The tenderest love, rawest lust.
Angel brought out these emotions in me from the start.
Of course Angel – not her real name, but how I ‘ve thought of her from the start – was pretty, right smack in my Attractiveness Wheelhouse because that is Mother Nature at work. Her only concern is us humans creating more humans, so she ensures looks are the first thing men notice about a woman. Sue us.
So of course I noticed Angel was stacked, brunette, cute, athletic yet ladylike. It’s part of being a guy, especially when you’re probably old enough to be her father.
But there was something more. Angel was nice and made me laugh and didn’t seem to get worked up when things didn’t go quite right, which they seemed to do from time to time at the bank she worked at. I’ve been on my share of dates over the years, your share, too, probably, and I long ago stopped dating for looks.
But there was even more, something intangible that made me want to hold her when darkness fell and wipe her tears away.
So, after numerous visits to her teller window, I’d decided to ask her out. I’d been around the block once or twice and based on my decades of experience asking women out I was fairly certain she would say yes.
Actually, that’s a lie. I knew. And she knew I knew! And I knew she knew I knew! She was curious – about me, about our age difference, about whether or not the rumors she’d heard about older guys being really lousy in the sack were true.
And I was ready for the great love, frankly because I’d been a bachelor a long time. Happily. I’ve always enjoyed my own company and was never lonely. Heck, I’d even been engaged a couple of times, but my instincts had started telling me it was time to settle down, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts over the years because they will usually tell you how to get to where you want to go.
So all that was left was to ask her out and see how far our first date would take us.
Because you never know. Either a first date you had high hopes for turns out to blow, or it went really well and you never had a second date.
But I had a hunch.
———
Look, I am not stalker!
I swear. Really.
I merely aggregated assorted pieces of information I’d gathered over the past couple of weeks. Based on that aggregation, I happened to strongly suspect that Angel just happened to be a few minutes away from her lunch hour when I waddled up to the teller line.. My plan was almost foiled by some other skank teller being available when I was next in line, but I recovered quickly and let Old Lady Bagsby go in front of me and soon enough I was able to present myself at Angel’s window with some BS transaction I could’ve done at the ATM. Angel herself presented the opportunity I was looking for when she asked me how I was doing.
“I’m hungry. How about having lunch with me today?”
Really, I’m not a stalker. I am not making that up.
Of course, Angel said yes, tilting her head and smiling at me with a smile that could have produced power for the Las Vegas Strip for a week. I was so focused on what was going on, I barely noticed her friend Molly begin a modest coughing fit in the adjacent teller window.
Considering I had given her exactly ten minutes’ notice of our first date, it went splendidly, a word I don’t throw around all that often. I mean, one minute she was processing a routine financial transaction I had drummed up on the drive over and the next Molly was helping her with her coat and whispering something in her ear. I would never find out what it was, though whatever it was had Angel nodding solemnly.
We didn’t have unlimited time, so we went to a Chinese place in the shopping complex that housed the branch she worked in. Fortunately, we both like Chinese food.
I wanted to be interesting and funny and all that crap, but really I wanted to one, not try to act her age and, two, treat her like a lady, the older gentleman’s ace-in-the-hole. Boys her age don’t hold doors or pull chairs out or order for their dates or flatter them shamelessly and I certainly hope notebooks were out because class was in session. I gave a clinic in how an older gentleman treats a younger woman.
I will always remember everything about this hour. Angel was, of course, beautiful, but she was hardly the first beautiful woman I’d had lunch with. She was funny and thoughtful and there was no doubt I wanted to see her again.