It was a surreal experience, to hold his hand for the first time. Brush my fingers over his knuckles and feel the warmth of his palm. The trip back to his place was quiet, shy. There was no way I could have reconciled the idea of him as shy… as nervous. Nervous of me. I was the one with no experience, no social skills and no courage. It had taken so much talking to get me there, beside him in the car he’d waited to show me. Riding to the home I’d only seen in pictures but he was so proud of.
Drink offered and accepted, as we sank down onto the couch I tried to be sneaky about examining his profile. It wasn’t like I’d never seen it before, we’d shared pictures. I knew the line of his jaw, the swell of his nose and Jesus Christ those eyes. But he wasn’t looking at me. Indeed he seemed to want to look almost anywhere else and for the first half of the movie he picked out to put on (his favourite, I’d asked for it) he stared so hard at the screen that I was sure my worst nightmare had come true. He was disappointed. He looked at me and what he saw was… less than he’d imagined and there was no graceful way for me to extract myself and end this awful, itchy, uncomfortable experience for us both.