First steps

Happy new year! And a little short story to welcome in 2014….

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You’ve read that oh-so-grey book. More than once. Your copy falls open on certain pages. But you’re not like her: wanting this to please him. You… you need it for yourself. Need someone to look over you; to help; to deal with you when you fall short. And yet you dread what that might actually be like, for all you lie in bed trying to imagine it.

“Write?” the site had said. “If you’re sure you’re brave enough.”

Written she had. Tentatively, guarded in what she’d said. She’d “stumbled across” his profile whilst searching for something else on Google. Had been rather intrigued. Wondered what exactly he had in mind.

His reply had been polite, but brief: ‘stumbling’ seemed improbable – technically infeasible, actually, given the site was password-protected. He understood that this was a big step, but without complete honesty both ways from the outset, things would be unlikely to work. He wished her well, but perhaps he wasn’t the right person for her. And it was as she read that that she’d realised that he probably was.

Her second note had been apologetic, had tried to explain what he probably knew already: that she hadn’t wanted to be too forward. That she wasn’t that type of girl. That she… that this… that sometimes she felt the need for help. Support. Motivation. That she hoped he’d reconsider, and that they might chat more.

You know how it is when someone asks all the right questions? Says all the right things? Before long, he’d suggested meeting. Her heart leapt, fluttered then sank: “But somewhere public, to see if there’s as much rapport between us face-to-face as there seems to be in the written word.” They’d lunch, talk, and head their separate ways to decide whether they each felt comfortable with the other. No pressure; no commitment either way. And he’d be in London the following Tuesday, and would Italian be something she’d enjoy…?