Emily was fidgeting on her barstool, tapping her foot impatiently against the brass railing at the base of the massive mahogany bar, and rapidly sliding her phone back and forth across the top, where the wood was slightly worn from the many bottles and glasses that had slid across it over the years. She had a wrinkle in her forehead, running straight from her hairline to the space between her eyebrows, as she alternated between checking the front door and checking the time on her phone. It was a ritual that she had repeated seemingly a thousand times. She blew a puff of air upwards towards her long, dark hair and asked herself the million-dollar question yet another time: Where is she?
She straightened a bit in her seat when a smartly dressed woman made her way into the room, peeking from side to side as if she were looking for someone. From the looks of her, the woman could've been her boss' cousin, minus the auburn hair, of course, but Emily reasoned that it might not be her natural color. Emily subconsciously arched forward on the stool. As much as she was annoyed by the tardiness of her date – and the fact that, while she waited, she had been forced to sit at the bar and fend off the advances of the kind of people who were there for only one reason – the anticipation of the moment took over. She had to admit that the woman was cute. Worth waiting for. This night, she thought, might not might not end up being such a disaster after all.
Emily smiled slightly when the woman, with a lost look, finally aimed her head in the direction of the bar. Emily was still leaning forward towards the door, and the woman, picking up on the cue, smiled tentatively and headed in Emily's direction. Emily was so eager to get the night started that she almost jumped off of her stool and onto her feet as she waited for her to get there, but she held herself back. No need to appear that desperate. In fact, she intentionally tried to make her expression seem somewhat annoyed, willing to use any trick she could to get the upper hand. After all, who wouldn't want the upper hand on a first date?
The woman, still looking lost – or perhaps it was overwhelmed – finally made her way over to the barstool next to Emily's. She took a breath and opened her mouth, as if she were about to say something by way of introduction, Or apology. Before she had the chance, though, Emily blurted out, "Jules?"
The woman's head snapped back slightly, as if in confusion.
"Are you meeting a blind date?" Emily prodded, leaning her head towards the woman.
"Uh… no; I…"
"Oh, God – I'm so sorry!" Emily managed a gentle laugh, touching the woman's shoulder. "I… uh…" Shaking her head and putting a hand up in surrender, she chuckled lightly again. "I thought you were my blind date." 'Hoped' was more like it, but she had already embarrassed herself enough. She inhaled deeply, tightening her lips. "I'm waiting for a blind date," she explained, as if that weren't obvious. "She's late," she added, still annoyed.
"Oh – wow… I…" Paige was stammering. "I'm sorry – I just thought you might like some company," she explained, dipping her head. "I'll leave you to it…"
"No, please!" Emily fastened both hands around the stranger's arm, not realizing what she had done until Paige looked down at her hands, puzzled. Emily let go slowly, smiling as she explained herself. "I would love some company, actually. I've been feeling like a fool, just sitting here waiting." Under her breath, she added, "Plus, she probably stood me up."
Paige nodded and, as if suddenly remembering her manners, thrust out her hand. "I'm Paige, by the way."
"Emily," Emily replied, giving Paige's hand one quick shake and hanging onto it as she gestured to the stool, inviting Paige to join her.
When the bartender placed a napkin in front of Paige, she ordered a gin and tonic and looked to Emily, prompting her with a raised eyebrow. Emily reached slightly behind her and produced her wine glass, raising it towards Paige to show that she had it covered.
Paige grinned nervously and twisted her hair a little. Emily smiled as she tried to think of an icebreaker. It was certainly awkward enough to be a first date.
Paige had gone past nervous and was rounding the corner on her way to panic. She wasn't sure why she lied when Emily asked whether she was on a blind date. That was exactly what she was there for, even though she had been able to tell at a glance that Emily wasn't the one she was meeting.
She realized that she had probably lied to make herself seem less pathetic; less the sad, single friend whom people were always trying to set up with someone. Anyone. Then again, Emily was on a blind date, so she must not've thought that people who went on blind dates were all that pathetic.
Paige opened her mouth, but no words came out. She knew that she should have said, "You know, I actually am here for a blind date; I don't know why I lied about it." But she worried that it would sound like patronizing lie; as if she was just pretending to be waiting for a blind date to make Emily feel better. Paige cleared her throat, to make it seem that that was the reason she had opened her mouth. And she silently prayed that her date wouldn't show up, or she would have to pretend that it was someone whom she knew all along – and hope that the stranger played along. She was subconsciously shaking her head slightly, in self-condemnation. Emily picked up on it, reading it as a reaction to the awkwardness of the night.
