▪️Thursday November 26th, 2017▪️

▪️Chicago, IL▪️

Angie holding my hand for way too long felt right. Her holding my heart hostage feels even better. I've never believed in love at first sight—that's for fairytales, but I've never experienced lust at first sight either. I'm sure this is what I'm swallowed whole by tonight. My fucking heart throws me for a loop every time I look at Angie.

Her light brown braids dance across her shoulders as she swivels her head acknowledging every guest, her tall, lean frame catching their eyes, her voice painting their faces with whatever emotion the songs bring. The audience watches her, like I do, mesmerized, like I am, forgetting the where and when of this event. I rub my‌ knuckles below my neck in an attempt to dissolve the sweet ache in my sternum.

It's not like I haven't suffered from an elevated heart rate before. The hardworking organ makes itself heard during every workout at the gym. Every sparring session, it pumps harder. No, I'm not a raging maniac. I have 'a heart'. I'm even a softy. My heart beats with tenderness for my mom and brother. But this, what I'm feeling now is new. It's wonderful. It's fucking scary. With every note, every word that comes out of Angie's mouth, I run out of space in my body. My heart has never grown to fill my entire rib cage, never risen to the throat, and expanded into my stomach.

The fullness is not unpleasant, but it's overwhelming. I'm one giant heart-balloon: light and bursting to find out everything there is to know about this woman. The idea sounds ridiculous even when I say it inside my head. I didn't drink that much. Two beers, a case of which is my sole contribution to the Friendsgiving gathering. Two hundred and twenty pounds versus two drinks in an hour. I'm not drunk. Not on alcohol. But I have to blame something for the euphoria that clouds my judgment, that runs plans and schemes in my brain of what I can tell her to capture her attention, and how to keep it.

She's radiant and powerful in her song, making eye-contact with everyone but me. The room reciprocates, following her, like there's nothing else they'd rather do. I fight against the urge to walk through the chairs to the front, so I'm the only thing she sees. So I'm the only one here she's singing to. Maybe when it's just her and me, I'll figure this out. This is some alternate universe where instead of doing what's right and proper, I want to do what I want.

And I want Angie.

The final words of her song hang in the air, and she steps aside for a woman with a flute and a man on the keyboard to start the next piece. No longer chained by her presence to that side of the room, I step back and inspect the table that's set according to whatever high-end etiquette Marguerite follows, with multiple spoons, knives, forks, and glasses near each plate. Cards with fall leaves to match the rest of the decorations and the guests' names in fancy handwriting sit in the middle of every setting. I find Angie's name and my name. I have a plan.

"I need a favor," I say to Amelie, who stands behind the last row, watching Marguerite and a woman with long dark hair step into the spotlight to accompany Angie for her next song—announced as 'Latitude'—that I've never heard of before, while the previous musicians leave the impromptu stage.

"Does it have anything to do with my roommate?" She raises her eyebrow while keeping her eyes glued to the performers.

"Did she tell you something?"

"I'm confident most of the guests who saw your handshake know what's going on."

I angle my body to shield our conversation from the guests who're within an earshot. "What is going on?"

She crosses her arms, cocks a hip, and squints at me. "You were evaporating water from the air. It was the Sahara desert with all the heat you were emitting."

"We, not just me." Heat prickles behind my collar.

Am twists her lips but can't hide her smile. "You sound like a kindergartener around his first crush."

"I feel like one." I rake my hand through a fresh cut Mom gave me before she left for LA with my brother. "So about the favor. How definite are the places where the people are sitting? Any wiggle room?"

The audience erupts in applause as the song ends. "Let me guess, you'd like to sit next to Angie?" Amelie walks with me to the long table that dominates the dining room and extends into part of the living room.

Ben appears to Am's left, wraps his arm around her waist, and buries his face in her wavy hair. "Angie's sitting next to Am. You're sitting on the opposite side of the table."

That's not close enough. "What if I move Angie to my side of the table? I'm sure no one would care."

"The name cards are already in place." Ben points at Angie's and my name cards almost facing each other.

"I don't see any superglue." I take Angie's card and switch it with the one to my left. "Doesn't this look better?"

"But—" Whatever Ben was going to say is interrupted by Am's kiss. I mouth, 'thank you' to her, but even though she started the kiss to help me out, she's no longer interested in anyone but Ben.

