Free Settling Up by Eryn Scott

Totally? Where was the man that knew fancy French wines and worked with numbers? I hated to box people into stereotypes, but this seemed contradictory as hell. Now that the club music wasn’t bumping, no longer seemed to stab angrily at my eardrums, I felt my rational thought processes return. Okay. Maybe he was going through some sort of fractional life crisis. Thinking he needed to be a DJ could definitely be a phase, one he’d stumbled into to make an ex girlfriend or wife upset.
    After the waiter poured our wine (thank you, Jesus) and took our orders (knowing I had delicious pasta on the way made everything better), I felt the words dislodge and flow out.
    “So… how did you become interested in the art of disc jockeying?” I cleared my throat so any sarcasm lacing my words might be mistaken as a tickle in my trachea.
    Thomas shook his head. “It just came to me, really. I mean, I was playing some music for my friends one night at a dinner party and suddenly everyone got up and started to dance on the table. They said the songs I picked were so good they couldn’t help it.” He chuckled at the memory as if it was real and not completely made up.
    Adults dancing on a table? In this Ikea-built generation of fast and cheap furniture, it was highly unlikely anyone’s table would’ve withstood that amount of weight.
    “I run with a little bit of a younger crowd. I feel like all the guys my age are so boring. Into stocks and life insurance and where they should look into buying a retirement home.”
    There it was. Younger crowd. Oh goodness. How much younger? Plus, the guy he described (the one who liked stocks and retirement, that one) was basically my perfect list guy. I gulped down a mouthful of wine. Thomas held out a hand.
    “Oh no, Lauren. Don’t guzzle it like that. This wine is not your standard five dollar variety from Trader Joes. This is sensual French wine that deserves to be sipped, courted, like a lady.” The way he said “lady” made me shiver uncomfortably and wish I wasn’t one.
    He reached over the table and tipped my glass away from my lips. Then he held up a finger as he picked up his own glass. He tipped it toward his nose, closing his eyes as he smelt, then swished it around. Finally he let a small trickle of it leak out, sucking it in and moving his tongue; as he did so he sounded way too much like Hannibal Lecter for my liking. I cringed but, again, he didn’t seem to notice, swishing the small amount of liquid around in his cheeks.
    “Like that.” He smiled, setting the violated glass down at last.
    I’m pretty sure my face resembled that not-impressed-downward-mouth emoji Betsy sent me from time to time when she thought I was being difficult about something. But being difficult was definitely in my nature and Thomas telling me I couldn’t “guzzle” this wine only made me want to that much more.
    “Wow, what a beautiful painting.” I pointed behind him.
    Thomas turned and I grasped my wine glass, sloshing a huge gulp into my mouth, and placing it back on the table before he turned back around.
    “An art critic, huh?” He smiled.
    I shrugged, swallowing the delicious wine slowly so he wouldn’t see. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice that my glass was nearly half empty now. Whoops.
    He didn’t. Mostly because the next ten minutes were filled with him telling me almost every detail of his childhood (growing up in a broken home with a brother who never treated him with respect, to this day), him continuing to drink his wine in the creepy Silence of the Lambs way (I thought all of that sipping stuff was just supposed to happen at the beginning of drinking, not continue all the way through), all the while, he periodically added a beatboxed bass-line to the classical music playing throughout the restaurant (complete with shoulder moves, head pumping, and eye assault). Not that I was normally a chatty person, but I don’t think I could’ve gotten in a word edgewise if I’d