"I hate these things," Emily said, to try to break the tension.
"Yeah," Paige agreed, "Set-ups are the worst."
"Tell me about it!" Emily smiled, rolling her eyes. "Especially when your boss who has a cousin who's 'really cute, and just your type,' and you can't say no, and you just have to pray that things go well – not for the sake of your love-life's sake, but for the sake of your job!"
Paige's head tilted back in laughter. She hoped it came off as commiserating laughter, rather than the nervous laughter that it actually was. She didn't know why her eyes kept wandering to Emily's knee, which was peeking out underneath the hemline of her skirt, or the shoe that she was dangling from her foot as she crossed one long, dark leg over the other. Well, she did know why they kept wandering to those places, but she wasn't ready to admit it.
Over the course of a few minutes of small-talk with Paige, Emily let her blind-date guard down. She was focused on Paige,and had stopped paying attention to who was coming through the front door. She never noticed the woman heading in their direction, who had matched the picture on her phone with Emily's face. "Emily?" she said, placing her hand on Emily's forearm, to get her to look up. "Hi! I'm Julie! I'm so sorry I'm late," she pushed out in one high-pitched, enthusiastic breath. "Traffic was… a mess."
Advantage Jules. Emily, distracted, hadn't been able to get her game-face on in preparation for her blind date's arrival.
"Shall we, get a table?" Jules asked, gesturing in the direction of the seating in the dining room. Emily grabbed her clutch purse and her drink and followed Julie. It wasn't until they were halfway to a table that Emily realized that she had stranded Paige at the bar – Paige, who had come to her rescue earlier, back when she had been sitting by herself. She turned her head to give her a smile of apology, but Paige had turned her back to them, facing the bar. Emily, seeing Paige hunched over and looking at her phone, in do-not-disturb mode, felt overwhelmed with guilt. Before Paige came and sat with her, she had been doing the same thing; pretending to be busy with her phone, in hopes that it would deter the pick-up artists from coming over and hitting on her. It hadn't really worked. And, without really thinking, she had left Paige to the same fate. She knew the vultures would descend on her shortly, too. There wasn't anything she could've done about it; it wasn't as if she could've invited Paige along on her date. But, at least, she could've apologized. And thanked her for coming to sit with her. Emily made a plan to excuse herself, saying that she had to go to the ladies' room, as soon after they placed their orders as she could reasonably do so. But, when she set her menu down and looked over at the bar again, Paige was gone.
Emily began to question why Paige had come over in the first place. Maybe she really was just looking for someone to share a friendly drink with. If that were the case, Emily could understand why she left the bar after one drink. Emily, herself, would've left, rather than fend off unwanted advances, had she not been waiting for someone.
But Emily couldn't help wondering whether Paige had had other reasons for joining her at the bar. That would explain the slow, nervous way that Paige walked over to her at first, and the way that her eyes seemed to keep wandering up to Emily's top – and down to her legs. But, if that were the case, why would Paige have left so abruptly? If she had come to the bar hoping to meet someone, wouldn't she have stuck around longer? After all, a fisher doesn't give up after the first fish wriggles off the hook.
Emily was, unfortunately, devoting too much thought to Paige and not enough to her date. Jules noticed; there was no way that she couldn't have. She didn't know what was on Emily's mind, of course, but she knew that Emily was somewhere else. She put it down to the fact that she had been so late, and she apologized profusely, and repeatedly. Emily kept insisting that it was no big deal, but her actions weren't lining up with her words. And Julie wasn't sure that she wanted a relationship with someone petty enough to hold tardiness against her for the entire evening – or someone passive-aggressive enough to deny that she was doing that. Emily was beautiful, and she seemed to have a lot going for her, but Jules would have to tell her cousin that there was no chemistry between them.
There were no illusions at the end of the meal, which Jules ended up paying for. It was the least she could do, she insisted, for making Emily wait so long. After a quick, friendly hug on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, they headed to their cars.
"Amber, my love!"
There was a low, grumbling sigh on the other end of the line. Emily checked the display on her phone. Damn it! "Gretchen! Gretchen, of course!" Emily laughed lightly. "Sorry, I… uh… I was on so many calls at work today, I… uh…got you mixed up with one of my best clients."
Gretchen laughed sardonically. "Well, I guess it's true what they say," she said mockingly. "You guys really love your clients!"
Emily cleared her throat nervously. She had been busted, but she wasn't ready to give up yet. "So, what's going on, Gretchen?" She felt compelled to reinforce her knowledge of Gretchen's name.
