Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [30]
Their actual first date had been bad enough.
Milo had been nervous from the start. Milo and Christine’s initial meeting had been a brief encounter outside of a Japanese restaurant in West Hartford Center. Christine had been with one of Milo’s coworkers at the time, a nurse at Hartford Hospital who had been working the same shift as Milo, and for the brief moment that the two of them conversed, Christine had sized up Milo and deemed him “cute.” The next day, his coworker, a woman named Nina, had passed on the favorable estimation as well as Christine’s phone number. “She wants you to call.”
“What? I’m just supposed to dial her number and start talking? What am I supposed to say?”
“I dunno. Ask her out, silly.”
This type of interaction seemed all well and good on the silver screen, but in real life, calling a strange girl and asking her on a date based on a split-second impression was not easy.
Hello, Christine?
Yes?
Hi, this is Milo.
Oh, hi, Milo. How are you?
Good. And you?
Fine.
Then what?
If the conversation proceeded thusly, Milo would be on the hook for the first meaningful statement of the phone call. He would have to proffer the next thought or idea. What might it be?
So, I hear that you think I’m cute. I barely remember what you look like from the minute that we spent together, but I figured I’d give it a shot. I don’t exactly have a stable of girls to call upon.
Milo spent hours trying to find a foolproof way to be the last one in the conversation to indicate his current state of being, thus placing the onus of the first meaningful statement of the conversation on Christine, but there was no getting around it. If he placed the call, he would eventually need to express something other than pleasantries.
In the end, he managed to make the call after a three-day cocktail of rehearsal, rescripting, and avoidance, and thankfully, Christine had made the conversation easy on him. Milo led by saying that Nina thought they might have a lot in common, including a love for hiking and the movies, and Christine essentially took it from there.
Three nights later, they were back in West Hartford Center, enjoying a candlelit dinner at Arugula. It was his first date in a long time, so Milo was feeling uncommonly normal as he sat down at the table by the window. No longer relegated to the role of the Dungeons & Dragons nerd, he was sitting across from a beautiful woman who had greeted him on the sidewalk outside the restaurant with a warm and genuine smile. Her hair was short and dark, and she appeared to be wearing little if any makeup, and it didn’t appear as if she needed any. She possessed the kind of natural beauty that seemed to require little effort. She was short, barely five feet tall, which was fine with Milo, who was only five feet, seven inches tall. She wore small diamond studs in her ears and was otherwise unadorned. Simple but beautiful, Milo had thought as she approached him on that warm spring evening. He was also pleased to see that the shirt, pants, and sport jacket had been a good choice of attire. Christine was wearing a short black dress and heels. Not too formal, yet not too casual either.
The trouble began just after they had finished ordering. In the short time that they had spent together in the restaurant, Milo had finally begun to relax at bit. The pressure of the near-blind date had been wearing on him, but after just fifteen minutes together, it was clear that he and Christine were going to get along just fine. With the relaxation came the sudden need to use the restroom for what Milo feared would be more than just a couple of minutes. Apparently the release of tension had sent a signal to his body that the time had come for him to have a seat and take care of business.
Milo realized this almost immediately after handing the menu back to the waiter, and hoped for a moment that he might suppress the need. Abdominal discomfort indicated otherwise. So with hopes of accomplishing the task quicker than