New Blushes of Love
Since our dinner date, Dexter Reed had launched a full court press—the kind issued by a team in the NBA finals, resulting in turnovers, missed passes, and bleeped-out words due to live TV delays. The kind that leaves a team discombobulated, forgetting all the things they had practiced and were used to implementing to protect the net on their end of the floor…the things that always kept them in the game. I was surely feeling the effects of the pressure, like the Cavs when faced with the relentless playing-until-it-hurts attitude of the Warriors.
Play #1: Early morning texts
Reed: Good morning, Ms. Sanders. I hope you have a wonderfully, productive day.
Me:
You’re probably wondering why there’s a blank
space after “Me:”, right? Clue: Early morning. The man was not kidding when he had told me that he was a morning person. I mean, really? A text at 6AM? After the first few times of silence from my end, he realized that he was not going to get a response, yet he continued to drop a line of greeting each morning.
Each morning after I awakened, I said, “Thank you for another day”, unlocked my phone, and opened his text which never failed to put a goofy smile on my face. I was like a high school girl who finally had a guy notice her—going out of his way to say “hi” whenever he saw her, regardless of who he was with or where he was. He noticed me. That attention kept me giddy about what the day would bring—making me smile in the middle of meetings for no reason at all. It kept me blushing at just the thought of that type of full, intense, and sincere male concentration being directed at me. Don’t judge me…didn’t you read that it had been “a minute” as Trish so eloquently put it?
Play #2: Workday calls
“Aubrey,” he said in his deep, sexy, ought-to-be outlawed voice. “Good morning. This is Reed. I trust that you’re having a good day?”
Now, when I answered his call, I, Aubrey Sanders, for the first time in my adult dating life, stopped what I was doing for at least the full first minute to put my focus on our conversation. Spinning in my chair, I clicked the remote that closed my office door, sealing in the atmosphere for soft laughter and flirting that only two people who were really feeling each other could generate.
“Hi, Reed,” I asked in my sexiest I-wasn’t-just-knee-deep-into-a-blueprint voice. “How are you?”
For fifteen minutes, we chatted about whatever came to mind. Free-fall conversation, if you will. It did not matter the topic; we were talking. He asked what I thought. I asked what he meant. Yeah, it was good.
Play #3: Random, Odd Deliveries
“Aubrey,” the intercom sounded with Lisa’s electronic voice. “You have a package from Amazon. I’ll bring it in a minute.”
“Okay,” I said, as I combed through the strings of the Amazon Prime shopping maze I had willingly and wholeheartedly thrown myself into—without shame—for those brown cardboard boxes brought all kinds of things I needed and didn’t need at all times of the day.
This day, however, I couldn’t remember what I had ordered using that infamous “One-Click” gold button. I sifted through my order list really quick—Amazon was always open on my monitor. Still, I could not find what the order was.
Lisa walked into my office with a flat-ish box in her hands.
“This is for you,” she said in her raspy yet engaging voice. She sounded like she was working her way to being a habitual cigarette smoker, except she was not. She had choked on a fish bone as a teenager, and the resulting surgery had left its mark in a modified voice that made clients do a double-take at the sexily cultured professional voice that came from her petite frame.
“I don’t know what this could be. I don’t show any orders.”
“Well, it has your name on it,” she said as she made her way back to the front reception area.
I pulled back the strip tab and pulled out the item. A book of poems by Langston Hughes.
The enclosed note had the following:
Ms. Sanders:
For the poet inside the architect. Like finely constructed clothes, you design buildings that speak to us. May these writings speak to you.
Thank you,
Reed
How is a woman—this woman—who deals in lines, angles, and concrete—supposed to respond to this? I decided to fall just a little bit more.
Play #4 – Engaging dates and Instagram
We dined for several weeks across the Seattle metro area—trying the smorgasbord of international cuisine offered to us. Reed and I both enjoyed new places, and one of us usually offered up a new spot for our twice-weekly dates.
Some dates were at the end of a busy workday, but not often. We were both busy people and respected the professional space that we had both carved in our lives. So, usually, we pleased our culinary desires on the weekends, while possibly doing something outdoorsy.
I recall one weekend distinctly. We had visited the salmon runs at Ballard Locks—resulting in a conversation on the symbolism of the steelhead going against the rushing water. Without a doubt, we teased and poked at each other’s humorous, pseudo-intellectual take on this enlightening event. The runs were my choice; after all, he needed to see fish in another environment aside from flying through the air at Pike Place Market.
“Take a pic with me?” he asked, pulling out his telephone and tapping a few buttons.
“Sure,” I replied.
He turned me around so that the windows of the locks were behind us. He wrapped his nicely muscled arm around me, gripping me around the waist, and leaned his head towards mine, angling his phone for the selfie.
“Smile, baby,” he whispered in his Altoids-fresh breath.
Baby, huh? I smiled—a genuine one because I was happy to be with this man.
He snapped the picture.
@@@@@
Later, after eating some of the freshest seafood possible at a neighborhood café, we parted ways at my place. He kissed me goodbye like he meant it. My toes curled, and the butterflies demonstrated those joyful, new blushes of love that I was feeling.
While getting ready for an event that evening, I heard a ping on my phone. I picked it up off the nightstand and checked the notification.
Instagram.
I opened the app.
My smiling face greeted me in a photo next to Reed’s butterfly-inducing one. The man was smoking hot. I had just about stopped thinking about Idris. Almost. Not quite.
dexterreedDMV
When your girl @AubreySandersArchitect takes you to see steelhead swimming upstream for a date and all you can think about is how much you enjoy her. #BallardLocks #MyEverydayCrush #TakeMeWhereYouWant
Well, what was I supposed to do after that? I crumbled under the offensive plays. I was now his. Apparently, he wanted all of Instagram to know he was mine. Shucks. Idris, who?