Well - Part XVI

Well the pre-arranged time finally arrived and I arrived at the restaurant 10 minutes early. I hadn’t really anticipated Cheryl being there but she was.

She looked great too.

Her shoulder length blond hair hung straight down and with the bangs framed her face giving her very much that “girl next door” home spun look. She wore a solid blue color peasant dress with a shawl. The combination made her appear a tad older than she was however the unassuming appearance seemed to work for her. As I entered the restaurant, she was seated in the waiting area near the hostess stand. I was please to see her face light up a bit when she noticed my entrance.

We had a very nice meal. Much to my surprise, there were very few moments when the conversation lagged and no really awkward silent moments during diner. If I hadn’t known otherwise, it felt like we were old friends that had just seen each other days ago rather than ex-classmates that hadn’t ever broken bread together and really hadn’t spoken much in the last dozen or so years.

As the meal was approaching its logical end, I was pressing my mind for a good “next step.” We hadn’t really discussed much other than the meal but, I was hoping the evening wasn’t going to end after the check came.

“So, what do you want to do now…?” Might as well hit the subject head on. I had built up some confidence in the previous hour’s casual feel to our conversation.

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m not to familiar with what’s around here.”

Good point I thought. Definitely a slight disadvantage when we chose a neutral meeting location. Neither of us were too familiar with the area.

“Well, how about we just drive around some and see if something of interest.” Geez, that was a lame come-on line. I prayed she forgave me my lack of good words.

“Okay. We can check out the malls and see if there are any movies that look good.” She said.

“Yeah, okay…sounds good.”

We left the restaurant and got into my clunker of a vehicle. I hoped she wasn’t going to hold my lack of a decent “ride” against me either. I’m so pathetic. I should just offer to bring her back to her car and call it a night, cut my losses. Hey, once you get caught up in something like this though, you might as well just see it through…

We drove out to the mall and walked around the mall. It was amazing to me that it didn’t feel at all awkward being with Cheryl in this situation. Every other time I spent with potential girl friends even on second, third or fourth dates, we never hit a feeling of casual ease as quickly as it seemed (at least to me) I had with Cheryl.

We did check out the movie listings. I was completely going to allow her to dictate any direction on that front. She, however, didn’t seem to charged up about any of the offerings at this theater. Instead, we opted to continue walking around the mall and talking about any number of other topics. We reminisced about our mutual by-gone days but, more improbably we seemed to focus on where we were within our own lives and even started to discuss individual dreams and aspirations for the future.

I carefully avoided any mention of current events as the news from the warfront was going to be a dicey topic given the fact that I knew Cheryl hadn’t heard any news of the current whereabouts or fate of her brother.