Blind Date (A Why Choose Romance)

What did I want? I didn’t have much of a fucking clue.

Someone who wouldn’t drop their panties for a famous name, for a start. Someone with something about her. A bit of mystery. Hard to get.

Like, well, that girl in the audience. The one from the kitchen.

I had no idea of her name, but she stood out as down to earth.

I wanted to be appreciated for myself instead of playing the whole image game.

“That was... an interesting first round of questions, if I do say so myself. Jenny, I hope one of those dishes sounded good for your date. And by dish, I don’t mean the food.” Gill, the unflappable hostess, continued the show. “How about we move on to the next question? Jenny, it’s on you to ask.”

“Oh, it is.” From where the four of us were sitting, we couldn’t see Jenny, only hear her voice. “Okay, are you ready for this?”

“Oh, we are.” Gill seemed positively excited by the prospect of the next question. “Don’t worry, Jenny. We’re all adults here. Literally, you can’t enter the bar tonight unless you’re over the age of twenty-one.”

That sounded ominous. What the hell was she about to ask us next? Because if this were an interview, there would be questions we’d refuse to answer, and this game show didn’t seem the place for a no comment. But it was the place to make shit up, and that’s what we’d do. Fuck it. Sometimes I felt we dudes walked a tightrope.

“I have certain opinions on this one, but I’d like to hear yours. So contestants, what are your thoughts of, well, having sex on the first date?”

The audience hooted and hollered as if they were on the set for some sort of live audience sitcom. They approved of the question, and I wished we’d had advanced notice of this one. Gill certainly seemed aware it was coming.

I kept my eyes focused in the distance and my poker face on to hide my true thoughts.

Hell, even I didn’t know my true thoughts or how I’d answer the fucking question.

Truly, it depends.

Nah, that wasn’t what they wanted to hear.

Gill took her microphone over to Ethan.

He smiled. Ethan was our team captain, the quarterback. He had that all-American boy image to carry around, and I was to back him up with my contrasting asshole devil-may-care attitude.

“Well, I’ll be honest,” he said. “I’m looking for more than a one-night stand. I guess I wouldn’t say no, but only if the first date is definitely not going to be the last.”

“That sounds like a genuine, down-to-earth answer, doesn’t it, Jenny?” Gill played up the answer to the lady of the hour. “Number two? Do you have something different for us?”

Placing an evil grin on my face for the benefit of the show and because I wasn’t here to win her hand in marriage, I decided to address my answer to the one woman in the audience who had caught my attention. I took a couple of seconds to make sure we had eye contact before delivering my answer.

It would be a win her or lose her answer, but I just had to go for it.

“Isn’t that the point of the date? To see if you want to fuck each other good and hard? Why waste time if you both want it? Just embrace what your body wants, don’t overthink it. Carpe diem, you know? Live for today is my motto, and I do it. I see no point in self-denial.”

The woman from the kitchen looked back at me like a deer in headlights about to be hit by something big, long, and hard. Unlike the deer in headlights, I was pretty damn sure she would turn out to enjoy it when I hit at sixty-nine miles per hour.

Oh, you better understand I’m talking to you.

“Some girls like that directness,” Gill mused. “Are you liking that directness, Jenny?”

“Oh, I like the honest answers. Honesty is good.” She sounded happy as if she were enjoying herself. And that was the point. She’d won a charity raffle for the opportunity to sit in that chair and get a date with one of us.

“How about you, number three?”

“I see it as a try before you buy, and it seems a good idea to me. Make sure you’re compatible and a good fit before you waste time dating for ages only to find out you don’t work together well between the sheets.”

He grinned and looked toward his brother. What were those two up to? Them plotting against the rest of us was pretty common.

Working together was an automatic habit for them. They didn’t seem aware they were even doing it. No matter how tight our little clique had grown, the bond between the twin brothers was greater. And the two of them had a reputation for sharing girls, so there was that reason for sharing a fucking answer to this question.