"Oh, you know," Gretchen said, still annoyed. "Same old same old. How about you? Let me guess – blind date didn't go quite as well as you hoped?"
Emily mentally chastised herself again. She knew that she should've pulled over before she called, so that the sounds of traffic on I-95 wouldn't make it so obvious that she was driving back from the city. "It was fun," Emily said, her voice pitching higher at the end of the statement. "But on the way home, I started thinking, 'I wonder what Gretchy's been up to lately,' and, since the night's still young, I figured I'd give you a holler."
"Uh huh," Gretchen said, rolling her eyes so severely that it was practically audible. "And how many other girls did you call before you started thinking about good old Gretchy?"
"Gretchen…" Emily clicked her tongue. "You're not going to be like that, are you?"
Gretchen let out groan of frustration. No, she wasn't going to be like that. If she played it too hard, Emily would just move down to the next name on her list. But she didn't want to be too easy. If she seemed desperate, Emily might drop her from the list altogether.
"What did you have in mind?" she sighed.
"Drinks?" Emily asked hopefully. "I know this cute little bar in one of those row-house restaurants in South Philly. I could swing by your place in twenty minutes; have you back in Rosewood in time for midnight mass?"
"Fine," Gretchen said resignedly. "I'll be ready."
In some ways, it was a dick move to go back to the same place where she'd had dinner and drinks with Jules less than half an hour earlier. But it was a nice place, Emily told herself, and Gretchen deserved that much for being willing to go out on short notice. Ideally, Emily would have left herself some extra time, so that she could go home and change her top and her hair. She wouldn't want anyone in the bar to recognize her, out with a second girl on the same night. She didn't have time to do that, though. She needed to get back there quickly. If Paige hadn't left earlier, as Emily had thought, she might still have time to catch her.
Emily took a quick scan of the restaurant, but Paige was nowhere to be seen. She looked a couple times more from her seat at the bar, in case Paige had just been in the bathroom, before concluding that she had missed her. Things could've been worse, though. She was there with Gretchen, and Gretchen was always up for a throw-down. Emily was her charming self over the space of a couple of drinks, getting Gretchen back to Rosewood before midnight – but not for Mass.
Emily was still haunted by her encounter with Paige. She wanted to know what Paige's deal was; what made her tick. They hadn't spent much time with each other, but there was something about the woman that intrigued her.
She did the stupidest thing: She got onto facebook and searched for the name Paige. Even stupider, she thought, because she hadn't even gotten Paige's last name. But Paige wasn't that common a name, she figured. How many Paiges could there be in the Philadelphia metropolitan area?
Quite a few, as it turned out. Then again, Emily didn't even know for sure that Paige was from the area. Maybe she was in Philadelphia on business, or visiting an old friend, or on vacation. But Emily didn't have a better strategy, so she kept scrolling through the list. None of the profile pictures looked like Paige. Some of them were just pictures of kids, or boyfriends/husbands. Boyfriends. Emily didn't even know whether Paige was single. Or gay. There were a few Paiges who had pictures of cats for their profile pictures. Emily took a closer look through those, but couldn't find anything definitive.
Paige's blind date with hadn't gone much better than Emily's, but she couldn't put the blame on Emily. She'd gone in with low expectations, having had enough experience with blind dates to know better than to get her hopes up. The evening, in Paige's assessment, wasn't horrible, but it was far from great. Apparently, her date thought much more of the evening than she did, though, and Paige was surprised by the call, the following day, asking her out for a second date. She said yes, partly out of hope, and partly out of desperation; hope that the second date would be better, and desperation that convinced her that even a bad date is worse than ending up alone.
Like Emily, Paige found herself thinking back to their brief, chance encounter in the bar. She wondered how different things would have been had she said yes, when Emily asked whether she was Jules - then whisked Emily out of the restaurant, before either of their real dates arrived, swept her off her feet, and finally, at the end of a perfect evening, confessed that she wasn't, in fact, Jules after all, daring Emily to pretend she wasn't pleased. It would've made for a great "How I met your mother" story. Emily seemed like the kind of person who would be up for that kind of adventure. Emily may have, but Paige knew that she, herself, never would. She could never have been that brave. She chuckled sadly to herself. If she had even one brave bone in her body, she would've turned down the invitation for a second date.
A/N - Hey, guys... Thanks for giving this one a shot.
This story is based on a prompt by thecatfromaliceinwonderland which I really hope I can do justice. I have to admit, though, that I'm still struggling at getting back into the swing of writing. I'm shooting for 15 chapters, but we'll see...
You guys will help me find my way as we go along, right? Your suggestions and constructive criticism are always welcome! :)
