Quiet Rabbit~Part 3

Mary met Mike. Doesn’t it sound romantic? It wasn’t. I was smoking in the kitchen on Jersey St. A friend of a friend. My beer was on the counter, but I had turned my back on it, leaning against the edge to smoke a cigarette. I really wanted a shot.

There was murmuring in the living room. I had taken refuge. It seemed even the coarse material of my wool skirt was affected by the social etiquette and lingering work egos in the small apartment. The doorbell rang and I moved to answer. My friend Oscar beat me to the door and in walked Mike.

His muscles were very impressive and Oscar eyed him like meat. With the affability of a high school jock, he shook hands with Oscar, and squeezed his shoulder with the other hand. It bordered on flirting, and I was instantly impressed with how Mike handled people. He handled them, that’s the perfect way to explain it.  

Then, Mike spotted me. I wondered about the light from the kitchen, possibly shining the shape of my body through the not so modest white blouse. The coat matching my wool skirt was long since discarded, lounging on the back of an arm chair or tossed carelessly on a banister. I was then and am not now against men seeing my body. Or using it to get what I want.

But you know that too. Or you will know. You will understand before I am done why I have waited a year. But I will get there. Long stories inevitably ramble to the end of the path. I know that now.

Instantly, Mike was using his long legs to get to the kitchen. Another friend, Gloria, spotted him where the dining room decussated the long hallway running the length of the apartment.

He appeared charming when harried. A slightly contrived “what can you do” smile was sent to me over Gloria’s head and crowd-surfed the bustling energy filled air of the apartment. I grinned and rolled my eyes, took steps back towards my beer and my smoking spot. Gloria released him with a flirty giggle and he appeared in the doorway.

“Hello.” He said, pausing to collect himself at the door. But you know something? We both knew and our immediate familiarity made that clear. I did not do as I usually did when an attractive man entered the room. There was no posing, no tilting my pelvis to show my flat stomach, no arching my back to prop up my ass, no elegant cock to the head, seductive tracing of newly moistened lips. I looked at him like I knew.

“You were so amazingly sure of yourself.” Mike would tease her, by the car later that night.

“Just now? I don’t make it a habit to be unsure. In business or pleasure.” I had said, grinding my spent smoke, coy like a French woman. That was one of my mother’s sayings. I am sure you remember her voice rattles around in my head and many times has Lorraine’s words climbed into your naïve ears as well. Eventually her words destroy, you see? But I digress.

“So what do you think then?” He pulled out a smoke of his own and lit it. I liked the way he looked up and down the street. He was aware and protective, two things I admittedly lacked in. And a woman could always use some muscle.

“I’m game if you are, Quarterback.”

“Quarterback?”