Kindergartener indeed. I'm in my spot doing my best to maintain a semblance of a conversation with those already sitting. Meanwhile, most of my focus is on watching Angie finish her chat with other musicians and adoring fans she created in the span of the last half-hour of singing.

My peripheral vision is getting a workout as I strain to see her slow progress toward the table. With her every step, my palms get sweatier, and my lungs spring a leak. I need more air, I need her to get here, I need to remember not to sound like a babbling fan and scare her away.

I drain my beer, decide getting another one is not a good idea, and scan the table in front of me. An exotic array of food I have trouble identifying surrounds the traditional turkey, stuffing, gravy, and mashed potatoes. Other guests brought their favorite dishes, representing cuisines from all over the world. Angie pulls out the chair next to me. To pretend I'm not watching her every move, I reach for the glass salad bowl closest to me and, without looking, pile its contents onto my plate, then turn her way. "Would you like some as well?"

Angie bares her perfect teeth in a terrified smile. "No. Thank you. It has mayo in it."

Her pinky is an inch away from mine on the beige linen cloth.

"And what's wrong with mayo?" I shift in my seat to face her, ensuring our fingers touch in the process.

She doesn't flinch. Doesn't remove her hand. The contact feels inevitable, magnetic, like our fingers couldn't stay away from each other any longer. Like I'm the puppet, and she's pulling the strings, so I'll follow her wherever she leads.

"Nothing if you're into that kind of thing. I'm a Miracle Whip girl. Mayo is just"—she scrunches her nose—"so bland." Her pinky runs a line that might as well be fire along the side of my hand.

"Not the way my yiayia makes it." An innocent touch of our knees continues a very different conversation under the table than what we are saying above it.

"Yiayia?" Our shoes line up toe to heel.

"Grandmother in Greek, my mom's side of the family came from Greece in the early sixties." Angie and I create a border of contact between us all the way up our legs.

"You're Greek?" She sounds more surprised than when people find out about my heritage.

"Half." I'm not interested in talking about my father's side of the family. I'm interested in a room without people. In having Angie all to myself.

"And you cook as well? Like Ben?" She bites her lip, but I doubt she's thinking about food.

"Never said that. I prefer mayo, but only when someone else made it. I'm great at eating though." I place a spoonful of the salad into my mouth and make an exaggerated m-m-m-m sound.

"I'm not going to hold this against you." She reaches for the sweet potato casserole, ladles a serving on her plate, dips one of the spoons into the spreading goo, and licks it, as if test driving the orange mush. Her eyes don't leave mine, and there is a challenge in them, or an invitation. Or I'm completely fooling myself, imagining what I want instead of what's actually there.

"M-m-m-m." She mimics me and runs her tongue over her lips one extra time. My imagination is not that good. These are innuendos. She's interested, just as I am. She keeps her right and my left hands overlapping, while she gestures with her left to the cornucopia on the table. "What do you like eating?"

My lower brain screams, "You." But my upper brain prevails. "Most everything. Not a fan of spicy things much."

"So sad." The glimmer in her eyes spells mischief as she pays attention to every feature of my face. "Mayo people tend to be bland." Her gaze lingers on my nose and slowly as if I'm a digital print and she's scanning me pixel by pixel, drops to my upper lip. "Missing the zest of life."

I regret wearing my flat front khakis today and not something roomier that could accommodate the growing tightness in my groin. "Hard disagree."

"How hard?" Her gaze flies to mine. She gets my drift, and the sparks that have been around us concentrate in her gray-blue irises, the pinpoints of her pupils spearing me with heat, wanting something, asking for permission.

I'm unable to speak. The string of yeses and an attempt at a witty comeback collide and are stuck somewhere between my vocal cords and my lips. I nod to give her the go-ahead to do whatever she wants.

Her hand that was playing with mine drops under the table, first on her lap, and then passes over the gap between us and lands on mine.

I force the air out in a long stream, clearing the pathway for words. "Probably, the hardest ever." We affix our eyes to each other as my hand repeats her maneuver, crosses over to her lap, and wraps around her upper thigh. She inhales in a series of tiny gulps, stealing the air I just breathed out. Fuck.

