She gave me a small shrug. “I don’t get close to guys often.” She hesitated, then she looked serious like she was unsure she should have said that. “I mean I didn’t for a long time, but I do now. I’m different. It’s time for a change.”
A change? What was she a lesbian trying out the other side? I decided against asking that figuring if it was the case she might be offended. Didn’t matter to me either way.
“What all does this change of yours consist of?” I asked her.
“Adventure.”
Just that one word. Interesting. She had eaten her bar food with a knife and fork with her paper napkin in her lap and she wanted an adventure. I wasn’t sure that was safe. She seemed too innocent for an adventure. Or maybe I was reading her completely wrong?
“What is this adventure?”
“I’m not sure yet. But I am on it now. Bars, random guys, bar food—that’s all part of it.”
“Am I the beginning of your adventure?”
She smiled and then nodded. “Yes, Eli, you are.”
Lila Kate
DANCING WITH ELI at this bar wasn’t my first time to dance at a bar. I had once before while in college. A friend on the dance team had her twenty-first birthday party at the local haunt. I went. I danced. I left early and arrived home before midnight sober. But that was the old me.
“I think I’d like another drink,” I told Eli after our dance.
He smiled as if I was amusing. “Anything in particular?”
I almost said a martini and stopped myself. “Whatever.”
He chuckled and I watched as he held his hand up signaling a waitress who was carrying a tray of little shot glasses filled with Jell-O. She came over and he took two glasses off her tray. “Thanks.”
Then he handed one to me.
“What’s this?” I asked holding the cup of Jell-O in front of me.
“A Jell-O shot. It’s even better than a bar drink. It’s a club drink.”
The club he was referring to was different than the club I had grown up in and I knew that. I figured why not. I tasted it slowly.