🎾🌊 Matched Playfellows
First Draft Created: 2024-06-24 18:45
Updated: July 7, 2024
Last Updated: 1 month, 3 weeks ago
On the theme: Ocean
Deep as the ocean outside were her eyes. God, that sounded corny. But I couldn't help it. I was spellbound, captivated. I wasn't sure how I ended up on a date with this firecracker of a woman, someone with the energy of ... well, a nuke.
Yes, energetic, she had been, in our tennis games, where I'd met her at the racquet club. But now, in this dimly lit restaurant, right by the blazing bombfire, sorry, bonfire... fireplace? Well... I shook my head to correct my thoughts... things felt calm. She was remarkably serene, sipping from her long-stemmed glass, held delicately in her wickedly pointed dark-fingernailed hands like some classy vampire who preferred to drain her victim's lifeblood into a glass. Serene... though with fire that danced, literally and figuratively, in her eyes.
My heart - no, I was being melodramatic- my ego had felt shattered by the tsunami of my terrible loss in our match earlier. As if spotting it, she had somehow shoveled together the debris when she'd accepted, no, invited herself out on a date with me. Somehow I couldn't remember actually saying yes. I think my wide eyes, dropped jaw and blush had made the answer clear. Of course, she had likely just felt pity for me. If a competitive woman like her felt pity. Perhaps... mercy?
No. My ego again, and self-deception.
For that gothic cocktail dress showed anything but pity. If anything, it was merciless on my imagination. The scale of its destruction on the purity of my thoughts was ... well, nuclear.
I, of course, was a disaster, not even changed out of my tennis gear but just with a tracksuit slapped on over it. I hadn't realised she'd meant like a date date as opposed to a brief coffee where she could brutally mock my defeat before departing to wherever her real plans were, for her dinner date.
So here I was, dressed like a lifeguard on a beach -t least dressed in some twisted way appropriately for our oceanside retaurant, I thought wryly, with a woman dressed in eveningwear, with deep reddish purple lipstick... or whatever women called that colour... magenta? Or was that the word for the red one?
"So, have you read much of the works of Poe?" she asked, twirling the glass in those fingernails of doom.
Just my luck. Not only was she a knockout - with my beating on the court to prove it - she was the type of woman who read books. Real books. The scary kind, not the easy kind.
"Um... this is embarrassing, but... someone bought me his complete works once... and I... got about four pages in," I admitted. "Something about a hot air balloon... or whatever they called it back then... but it was so wordy. And now it lives on my shelf. The cover looks beautiful though!" I aspired towards some humour to illuminate. If she was queen of darkness and graceful and effortless destruction, perhaps some effortful sunshine would be a novelty.
I expected disappointment in her eyes at this hapless jock who had classlessly devoured his burger like the Beast at his first dinner with Beauty, ravenous from nerves and my beating on the court, while she nibbled delicately on some fancy pasta I couldn't even remember the name of - certainly not spaghetti - but she smiled... or was that the smirk of triumph I had grown accustomed to in the majority of our matches? No, my still-fragmented ego couldn't take the self-doubt and over-analysis. I would interpret it as just a smile.
As the waiter came to take our desert dishes and the bill was paid, I prepared myself for the inevitable awkward extrication of my date, wondering if the conversation to her departure would be swift and direct or lengthy and polite. Instead she was glancing out of the window, with a thoughtful look on her flame-filled eyes, which had dimmed with the fireplace to a smoulder. She said "the ocean looks so beautiful at night. Would you like to take a walk on the beach?"
Surprised, I of course nodded, like a goof, now feeling way too tall now that we were somehow standing outside the entrance and I was looking down at her. Conversing with her tended to take my attention off of where I was, the passage of time, and how I'd teleported there. No surprise I lost so many matches. Vampires did have an ability to mesmerise. At least I'd remembered to duck on the way out - something which was just muscle memory for me now.
"Sure!" I finally said, realising that she likely couldn't see me nodding in the relative dark of outside. I had shuffled my way down the stairs ahead of her so that when I'd turned back to faced her we'd be closer to eye level. "I... I don't think this area is dodgy. Should be safe."
"You can protect me," she said, with a wink a wink her partially illuminated face. "If anything happens, you'll be my saviour."
"I'm not that aggressive!" I protested, laughing in surprise at the notion. "I'm not really a man of action... more like a gentle giant. I think it's a bit of a fault of mine, actually. As you saw on the court, I tend to hold back a bit. Luckily there's nothing to protect anyone from here... besides sharks... and mosquitoes." I swatted at the sudden buzz near my ear.
She laughed, musically, as we began walking towards the beach. My hands having found the comfort of my hoodie pockets, she rested her hand on my arm.
Foam flecked the waves in the darkness, and I caught sight of the ocean swells rising in the moonlight, echoing the thundering of my heart.
"I noticed that" she said, finally. "It's almost as if you think you'll break me because I'm so much smaller than you."
It was a good thing now that she couldn't see me blushing in the darkness. I had been holding back... on the court and off it. A habit I'd learned, from my basketball player's build and being surrounded by people who seldom exceeded chest height. Smaller people I'd assumed would be so much more timid than me.
"Don't hold back," she said. In the dark I heard a subtle lightness in her voice, of a smile or unbidden hint of a laugh betraying its evenness. Her hand tightened slightly on my arm, causing me to stop walking as she did, and turn towards her. Our stroll, I realised, was perfectly matched.
A subtle tug of her arm brought me obligingly down to her level, listening. Her breath was warm on my cheek as she brought her face close to my ear. "I can take it."
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