The First Date

Our Bareback Cowgirl describes her steamy life behind the barn.

One year ago:

She sits on the bus, her pocket mirror held up in front of her face, triple checking that she has nothing stuck in-between her teeth or that her mascara has not raccooned itself around her eyes from the rain. She’s not even sure if she’s attracted to this boy she agreed to meet out of boredom – not too mention sure if he’s obese or not as his pictures are deceiving. Yet something pushed her out the door and into the thunderstorm, and somehow she managed to make it across town to the place where they agreed to meet.

This boy, Bryce Baddy, was waiting for her on the street corner, sitting on an old green bike with high handlebars and a basket on the back. He says hello to her in a French accent.

‘I don’t speak French…’ She tells him.

‘Nor do I! I’ve just been talking to myself in a French accent for the past half hour.’ He sounds as if he is speaking to the entire street instead of to her.

‘Are you drunk?’ She asks.

He starts to ride along the sidewalk expecting her to follow along. His green and purple plaid shirt is spotted with raindrops, but the sky is dry and friendly now.

‘NO!…. Yeah. Maybe.’ His loafered legs stick out on either side of him as he nearly drives his bike into a bush.

He takes her to a park somewhere near Ossington and he plants himself against a tree. Staring straight ahead, while talking much too much and much too fast, he pulls out two beers and hands one to her, motioning for her to sit while he continues his soliloquy. He says something he thinks he shouldn’t’ve and stumbles awkwardly into his next sentence, but she stops him:

‘I like your honesty.’ She doesn’t want him to have censors.

He pauses in his speech and nods his head to himself.

‘It’s really important to me to be honest with everyone.’ He looks up at her from the strand of grass he’s been fiddling with, staring her in the eyes for the first time all night. Then he adds: ‘And I think you are fucking gorgeous.’

They relocate to a clothing store launch party – mainly for the free booze. Browsing the vintage clothing items hanging from the rows of racks, gawking at the hilarious, and chuckling at the items they could only imagine wearing in public, they slowly begin to stand closer to each other than the two strangers who’d met moments earlier.

He pulls a sweater out from the cascade of hanging clothes, and they both voice their opinion about the garishly wooly garment. When she stops talking, he holds his glance and bends his neck to kiss her. Not a moment gone or in between, a kiss folded within the last item of clothing and the next, a perfect fitting. Whoever witnessed that first kiss, did not once recognize it as a first kiss, but rather one of many kissed by two people who have gotten used to kissing. A comfortable kiss.

As they stumble outside and down the side streets, making their way somewhere, he nonchalantly questions her as he zig-zags his bike all over the sidewalk:

‘So what’s the likelihood of you not going home tonight?’ His eyes stare straight ahead, not one glance at her.

‘Not likely’, she laughs.

The night is dark now and the streets and sidewalks are glistening under the streetlamps from the pre-evening rain. Her cowboy boots clomp loudly on the pavement, every step echoing in the empty street. His bike is buzzing quietly as the tires spin.

‘Hm. That’s a shame. I was really looking forward to cuddling you… and maybe copping a feel.’

She turns her head, eyebrow raised to scoff, and looks at him perched on his bicycle. He is dead serious, in the way that he felt no need to convince her that that was actually ALL he wanted to do. He really just wanted to cuddle.

‘I’ll tell you what. If you can keep me here until 1 AM, I won’t go home. My last bus will leave without me.’

‘I can definitely do that,’ he smiles.

She liked how comfortable she felt, removing her stockings while she sat on his bed at 1 in the morning. She liked the way that there was no awkward pause in the moment between looking at each other and kissing each other. She liked his kiss. She liked the thickness of his skin and the mole above his lips. She liked his hands on her hips and her cheek on his chest, the feeling of sleeping in one of his old t-shirt’s and his cat licking her ear in the morning.

She slipped out of his sleepy embrace at 7 AM, not wanting to ruin a potentially perfect date with the sobriety of morning.

– Bareback Cowgirl.

The First Date, 4.3 out of 5 based on 6 ratings