Pre-date, Jake had declared himself my “Mr. Miyagi,” teaching grasshopper how to karate chop in the event of emergency, and how to prepare a poker face to hide one of three possible gut reactions: Ick! Ah! Or … Eh.
Thirty seconds to show time, I found myself secretly watching Ricky as he waltzed up the driveway; he really did bear a striking resemblance to his celebrity counterpart, but with better hair. To the best of my recollection, my initial reaction was a heart-rousing Woo-hoo!
Unfortunately, it takes a lot more than a perfectly chiseled Woo and a tanned Hoo to get me giddy (Grasshopper is no Kung Fool). Despite his dreamy bod and designer trousers, the evening turned out to be incredibly uncomfortable. Early on, it was clear we had nothing in common but self-tanning cream and Beverly Hills 90210 reruns. It’s not that this is such a bad thing, it’s just that I already have plenty of girlfriends.
I tried to pick up the conversation slack and make lemonades out of the sour situation, but all I got was a big white smile, a wandering hand, and a bunch of one-word answers (two if you count the “uh-huhs”). We hadn’t even reached the restaurant yet.
During dinner, there was a lot of silence, interrupted only by the sound of me crunching tortilla chips and slurping my margarita at record speed. If an oxytocin high (the hormone of love) wasn’t in the cards, I figured I might as well get a buzz going.
Over flan, we depleted the last of the small-talk energy reserves, discussing his new shoes and his kempt cuticles, at which point he chipped his front porcelain veneer on his fork. “It’s not the flatware’s fault,” he said, assuring me this sort of thing had happened to him twice before. Yet even with a good chunk of his front tooth missing, he made a last-ditch effort to get oléd by inviting me back to his hot tub.
Hot water. The mere thought made me think of Cate and how she’d coaxed me into this. As for Ricky? He’d become too swizzled to whisk me home via a gallant steed (actually it was a Ford Mustang), but he caused quite a skirmish insisting he wanted to. Our blind date had turned into quite a sight, so to speak.
PREVIOUS PAGE
