Would Have, Should Have...
Like most things, it had all gone much differently in his head.
Okay, like most things, he wasn't entirely sure what had gotten into his head in the first place, what had made him actually send that ad in to the personals section. He suspected he might have been drunk. Or he would have suspected that if it hadn't been for the fact that there had been no alcohol in his apartment at the time. He was left with an uncomfortable conclusion: sometimes, he was just an idiot.
Man with a badge in hot pursuit of romance. I'm 32, fit, sexy, ambitious, with a dynamite sense of humor. Looking for petite blonde, no-nonsense attitude, kids okay.
Yup. He was an idiot. An idiot who couldn't string three words together without looking like an even bigger idiot.
Randy took a swig from a bottle of Corona. (He had remedied the lack of alcohol at his place as soon as he got off duty.) He swished the liquid around in his mouth absent-mindedly before swallowing it.
Now that it came down to it, he knew it had all just been a fantasy. It would have gone something like this:
Sharona Fleming opens the newspaper one morning to one of her favorite sections, the personals. She runs her finger down the columns. "Boring...boring...boring..." Then it comes: "Hey, wait a second, here's one..." She reads the ad with rising interest. She sends a note expressing her interest to the box number he has provided. They arrange a meeting, sight unseen. She arrives at the restaurant wearing a silvery, gauzy sort of dress that seems to float around her and makes her look like an angel. He stands up, pulls her chair out for her. "Randy?" she says. "Sharona," he says suavely. "You're the man of my dreams," she says. "I always thought so," he says. She flings her arms around his neck and he kisses her like she's never been kissed before and makes her forget about all the other guys she's kissed, and don't think he doesn't know there have been a lot of them, because he knows, he remembers every name she's ever mentioned, he...
He leaned his head on the back of the armchair and sighed heavily. He. Was. An idiot.
He had forgotten about the ad by the time they were working on the case involving the death of Monk's paperboy. Forgotten, that is, until they were all reviewing the paper together and he had read over the personals section. As far as he could remember, his incredibly coherent first thought had been that if she asked about that section, he would just put his hand over his ad. Good plan. Very unsuspicious.
Even when she got a hold of the paper, it should have gone differently. He had a plan for that, too. A plan that followed swiftly on the heels of the "cover the ad" plan.
She would have known the ad was his. She wasn't an idiot, unlike some people he could name. "You're not my type," she would have said, as she picked up another section and turned to leave.
That's where he would have jumped up and grabbed her arm. She would have looked down at his hand in surprise, shocked to see him of all people taking charge of a situation.
"No, I'm not," he would have said. "But I should be."
Wait, no, scratch that...
"No, I'm not," he would have said. "I'm the type who doesn't leave you."
And she would have looked at him as if she were really only now seeing him for the first time and said, "You're that type?"
And he would have said, "I am, and I always will be."
That's how it would have happened. Or how it should have. Or...the captain and Monk were right there, so maybe it shouldn't have. Anyway, none of that mattered, because none of that was what happened. What happened was much, much different than anything he had been prepared for.
She read the ad. She recognized him. She recognized herself. And she didn't run away.
"That's you!" she said, and he should have said, "Yes, it is."
But he was nervous and confused, so he didn't say anything.
"That's me!" she said, soon after, and he should have said, "Yes."
But he said, "Don't flatter yourself."
And when she brought the ad up again later, he should have asked if she wanted it to be for her, but instead he persistently denied that it was.
Randy put the empty beer bottle on the TV tray next to his chair. He looked at the phone again. He could call her right now. He should, to sort all of this out. He would say...
Something idiotic, no doubt.
He went to sleep instead.