With a twist of a wrist, we go full throttle. Angie's hand inches to my groin. Her firm nod of consent gives me the green light. And it begins for real. We attempt to keep calm above the table, no longer looking at each other, cataloging the border of miniature pumpkins in the center of the table, playing with the leftovers on our plates while our hands are on the hunt. She rests her palm on my oversensitive khaki covered thigh. My mouth goes dry. Is she going to unbutton or unzip my pants? Instead, she goes around and slides her fingers into my deep pocket, the thinner lining of it giving her plenty of access.

At the same time, I have better luck on top of the leggings she wears under a long sweater. I inch my fingers grateful for the know-how from my previous partners. There's nothing timid about my touch. My gestures are small, but I maintain rough and rhythmic pressure and am rewarded by her breath picking up. Like a dirty dream come true, we are getting each other off under the festive cloth of a long table where eighteen other people are chattering and gorging themselves on food and alcohol. We sit there, not looking up, not talking.

"Mike, come here—I need you." Ben's voice interrupts my concentration. He beckons me from the other side of the table while Amelie's giving me an 'I'm sorry look.'

I still and turn to my partner in crime. I don't want to abandon my quest when both of us are so close to the finish line, but as Angie's hand leaves my lap, I reluctantly return mine next to my plate.

"It won't take long." Ben is up and moving toward the kitchen.

If I stand, the room's eyes will no longer be interested in Angie, but in the very dire situation in my crotch. Angie passes me a large cloth napkin I hold over the problem area, and I catch her mouth, struggling not to smile. Ben and I are best friends and I love him as a brother, but his frequent obliviousness to what's going on around him is part of his autism spectrum diagnosis. We've worked out a system where I tell him about the stuff he misses, and he tells me the stuff I'm being too stubborn to acknowledge or am lying to myself about.

In the hallway, Ben, his runner's frame clad in a collared white shirt and black slacks, bounces on his heels as he looks at the picture of his parents that hangs in the alcove. "Am said you like Angie and that I should ask you if she, I mean Am, not Angie. If Am. . .needs to stay at my place."

"Is she looking for an excuse to get back to your apartment?"

"Why would she need an excuse?" Ben shakes his head in confusion. "She's always welcome. I told her that."

"Right." Ben doesn't care for artificial veil of propriety. Tonight, neither do I. "Then take Am to your place."

"Does it mean you like Angie?" He moves his fingers against his thigh as if he's still playing the cello. "She's been helping me with the cooking videos I've been posting on YouTube."

So he knows Angie. They're not strangers like her and I are. If I ask him about her, he'll tell me what I need to know. What do I need to know? What do I ask? My mind offers the sensation of Angie's soft skin under my hand, instead of useful questions. I swallow a pool of saliva to avoid drooling. I'm worse than a kindergartener Am compared me to. "Anything"—I rub my five o'clock stubble to rid my palm of Angie's presence—"I need to know about her?"

"She's a hugger. An intense one."

That's more of a benefit than a problem. "Is that it?"

"She gets loud. Might be another reason Am doesn't want to go to their place tonight if you are going there too."

He's not saying it but he knows what Angie and I will do if we are in her apartment alone. Ben and I had conversations about him losing his virginity, about the real-life usability of Kama Sutra, and best condoms to buy. But that was about his sex life. Now that it's about mine, I keep the graphic visions of how I can make Angie scream to myself and lower my voice, as if the walls have ears. "I'd listen to Am. I don't know what's happening, but if anything is happening, I'd much rather not think about volume control."

Ben nods. "Understood."

As soon as I finish talking to Ben, I search the room for Angie. She's impossible to miss gathering swarms of people around her as she crosses the room. I find Marguerite, and we sink into a casual chit chat we've perfected over the ten years Ben and I have been friends. All the while, I monitor Angie's progress, hoping Am's prediction was right.

After Angie absorbs the last heap of compliments, she approaches Marguerite and me, embraces our hostess and they gush over the mutual admiration of each other's talent. Angie then wraps her fingers around my elbow and escorts me to the hallway.

"I'd like you to take me home." She picks a sleek blue coat off the rack.

"I'm on a motorcycle, and only have one helmet today." I put on my well-worn leather jacket.

"I drove. We can take my car. You can pick up your bike here tomorrow."

We both recognize what we are talking about.

Twenty minutes later, she's peeling my jacket off me in the hallway of her apartment, and I'm grateful Amelie's staying over at Ben's.