He’d picked a corner table with a little booth so we had to sit side-by-side, and occasionally we’d knock knees - which I was not averse to. I watched him go up to the bar, mentally adding up what our mutual friend had texted about him against what I’d learned so far. I’d never been set-up this way before - without an app, just a mate in common - and, two hours in, was quite convinced at its old-school brilliance.
It occured to me he'd probably be a terrible kisser. A wet cabbage kisser. I was wrong.
A string bean of a six-foot-something with trousers that sat as if to frame his pert bum, his company was easy. Chatty, straightforward, funny. I tried to remember what Lindsey had said about focussing less on impressing myself on a date and more on listening and being impressed. He told me about his obsession with Agatha Christie novels and American wrestling, and when I talked he paid attention. Remembered what led us on to a certain topic, picked back up on a trail of thought we’d both lost a little earlier. I couldn’t get a read on if he was simply so polite that his attentions were what he gave everybody, or if he was paying me so much attention because he fancied me. I fancied him, I thought. Maybe. Did I? I didn’t know, but I did want to stay. Keep talking. Enjoy him longer. It occurred to me that he was so 'nice' he’d probably be a terrible kisser. A wet cabbage kisser. I decided that as truth: he definitely wasn’t going to be the kind of man who’d make the earth move.
I was wrong.
He kissed me out of nowhere, his face suddenly more serious than it had been all night. The force of his mouth made my heart fall into my knickers, so that its heartbeat lit the tops of my thighs, and his lips parted gently, so that the tip of his tongue invited my own to taste.
‘Nice boys don’t kiss like that…’ I thought, like Bridget Jones to a Mark Darcy.
It kept happening, the kissing – a playful squeeze of my bum thrown in at one stage. I laughed. He’s a geek, I reflected as he popped to the loo, but wow: he’s a sexy geek.
The Sexy Geek laced his tapered fingers with mine as he walked me to the bus stop, and I’ll be damned if I can tell you what we talked about. No idea. Because then he pushed me up against the wall, hands in my hair, mouth on my cheek, ear, neck, hot and intense and desperate and time suspended. I could barely walk as I finally got on a bus, and it took me an hour – I swear down, no exaggeration, an hour – for me to get my breath back. I got home panting like I’d run a marathon, sitting on the edge of my bed and looking at the outline of my reflection in the mirror, saying to myself: 'Holy hell. Holy bloody hell.'
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