You are another college girl in a classy place, sitting on a barstool just a little too high. Your feet dangle, kick like a toddler on a horse. He holds on to the sides like reins. You don’t drink mixers or chasers, it all seems too careful. You tell yourself once that cranberry juice makes you weak. So you tell him you want a shot. Couples in blouses and old men sitting alone over baskets of fried pickles stare you down as you concave into him. It is obvious, you think. They know you call him daddy.
He asks what kind of shot and you shiver and lose all words (you have a plastic jug of warm Caliber on top of your fridge at home) then he says “Grey Goose?” and you nod fervently, lick your lips. He orders a jack and coke which comes in the little crystal glass with the little black straw from which he sips classily. The bartender brings a vodka shot. The bar watches you wipe the sweat off your hands on your thighs before taking a sip like a lady. He laughs at you. So you down the whole thing. This is why he likes you, right? You just do things. Your hands are on his forearms and you don’t even know it.
Instant headache, the shot. You want more, need more, but it was last call. One shot was cute, but two shots at the Indianapolis Yard House, where people eat miso salmon over beds of greens (he ordered you miso salmon over a bed of greens) would make you too mistress, call attention to it, so instead, you just sit petulantly in your shorts and crop top and let him lick your neck.
You want to eat each other alive and you want everyone in the place to know it. To remember what it was like, to be young, to want someone, to have time to waste. You feel pleasantly warm, the liquor not enough to bloat you, so you still feel sexy, on fire. You follow him out grasping onto his arm, maneuvering through waiters cleaning tables. The polo he wears is tight around the bicep. Hugo Boss. His gelled hair has the little curl in it. He smells of aftershave and cigarettes; you wish he would just keep smoking cigarettes, it smells so good, it smells like your dead grandpa’s den, like the used Oldsmobile your dad used to drive, like age and filth. The skin of his neck wrinkles and crinkles and folds softly; you press your nose into it. Other than that his body is tight like a rubber band, full and hard and bulging. Your legs intermingle. When you finally get outside, damp night, summer air, you drape over him and he wraps his arms around you and you don’t feel so stupid girl anymore; you feel like someone he’s with, like you could passably be that person.
You are only who you are to him. Waitresses treat you weird and ask questions.. They always bring him the check. He tells you what’s good on the menu. With your childish dimples it gets bad. It's worse when you walk into GNC together to resupply his pre-workout and the cashier says his rewards membership just hit 20 years. You stand awkwardly, laugh. You’ve taken the preworkout. You’ve licked it off his fingers. Someday he’ll spit it into your mouth and you’ll get drunk on it. You laugh and shift behind him at the counter, your veteran bodybuilder, as the cashier swipes his Amex.
