BBRae Week Day 3: "Please don't ever do that again"
Length: 2,114 words
Rating: T
Excerpt: In an instant the goofiness gave way to suaveness. "Again? You wanna see me again, miss Raven?"
@bbraeweek24 🥰
───
“Okay,” the guy started as he sat down, “when I was seven years old, my parents took me to a zoo for the first time. I started crying and they were like, what’s wrong? I said it was about the cages, and they thought I meant, I was sad about the animals being kept in—but really, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed inside the cages with them. Anyway, they never took me again. But I still consider it the day I found my calling—I still ended up in a sanctuary.” He reached for his newly-refilled glass of water and then stopped, reconsidering. “Working there. I mean, I became a wildlife caretaker.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” the girl said as he drank. “Wait, that’s what you open with? That’s how you choose to introduce yourself?”
“Yeah, I thought it was solid. Gives you an idea of who I am.”
That it does, thought the girl.
“Hit me with yours,” the guy requested.
She shrugged. “I’ve been letting people open and seeing them squirm.”
She did have squirm-worthy eyes. They were dark blue and stared on unapologetically. She also spoke with a detached tone, and she hadn’t smiled when he’d sad down—all things that would put most men on edge, but he liked to think he was charismatic enough to make up the difference. She was striking, but he didn’t remember her from the introductory mingling. That’s what was good about these events, he thought, you got to focus on people you wouldn’t normally go for.
Her name-tag read ‘Raven’. Like many women here she’d chosen not to add her last name. He himself felt he’d had no choice but to write ‘Gar Logan’, otherwise his tag was three whole letters, which felt suspiciously too casual. At that point it was like, what’s that guy hiding?
“What’s next? What do you do with uncomfortable silence?”
“Oh, you know, there’s all the clichés,” Raven said. “You covered ‘what do you do?’ Then there’s the where’re you from, and the what’d you do for fun?”
“Well, I’m from all over. I mean really I was born in Africa.”
“Africa? What country?”
“Middle of nowhere village in Upper Lamumba. Best childhood you can imagine.”
“Wow,” she allowed. That was a cool origin. If he was lying, so help her…
“But I can’t really say I’m from here, I was six when I left.”
“I like how you say that as if you, as six-year-old, made the decision to pack up and leave.”
“Mmh, the exact circumstances will be a story for another day.”
“Another day? You’re assuming we’re both swiping left?”
“I like to assume the best.”
He offered a smile. He’d been smiling too much since he’d sat down, thought Raven. He’d also gone straight for the little bowl of cashew nuts, and was popping one into his mouth every other sentence. He was an odd mix of performative and carefree, but he still seemed like he knew exactly how charming he was. In short, less than a minute into this speed-date, he was exactly the kind of guy she never went for. It made Raven relax, having discounted him in her head.
But she dutifully said, “I’m a teacher. Community college. I teach literature, and I’m also the unofficial therapist on campus. I’m from here, New York. And for fun, I read.”
“Not write?”
“Not every literature teacher wants to be a writer.”
“Fair enough. I write song lyrics, not that I want to be a singer. That’s for your third question. I also play the guitar. I like concerts, I like hiking, I like camping… the outdoors in general.”
Raven almost chuckled at how effectively he was ticking off all her ‘incompatible’ boxes. She couldn’t keep a smile back, and he noticed. “What?”
She shook her head. “I was just thinking how I hate camping more than anything.”
“Noted. You never answered where you’re from?”
“I didn’t? I’m from here, New York.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone here who’s actually from New York.”
“Would never live anywhere else.”
He scrunched up his nose. “Really? I wanna travel as much as I can. Like, I never want to spend more than a couple of years in the same place. It’s a tough dream, I know,” he added, because apparently he’d taken her bewildered expression for simple surprise. “So, you’re satisfied with your questions? You don’t feel they’re a little shallow?”
“I’m not the one who opened with a monologue.”
“Well, that was just the ice breaker. Now we have the chance to get deeper.”
“Is there a chance to get any degree of deep in an eight-minute conversation?” she questioned.
He thought about that. “I mean, just deep enough to know whether you wanna see someone again. That’s what speed dating is about, right?”
“I don't know. Everyone’s trying so hard to make a good first impression, you can’t really get a genuine assessment of people.”
He cocked his head at her; it made his wispy blond hair move with him. (He had too much hair, she thought. And she was decently sure he was younger than her.) “Sounds like you don’t believe much in speed dating at all.”
“Oh, jury’s still out on whether tonight was a complete mistake.”
He pointed at her and went, “Okay, core values. Go.”
“Seriously? That doesn’t work.”
He gaped. “How… that’s very important. What could you possibly have against that?”
She almost smiled at his indignity. “People telling you their core values is useless. The shallowest people can tell you they value genuineness. The drama seekers will tell you they crave peace and harmony. You don’t really know what people's values are until it’s actionable.”
“Yeah, I think I heard that. Don’t marry a person until you’ve seen them stressed, uh…”
“Gone on a trip with them,” she supplied.
“Yeah.”
“And when they’re sick?”
“I think struggling financially was one of them.”
“There’s probably different versions,” she allowed.
“Well, you give me questions, then.”
“Okay. Pet peeves.”
He gave that a moment's thought. He’d picked up some nuts and now let them drop back into the bowl. “Littering. Food waste. People who won’t try new stuff just once, like new food. Like vegan food.”
