Free Pretty In Ink by Scott Hildreth Page B

I said as I raised my bottle of beer.
    I had no idea of what it was I was feeling, all I knew was that I liked it. As I sat back in the booth and stared the length of the bar with unfocused eyes, Riley continued her series of questioning.
    “What makes him different that everyone else?” she asked.
    I opened my mouth to respond, and came up with nothing. There were many things I could have said, but for some reason, was incapable of naming them. Not because they weren’t worthy of mention or questionable in their significance, but because there were just too damned many of them swimming around in my head. Instead, I reached for my purse, pulled out the card he had given me on our second date, and handed it to her.
    “Read this,” I said.
    She slid her beer to the side of the table. “What is it?” she asked.
    “It’s a fucking pineapple, you dip-shit. What’s it look like?”
    “A card,” she said as she pulled the card from the envelope.
    “You should be a fucking detective. Now read it,” I said as I leaned into the corner of the booth and studied her.
    As she read the card, her mouth curled into a huge smile. I found it satisfying that she appeared to read it again, filling with pride that a man had actually written what she was reading for me and me alone.
    “Holy crap. He wrote this?” she asked.
    I nodded my head. “Sure did. Date number two. And he’s given me three or four more since, but that was the first.”
    She slid the card back inside the envelope and handed it to me.
    “Wow,” she sighed.
    “Wow is right,” I said as I pulled the card from the envelope and read it again.
    Stevie,
    I had always believed life was dull, and work was my only calling in life. I stumbled through the fog of my days knowing nothing of what life really had to offer me, nor did I care. During the darkest of dreary days, you appeared. Since that moment, you have brought light into my life and provided me with purpose, and for that I thank you.
    I live hoping the warmth and color you bring into my life continues, for I now understand what life can offer me through knowing you; and being without you would cause me to return not to living, but to dying.
    And I desperately want to live life.
    As long as it includes you in it.
    Wilson
    “He’s so nice it’s almost like, I don’t know, unbelievable,” she said.
    I finished my beer and slid the empty bottle toward the edge of the table. “I feel like I don’t deserve him.”
    “I feel the same way with Blake,” Riley said.
    I nodded my head as I waved at the waitress. As she made eye contact, I extended two fingers, hoping she was intelligent enough to understand what I wanted without coming to the table and talking to us, which I found to be invasive and irritating. In a perfect world, bars would have a beer machine no different than a soda machine and we would simply stand up, walk to it, and poke money in. After selecting the drink of choice and pressing the button, the beer would slide out a chute and into the waiting hands of the thirsty patron.
    As she acknowledged my request by raising two fingers and widening her eyes, I sighed and nodded my head.
    “I hate people,” I said.
    “Who?” Riley asked.
    “Waitresses,” I said. “And that white-haired bitch that drives around giving parking tickets. Oh, and that skinny red-haired girl at the store on Douglas who can’t seem to figure out how to scan a sack of tofu.”
    “But you don’t hate Wilson,” she said.
    “He’s not stupid,” I said.
    “The waitress isn’t stupid,” she said.
    Riley no more than finished speaking, and the waitress arrived with a Coors Light dangling from each hand.
    “Here you go,” she said with a smile as she pushed the beers across the table.
    I glanced at the beers, shifted my eyes to meet Riley’s, and shrugged my shoulders as I tilted my head toward the beers. 
    “Is everything okay?” the waitress asked.
    “No, it’s not. We were drinking Shocktop, and you