Free It's Got A Ring To It by Desconhecido(a) Page A

the
black wrap-dress that I thought was so elegant, I felt inadequate and
frumpy—not at all how I wanted to feel on my first jump back into the
dating pool. I felt myself angling toward the door. Tempted to turn back, I was
inches away when the beautiful hostess said my date had already arrived.
Reluctantly, I followed behind her like the before version of some P90x
exercise addict’s made over body. As the eye-catching beauty led me through the
restaurant, the darting eyes of onlookers scrambled to see me and turned just
as quickly. While I’d been worrying about his appearance, it hadn’t occurred to
me until that moment, I might not fit his bill. As if confirming my feeling of
inadequacy,
when
the
hostess introduc
ed
me
as his gues
t,
all I heard was
crickets.
    The look of confusion on his face beamed “unimpressed” and the idea
of running, not walking, back to the car sounded like a get out of jail free
card. Sweat beads swelled across my forehead. Then, it became apparent that his
expression was a reflection of the shock and awe plastered across mine. I’d
said what I was thinking out loud—“Shit!” Literally, I said “Shit.”
    He rose from his chair to greet me and I was grateful for his
willingness to ignore my rudeness. I heard him ask me to be seated, but my legs
wouldn’t work. My eyes were locked on him in total disbelief.
    “I’m sorry. I’m not what you were expecting,” his head bowed in
embarrassment.
    “Yes! I mean no! No. That’s not what I meant.” My head dropped and I
buried it in my hands, letting my body sluggishly melt into the chair across
from him as he dismissed the hostess. Mortified, I apologized profusely,
shaking my head, wishing I could rewind and start over. “Larry, I’m so sorry.
It’s not what you think…it’s just that you remind me of someone else.”
    And the next thing I knew, the waterworks were in full effect. The
more I wiped, the more they came, like an unleashed geyser erupting. Larry eyed
me, confused
and r
ightfully
so. He must’ve been thinking that I was crying because of him, but I couldn’t
stop long enough to explain that it had nothing to do with him. He put a hand
on my shoulder and told me everything would be ok
ay
, but his words had the reverse effect.
    When I cry, if anyone tries to console me, it only makes me bawl.
Through my sniveling, blubbering, broken tears
,
and mascara-run raccoon eyes, I kept
apologizing to poor Larry, who had to suffer the brunt of my emotional
breakdown. He must have been regretting the blind ish hell date, but he managed
to hide it
well
. Only
when he was sure that it wasn’t a life
-
threatening emergency did he slide next to
me and wait for me to compose myself.
    “You must think I’m a hysterical nutbasket .”
Hiding behind my menu, I wiped at my eyes and tried not to stare, but the
resemblance was uncanny. “Larry, I’m so sorry. I haven’t been completely honest
with you.”
    He peeked over the menu and hesitantly pulled it down to look me in
the eyes. “Ok
ay
. So
tell me all about it.”
    Those warm chestnut eyes. I knew them well, but they weren’t his. I
hadn’t expected that reaction from him, but I felt a weird combination of
uneasiness and calm by the empathy in his voice—enough to tell him the
real truth and not just the truth I was going to conjure up to avoid seeming
like some loon.
    Through choppy words, I made an
ill attempt
at explaining myself. “Well, I
feel so bad because you were so forthcoming with me. You opened your heart and
told me about your wife being unfaithful to you and how it changed you, but you
didn’t allow it to take you off the course of finding love…” I could feel
myself veering toward tangents to avoid telling him. “I didn’t want to scare
you away, so I told you that I hadn’t gone through anything like that, but I
lied. I’ve been through exactly that, in nearly the same way you went through
it, but I didn’t want you to know that I had let my pain