By Jason Geary

I’m interested, I promise. The story is genuinely intriguing and she’s beguiling. It’s just that I worked late last night and I slept poorly due to a pulled muscle in my lower back. She doesn’t know that, she can’t it’s a first date. I don’t want to moan about mundane things, that’s no way into her good graces.

She keeps talking, oblivious to the fight occurring in my mind. She’s telling me about her trip to New Zealand.  It’s a place I’ve never been, she makes it sounds like a playground for angels. Every mountain range and pristine river she describes in such wondrous detail that I feel like I’m seeing it with my own eyes. I really like this girl, she makes me comfortable.

No! Don’t think about comfort. Damn. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach spreading like ink in water. My tongue is swelling in the back of my mouth and my eyes begin to water. I fight it as hard as I can. She notices that I’m not listening as fully as I have been and it breaks the confident cadence of her story telling. I panic. I try to show her I’m listening. She lowers her eyebrows a fraction. I’m sure that my trying to show her I’m listening comes across as some sort of constipated expression. I’m making it worse.

No. Give me a break, I like this girl.

She continues but I can tell she’s not inside the story anymore, now it’s just reportage.

My jaw locks and my eyes go wide. I feel the back of my mouth moisten and then I yawn.

It is a tremendous yawn, the type of yawn that can’t be yawn without a deep booming rounded howl. As it wrings out of my mouth I see her posture shift. She looks left and right and stops telling the story. I cover my mouth, but what I really want to do is run.

“I’m sorry,” I offer ” I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“We can talk about something else if you want. Something more interesting.”

There was an awkward pause, I broke it, “No, I like your story, please tell me more.”

She began again, all of her enthusiasm drained from the tale. I felt a ripple in the pit of my stomach again. Here comes the reprise and with it the end of any chance I have with this girl.

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