I changedclothes at least three times between six-fifteen and six-thirty when Elliot texted me to let me know that he was waiting in the parking lot behind my building. I had forgotten to ask Elliot what level of dressy I should be going for, which meant I kept waffling between jeans, cargoes, and more formal slacks. I eventually settled on a pair of grey khaki pants that wouldn’t be glaringly out of place in a nicer restaurant, but also wouldn’t make me look overdressed in a bar.
I’d put back on a little of the weight I’d lost when I was sick, so my clothes at least didn’t hang off me, even if they were still a little bigger than they needed to be. I was trying to eat more, although that was hard to do with my dietary restrictions and my budget. I should also be exercising more, now that I was working again in a capacity that didn’t involve hauling heavy boxes—especially since most of the scenes I worked in Shawano didn’t have corpses attached to them.
It was… different. I wasn’t going to use the termrefreshing, since I was still going to scenes where people had done horrible things to other people—robbery, assault, rape, domesticviolence… Crime scenes were never good. Even accident scenes that we were called to resulted in catastrophic injury or death.
It wasn’t like Elliot hadn’t seen my body post-illness. He knew what I looked like, clothed and naked. It probably didn’t matter what I wore.
But I still cared. I wanted him to find me attractive. To think that I looked… probably notcute, since that wasn’t a word that had ever been applied to me. I wanted to at least look good. Like someone that someone could be attracted to.
I sighed, knowing that I only had a minute or two before Elliot was due to arrive, and picked out my fourth or fifth shirt of the evening. I had on my light blue t-shirt, and I layered a pale green linen button-down over it. If we were going somewhere casual, I could unbutton it. Hot, I could roll the sleeves up. Formal, and I could button it up and tuck it in.
I was buckling my belt when my phone buzzed—Elliot telling me he was here.
I blew out a breath, ridiculously nervous.
I shouldn’t be nervous. I knew Elliot. I’d lived with him. I’d slept with him, repeatedly. There was nothing for me to be worried about. We both knew exactly what we were getting into in terms of who we were, what our habits were, and how we fit together in bed. We knew all those things.
And yet, I was still nervous.
Because I wanted us to be an us. I wanted to not be the only person breaking the rules—and I wanted to break all of them.
Elliot droveus down to Shawano Lake, to a bar on the wharf that specialized in strong drinks and fried fish. It was a Friday, which meant that they were serving all the fried fish I could eat—and nobody seemed to care that Elliot and I put away far more than two men should have been able to.
He grinned at me when I pointed this out.
“Welcome to Wisconsin,” he replied. “Where all-you-can-eat-fish-fry is not only popular, but an open invitation for anyone and everyone to gorge themselves.” He lifted his glass, a mostly-full brandy Old Fashioned. “And get shitfaced.”
Neither one of us was following the second example. Elliot was slowly nursing the one drink, augmenting it with water. I was too nervous to let myself get drunk—I was on my second beer by that point, as well as my third plate of fried fish, french fries, and coleslaw. Especially post-Arcanavirus, it would take at least five or six for me to start feeling the effects of the alcohol if I was drinking beer.
“I will accept this as a new state of existence,” I replied. “And thanks for checking that they use soy oil, by the way.” Not a lot of places used lard in their fryers anymore, but I’d encountered a few.
He smiled at me as he cut into a piece of fish. “Of course. I couldn’t very well take you out for fish fry only to find that you can’t eat it.”
As nervous as I had been, Elliot had been, well, Elliot. Sardonic, but kind and thoughtful. Doing things like making sure I would be able to eat at the restaurant where he took me before he took me there.
It wasn’t a perfect date. There is no such thing and probably never will be, no matter what the romance novels and rom-coms tell you. There were silences that went on a little too long, laughs that were a little too loud, moments when I wondered if I should reach out and touch his hand, but I didn’t. Maybe I was too self-conscious to draw attention to the fact that we were on a date—maybe for myself, maybe for him.
Maybe it was weird because wedidknow each other. The whole point of a date is to get to know someone, to find out if you have chemistry, or whatever. We already knew that—we definitely had sexual chemistry. I thought we had emotional chemistry, too, although it remained to be seen if Elliot did…
And that was actually the worst part. Because we both knew I felt something. And that he didn’t. Or hadn’t. Or, at least, not as much as I did.
I’d been the guy in the relationship who didn’t know it was over, the one who was pining and not being loved in return. It seemed like that was becoming a habit, which probably wasn’t good for me. It’s one thing for both people to be confused, figuring out their emotions and what it was they wanted out of the relationship. But this wasn’t that.
This was me absolutely falling for Elliot, and Elliotmaybebeing interested in me.
I don’t know what I thought would happen. If I expected that in the intervening few weeks he’d fallen madly in love with me in my absence and would declare his feelings during a sunset walk on the docks…
“What’s bothering you?” Elliot asked me, his rough voice interrupting the increasingly depressing trajectory of my thoughts.
“What?” I felt my neck flush. “Sorry, just… Lost in my own head.”
“When something’s bothering you,” he said. “There’s this furrow you get between your eyebrows…” He reached out as though he were going to touch my forehead, sending my pulse skyrocketing, but then he didn’t, his finger hovering just a few inches from my face. He shrugged with a small lopsided smile that set my heart a-flutter.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he did have feelings for me.
“I just—” I shrugged. “I overthink things, is all.”
Elliot ran a finger around the rim of his glass. “What are you overthinking?” he asked.
