyes. He was earnestly trying to explain something to me. I wasn't really listening, though. I was too busy gazing back at him. There was a fleck of spinach trapped in his bottom teeth from his salad and a tiny drift of foam from the latte he'd just sipped trapped on the corner of his upper lip. I thought about telling him it was there, but it was kind of endearing and the spinach matched the dark green of his eyes.
I remembered to react to whatever it was he was saying. "Oh, mmhmm,"
I said, wrinkling my forehead and nodding a little. He sighed in relief, and sat back a little, running his fingers through his hair.
Apparently I'd agreed with him. I was afraid I'd have to say something else, but whatever he'd been trying to convince me of was a tangent or something, because he kept going, a little more relaxed than before. That left me free to let my eyes drift to his hair. It was dark blonde and just a little wavy and was now standing up and kind of frizzy where his fingers had passed. I nodded again at the hum of his voice and imagined my fingers twisting his unruly hair into spirals, brushing it off his forehead, grabbing it at the nape of his neck to pull him in for a kiss.
"Brin? Brin? Sabrina?"
"Mmhmm," I said dreamily. "I do."
"Okay, great," Andrew answered. He stood up and walked away.
Oh, crap. What had I just said yes to? Did he ask if I wanted him to leave? Did he ask for permission to take a potty break? Did he ask if I wanted to bear his children? I watched him walk across the bookstore floor and, to my relief, he headed to the drinks counter at the café. He turned and sent me a cute little wave from line and I started breathing again.
You have GOT to learn to pay attention! I yelled at myself. No matter how adorable you think he is, you can't get lost like that without checking into the conversation from time to time.
I have been waiting for Andrew to ask me out for months. I don't know if he's oblivious or just chicken. I mean, I'm cute. 5'3", dark hair, brown eyes, all my own teeth which are straight thanks to a year and a half of Dr. Shemelmen's finest metalwork. And I've got plenty of background to know guys are not exactly put off by me. So I know has to at least have thought about it, right? Nothing. A couple of times, I thought he was about to, but at the last second he'd ask if I had any questions about the lecture (he's my T.A.) or what I thought about Solzhenitsyn’s use of dramatic irony in something or other. I refrained from telling him that I didn’t care about either of those. All I wanted was a date!
C’mon, Andrew, I thought. It’s not hard. Just one simple little question: 'Do you want to go to dinner?' Or a movie. Or just OUT. Then you can sweep me away in your Chevy Cutlass for a romantic night on the town. A few simple words and both our lives can change.
I was trying to beam my thoughts across the room to him. Maybe I needed to concentrate more. I closed my eyes and focused as hard as I could. Ask me out, ask me out, ask me out, ask me—
“Are you okay, Brin?” Andrew asked from directly in front of me.
I yelped. Great, I thought. I sound like a miniature poodle. Nothing leads a guy to romance like tiny, yappy dogs. I may as well give up. “Yeah, I mean, no, I think I’m getting kind of a headache.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Do you…” He trailed off, looking a little helplessly at the coffee in each hand. “Do you want to go home and lie down?”
Yes, after hitting my head against the wall. “No! I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I took some aspirin and I’m sure caffeine will help. Really, it’s not so bad.”
He looked relieved. “Well, I have the caffeine.” He held up his left hand in mild triumph, flashing his spinachy teeth at me. “Coffee, hazelnut infusion, just how you like it.”
“That’s great, Andrew, thanks so much.”
“Any time, Brin. Seriously. I’m glad I can help you out,” he said. He sat down and removed the lid of his own coffee, blowing thoughtfully on it. He flicked a look at me, then back down, and then glanced up again. I smiled at him, and he blushed and looked away. Well, this was interesting. He opened his mouth and started to say something. I held my breath, not wanting to startle him out of saying whatever it was. “Umm, Brin? There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while.” Oh, wow. Oh, could it be? “Will you—”
This was it! He was going to ask me out. I felt like I was dying because my life—I mean, our lives were flashing before my eyes in this split second. We would go out, and it would be a chilly night and he would put his jacket around my shoulders and then hold my hands “to keep me warm,” and at the end of the night at my door, I would offer him his jacket back and he would say, “But I can’t leave without something to keep you warm,” and then he would lean in and say, “Maybe this will help,” and he would kiss me deeply and soulfully. And then we’d see each other every day for the next three months, and have this perfect whirlwind relationship where we would see more and more how much we were meant for each other. Our wedding would be simple but beautiful. Then after five years of wedded bliss, Andrew would get tenure at Harvard or Yale and we would decide to have our first child. She would be beautiful with my dark hair and his dark green eyes and we would call her Isabel. Two years later we would have a little boy and then twin girls. Andrew’s work would receive wide acclaim and he would be able to retire from his professorship and go on the lecture circuit and I would stay home with our perfect children working on my home-based jewelry designing business. We would go gracefully gray, and watch Isabel, Ethan, and finally, Abigail and Alexis go off to their Ivy League school of choice, and finally, when we were old and had many grandchildren, we would fall asleep in each others arms one night in front of the fireplace, and they would find us the next morning with gentle smiles on our venerable, yet still attractive faces, in blissful harmony until the very end.
“That is…would you like—”
But wait. What if the date went well, and we started dating steadily. And we got married, but he insisted on having some dorky algorithm on the invitations and fractal patterns on his tie. What if he had spinach in his teeth in the wedding photos? And then I would wake up every morning and fix his breakfast and he would always spill some of the food on his shirt, but he wouldn’t notice, so he’d go off to school and they would think he was unprofessional. Then he wouldn’t get promoted and he’d be an assistant professor and I would have to take a job answering phones for a used car lot and the manager would leer at me and “accidentally” grope me but I wouldn’t be able to say anything because we need this extra income so much because I got pregnant on our honeymoon and we had a baby who wouldn’t stop crying because Andrew made me name him Fyodor, and then Andrew got fired because he didn’t have tenure and all he could get was an adjunct job at community college and then I got pregnant again and the boss thought my butt was getting too big to pinch so he fired me and all we had to support these two kids was the three classes Andrew could get teaching a bunch of freshman who didn’t understand him, so they all kept failing his class and then after a few years one of the little trollops gets hot for teacher and I’m not attractive anymore with my stretch marks and my hair which I haven’t had done in years and he decides to trade me in for a newer model and takes the kids because I don’t have a job so I clearly can’t support them and I end up alone and homeless and I die on the streets because he abandoned me, who was supposed to be the love of his life.
“—to maybe go out with me sometime?” Andrew finished asking hopefully. He was still blushing which half a second ago I would have found incredibly cute but now all I could think is that it made his face really blotchy and made the spinach in his teeth really stand out.
“I’m sorry, Andrew,” I said. “I just don’t think it’s worth it. I mean, I want someone who’s going to be there for me in good times and bad, and I’m not about to let you trade me in for a younger model when we have children together!”
I picked up my purse and stood up to leave. Then I turned to face him. He was just sitting there looked confused and a little stunned. I said, “And you have spinach in your teeth. It might match your eyes, but it’s not very hygienic.”
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