A Few Too Many F-Words

Fiction

Ferocious

In the dating app messenger, that’s what you call me from one look at my eyes. I tell you that you’re imagining things. I’m a mouse, not a lion, but you think it’s funny how I take your words so seriously when we haven’t even met.

Let me have a good long stare into your eyes so I can be the judge.

But I’m not ready yet. I tap out of the app and take a breath of relief.

I don’t want you to see what really lurks in my eyes.

Fearless

You tell me stories of the women who were before me, and I wish I could tell you I wasn’t intimidated. Business women who caught you by the tie, singers whose throaty voices seduced you, bartenders who traded smiles for tips — I don’t want to think of all those specters that will determine how you view me.

But still I linger over each message as if the words were transported to me through bottles on the sea. I try not to let you know how I long to know what happens in the off-hours when I don’t hear from you.

All I have is a picture on the screen and words to follow after.

For another night, I let the phone fall from my hand and try not to think of how restless I feel in my own skin.

Faithful

The man before you didn’t try to pluck my thoughts like fruit from a tree. In fact, he didn’t care for me much at all other than how I made him look as he paraded me around a room. As long as I was coiffed and decked out in designer brands, I was the apple of his eye.

But then it ended, as these things do, with a phone call.

It turned out he had a wife.

It turned out I was the other woman.

It turned out I had played the fool by thinking I was the one and only.

I was just another — the woman who could be replaced like an item on a shelf.

Fun

My friends said I lost my spark after the man broke my heart. We didn’t even talk about him, but he was the hole in the wall no one could ever ignore. Though I tried to plaster over the gaping maw he had left, I couldn’t seem to smooth out the cracks.

Once, I had been the one to host dinner parties at my apartment. Now, I was practically a hermit who just went to work and the grocery store and that was it.

But your messages made me want to go out and try again. Maybe I could even be the life of the party one day.

I wanted to be the center of your universe, the sun you revolved around, but those words? I couldn’t say them.

It was too soon.

Famous

My mom’s written a few self-help books about dating and marriage. Her four marriages (three of which occurred during my adolescence) has given her the repertoire to be regarded when it comes to courtship — though one must wonder if she’s just become the patron saint of divorcees everywhere.

When someone would recognize her on the street, I’d stand away from the scene like I didn’t even know her. Even now, it’s embarrassing that she has more experience with love and romance than me.

And she had plenty to say about the man who got away, the one who had a whole other life away from me.

While she sipped a cocktail that looked too young for her just from its neon color alone, she pointed at me with a purple talon. “You could learn a thing or two from me,” she said. “Do you want me to set up a date for you? I hear Harry Mercer is back on the market.”

You had to know your life sucked when you were getting dating advice from your sixty-year-old mother.

Fatal

But my mom wasn’t always that way. She was in love — true love — once. The man had been my father, someone who was only a part of my life for eleven years. I still remember how he made me laugh. One time, Dr. Pepper spewed out of my nose just from a silly face he made at me.

He made my mother laugh too. I remember the way they would dance in the kitchen, his hands at her hips, as she laughed while he whispered in her ear. I would look at them and see what soulmates truly were.

Happy endings were a rare commodity in life, I would learn.

The day of their thirteenth anniversary, my father collapsed in the grocery store while picking up a batch of chocolate-covered strawberries. When they found him, the carton had smashed open on the floor.

The next time I saw him, he was lying in an open casket.

And that’s the way love dies.

Flexible

The app tells me it’s been two days since I last sent out a message. You have left me a half-dozen responses, and I know from the silence now that you think I’ve ghosted you. I’ve done it before to other men. Sometimes the words just stop mattering.

But tonight I look at your profile picture again, the one of you smiling beside your German shepherd Sammy. I think of how nice it might be to walk in the park with you, your dog sniffing the grass as we amble beside each other and fill the air with chatter and frisson.

It’s a daydream I can’t imagine bringing to life.

Before I can think better of the move, I message you back.

Sorry for the radio silence. Busy with work, you know? How about we go to lunch soon?

Your answer comes only a minute later.

Formal

I thought a dinner date would be too strict, but thankfully you agree to lunch at a café in the suburbs. It’s a Saturday afternoon; the sun is just a warm touch on the nape of my neck.

When you see me get out of my car, you brighten. I try not to think of how your smile makes my stomach do silly things like flip.

Then you hold out a daffodil wrapped in paper, and you say, “Roses are too cliché, you know?”

I press the flower to my nose and think how I already feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

Frequent

The lunch date becomes another, and another, only then to morph into a meeting at the movies. Only on our fourth date do you pull me close and whisper, “Is it okay if we kiss? I didn’t want to rush you, but — ”

“Yes.” My answer is automatic, even though I’m usually prone to overthinking.

When your mouth meets mine in the dark, I don’t think of other kisses or other men or other mistakes. I think of you and me and the delicate tension unspooling between us.

It’s almost too easy to lose myself in you, like I’m a girl experiencing her first major crush, and I wonder if you’re as enamored as I feel.

What if this is a one-way street? What if you’re just desperate for someone else’s touch? What if you just want someone to keep you warm tonight?

Your hands splay in my hair, and you whisper, “God, where have you been all my life?”

The what-if’s die on my lips as I realize, for the first time, that you really do like me.

It seems like such a miracle.

Fabulous

I won’t say we’re going to last forever. I don’t know if I want to marry you or just share a bed with you for the trysts at your place or mine.

But I do know I’m going to love you the best way I can.

You’re teaching me about love with every caress, every shared moment of breath, every single spark of knowledge that a history is being written between us while we dance in this game called love.

I love you is too twee.

How about we say we’re just fabulously “in like” with each other?

You smile at me lazily and press a kiss to my nose.

“That sounds perfect.”

And so it is.