My leg trembled as I neared the summit of the ramp. This was the culmination of months of awkward conversations, stale pickup lines, and decreasingly subtle hints. I didn’t want to become just another “personal assistant” like all the rest. There was something different about this one…something special.
As I hit the doorbell/opening button, anxious doubt engulfed my mind. Sure, he said he would like to have dinner with me, but what if that was just his computer talking?
But my worrying was cut short; a familiar electric hum from inside focused my thoughts as The Moment steadily approached at 3-4 mph.
The door opened slowly, noiselessly.
“Stephen…” My heart went on an exotic vacation with my breath as I gazed upon the four and a half feet of solid man in front of me.
“Good Evening,” the last syllable dropping in pitch like the end of a sparrow’s song. “I have been waiting foryou.”
“Oh, if only this evening, like so many of your sentences, could end in two becoming one, heaven will I have reached!” I exclaimed to myself.
I crossed the threshold and took his chair by the arm. We stood in silence for a moment as I pinched myself and he wiped a trickle of glistening drool from his face. He led me, then, to the elevator explaining that we would be dining on the third floor balcony.
Suddenly, a spark flew through me and ignited an idea.
“I’ll race you to the top!” I exclaimed as I headed for the stairs.
A thin smile spread across his face as he began to struggle with the button and I began my ascent.
Victory that evening, however, was not nearly as sweet as the sumptuous grilled salmon and gourmet vegetables we had for dinner; he intravenously, I through a large novelty Tropicana straw.
We fell to light conversation when our hunger was satiated, discussing such pleasantries as the weather and advanced String Theory. But something inside me was yet to be satisfied: a deep, primal passion rebelled against my futile efforts to disguise my growing arousal.
Entangled in foreboding, when I could bear it no longer, I cried out in exasperation, “Stephen, I must have you. Here. Tonight! I must know you, not in the way you know the laws of quantum mechanics, but in the way Adam knew Eve! But … I fear it is … physically impossible … I ….”
Consumed by desire, I broke down, but he, he remained steel-faced, unflinching. After a minute-hour of gentle clicking, his one open eye met my tear-drenched counterparts.
“Nothing is imposeabel,” he replied as he showed me the equation to back it up.
Though the last word was unrecognizably slurred ruining most of the romantic effect, he recovered gracefully by sliding to the floor into a perfect fetal position.
And so the night was spent…
Dawn broke, but noon fixed it and woke me gently in the process. I reached for him, but his sleeping dent was long since cold. Instead, I grasped a thin paper, a note. It read:
[illegible note]
I looked up and saw him, a mirage perhaps, still in the process of getting out of bed merely inches from my fingertips. But this only intensified the tears that stung my eyes for a forgotten past. I realized then that, though the physics between us may have been right, the chemistry simply was not.
