‘It’s a too fine a line to choose. It’s the peril of being an adult – always talking in responses between being sincere and genuine, or being clever and ironic. I’m not even sure which one I’m talking in right now. That’s exactly how perilous it is.’
------
The glass was much stronger at the stem than it had been just an hour before. Now it was tougher and heavier. It was that kind of wine. The colour of it deep and bloody enough to coat your face in two extra inches of skin, and leave you with happy, dumb lips sticking out of your face. This was half the reason to refill. The other half to elasticate the words. So, now he wasn’t sure if it was heavier because the glass was fuller or because the bottle was emptier. It wasn’t the greatest reflection to start on though. Not for what he wanted.
------
For her take of the wine the table was a little too cluttered – it bothered her, but not enough to do anything about it – just a nuisance somehow. Her progress into the alcohol was slower, but she could feel the brain’s attention to the angles of the room, the table, drifting away. She was trying to hang on a little longer before she let that go. She saw how the plump glass at his mouth made his swigs clumsy. She thought that maybe he thinks it looks sexy. It made her flick out a chuckle.
------
He pondered syntax and wit to compact his words. So, when his spontaneous wit came, it wasn’t that at all anymore.
‘Do you always blush sexily when you giggle?’
‘I’m blushing?’
‘Oh yes – it’s very sweet.’
‘Sweet and sexy?’
‘Sure – why not? You’re a very sexy, sweet woman.’
‘So, you think I’m hot?’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘And, you think I’m sweet?’
‘I do that too.’
‘So, what, you want to take a freshly baked cake to bed?’
‘What?’
‘I’m not a mug of hot chocolate you know. I mean I like you, but all this sweet and sexy shit doesn’t wash a grain of seduction on me.’
‘It’s not what I mean.’
‘I know it’s not what you mean, and I probably wanted to sleep with you too.’
‘Wanted? Past tense?’
‘Do you know Procrustes?’
‘Who? No, I can’t say that I do.’
‘Well, look it up and try not to do the same to me.’
------
In the following silence the angles came back just the way she liked them, and for him the wine dulled him more than before.
She saw it in him:
‘It’s alright. I want the same as you, I just want it so differently, it’s barely the same. I’m sorry. Let’s finish the wine and you go to your bed and I’ll go to mine. Much less peril that way.’
