Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [92]
The waiter comes over. I order chicken marsala, Ryan asks for tortellini and a glass of the house Chianti. I wonder if I should judge him for drinking or be offended that he didn’t not drink because of me, and Ryan sits in what looks to be completely enjoyable silence. I already know that Ryan’s dad was a character actor, his parents divorced when he was young, he dated Maria Bello throughout his twenties and didn’t go to college, so all the what-did-you-want-to-be-when-you-grew up, what-do-your-parents-do, what-did-you-major-in types of questions—standard first date fare—would be silly and redundant.
Forcing a conversation about what’s going on in the world would feel just that—forced—and I’m not interested enough in food to start discussing the menu. I am, for one of the first times I can remember, at a complete and utter conversational loss.
And then I feel just the slightest glimmer of hope in him. He could ask me the typical first date questions, or about my column, or about why I decided to get sober. Flooded with sudden optimism, I smile at him. He smiles back and I assume he’s going to ask me something, but instead he takes his index finger and taps the table, then his other index finger and does the same thing. And, before I know it, he’s doing some kind of impromptu drum solo on the table of Café Italiano, clearly grooving to some wild beat inside his head.
“Mmmm, you smell so good,” Ryan says as he breathes in my ear. He’s just finished kissing me, expertly, and we’re looking into each other’s eyes. I’m much more comfortable now than I was at dinner when, in between Ryan’s drum solos, we made allegedly casual conversation about the restaurant, the weather, and the waiter. Of course, there was nothing casual about my end of the conversation—each sentence I tossed out was attached to a prayer that he would respond in a way that would allow me to answer back—but at some point I realized that he didn’t seem to be expecting a lot of scintillating talk, and I relaxed as much as someone who’s in the process of gnawing a cuticle into a bloody stub can be. Maybe some people just always eat in semi silence, I started to think. I’ve often speculated that the conversations I have are a thousand times more bizarre or boring or superficial or whatever else my mood tells me they are than the ones everyone else is having. But dinner certainly convinced me that stressing about it wasn’t going to help anything.
After dinner, we’d walked the few blocks back to his loft, during which he grabbed my hand to point out a shooting star and I couldn’t help but see us as a stranger, or a camera, might. Were we secretly being snapped by paparazzi hiding behind sand dunes? Again, I picture Adam walking by right now, seeing us, and kicking himself with regret.
Right at his front door, Ryan had turned his face toward mine and started kissing me. And that’s when the chains that had seemingly been wrapped around my tight shoulders released. I felt comfortable as we kissed, even more so when he told me how good I smell. Maybe he really will be able to replace Adam in my mind.
“Let’s check on the little ones,” he says after we make out for a few minutes, so we go into the media room where we’d left them riveted by The Lord of the Rings, and they’re both sound asleep while Elijah Wood pontificates on screen. “Sit,” he says, smiling and pointing to the couch, as he pulls cash out of his pocket and hands it to the babysitter. I find myself aroused by the cool simplicity of his demand. For such a domineering person, I certainly do like to be ordered around sometimes.
So I sit on the couch as Ryan picks up Diego with one hand and Sam with the other to carry them upstairs and I’m simultaneously turned on by both his strength and his