“You’re vegan. That’s a strike.”
“It usually is,” he laughed. “But, I’ve never forced anyone to try it.” He waited for a sign of acquiescence that never came. “Isn’t that a point in my favor?”
“Could be.”
“But…?”
She hesitated. “But nothing says you actually practice it. You could tell me anything. Anyone could say anything.”
“So could you.”
“Yeah, but…” He saw her hesitate for the first time in this date. “You seem like the kind of person who tries to make everyone like them.”
Raven had just been trying to push the conversation away from pet peeves without having to answer herself; she’d proposed the topic without thinking and regretted it instantly, because he was doing some of her pet peeves right in front of her. She would’ve had to tell him some of them included people eating absent-mindedly, people reaching for food they weren’t going to eat, people looking at you while they chewed… But now he was blinking at her, and she feared she’d gone too far.
“…Doesn’t everyone?” he posed.
“No.”
“So you don’t care if people like you?”
“…I care, I just won’t change in order to make it happen.”
“Well, I wouldn’t either. But you don’t trust me, so.” He finished that statement with a smile. (She was hit with the idea that she had really offended him, and he was using a smile to put distance between them. But she didn’t care what he thought of her, right?)
“Is it a bit? When you opened saying, I’m at a sanctuary, but I’m working there, I’m not there as an inmate? Do you do that every time?”
He laughed then, and she thought it sounded genuine. “No, the way I tell it deteriorates as the night goes on. I couldn’t act that well. But I get what you were saying.” Now he spoke carefully. “You’re… intimidating. Which is not a bad thing,” he rushed to add. “But, I guess, you’re used to people having a problem with that. So you don’t try to make them like you. Right?”
Now he was sheepish. Maybe he’d wanted to throw it back at her, maybe he’d just wanted to get deeper. Either way, she was satisfied she could consider them even. “You know what?”
“What?” he asked in a small voice.
“A girl behind you just got up from her table and is doing the splits, and I can’t focus on anything you’re saying.”
So he turned around. Sure enough, across the room a girl was straining her dress with a side slit as she lowered into a split under the eyes of her bewildered date.
“That’s a lot of trust she’s putting on that dress,” Raven commented, and took the space of time he was turned around to make use of her own complementary glass of water.
“Ooh, that’s what she was getting at,” said Gar when he turned back to her, “That girl asked me if I had any secret talents. When I told her what mine was she just… stopped talking. Completely. Until the eight minutes were out. I guess my talent was supposed to be sexy.”
She observed him, trying to take a guess. “I’m almost scared to ask…”
He didn’t let her ask. “I can move both my ears individually.” He used both hands to push his hair painfully back from his ears, and kept eye contact with her as he twitched one ear, then the other, then again.
The actual tip of his ears twitched down when he did it. For some reason it freaked her out. “Please don’t ever do that again.”
He let go of his hair, and in an instant the goofiness gave way to suaveness. “Again? So you do wanna see me again, miss Raven?”
She scoffed. But he seemed to be really waiting for an answer, so she said, “Realistically I won’t, no one here will. You’ve got one foot out of the city and you wanna relocate every couple of years.”
“That’s a deal breaker?”
“It would be for most people,” she defended. “Most people stay put in one place.”
“You know phones exist, right? The Internet?” He couldn’t seem to stop teasing her. He’d just realize she was blushing from when he’d put her in the spot just now, and it made a thrill go through him.
“You were hoping to meet someone who’d commit to waiting for you after talking for a few minutes?”
“Or maybe the right girl will come along with me. Maybe you’re underestimating the number of girls who are willing to be swept away to a completely new life. And didn’t you say people need to go on a trip together before they get married?”
“Is that what you’re after tonight? Marriage?”
“Would that be so surprising?”
The ring that signaled the end of the date came like a shot. Both looked at each other in surprise, recognizing it was the first time in the whole night they’d wished the eight minutes hadn’t ended. Both wondered if it was the same for the other.
Gar still got up, slowly.
“Did we finish a single line of conversation?” Raven asked.
“There’s a way to fix that,” he said, leaning on the table more than he needed to, she thought, in order to pick up his glass.
After the night was over, after she’d gone home and showered, and taken some time to soothe the nerves of her battered introverted nature, Raven pulled up the app for the speed dating event. A gallery of men’s pictures stared back at her, and she quickly located the one that read Gar Logan.
It would be borderline leading him on. They were completely incompatible, from their personalities, to their tastes, to their plans in life. It probably wouldn’t work out.
But somehow, they had never stopped talking the whole date. And all she wanted to do right now was find him and talk shit about the guy who came after him, who was actually here to recruit girls to join him and his girlfriend as their third.
She only had the name he’d given out—a security measure that had led her to choose this app. And she knew he wouldn’t stay long in New York. If she didn’t match him, she simply might never see him again. She’d lose him in the wide scope of the world.
Throwing caution out the window, she swiped left. Immediately she got the access to the profile screen that let her know he’d matched her too.
───
Notes:
I’m either writing 3 entries for this Week of literally just this one. T_T Whatever I end up doing will be up on AO3 eventually!
The ‘Camping’ comment is a subtle reference to the fact that I couldn’t think of anything for the prompt for Day 1.❤️
I pulled the workings of the speed dating app, and speed dating itself, right out of my ass. Don’t take my word for anything. I did ZERO research for this.
