Hold Fast

I get dressed and make sure I look fucking good but not try hard or over dressed up for where we're meeting. I clean up well and it's time to fucking lay out some real fucking tight game or this girl is gonna tell me to kick rocks. I can just fucking tell.

I warm up by flirting with a girl at a the café then with the cashier when I eat on my way to meet her.
I listen to good, fucking American, masculine, not give a fuck music.
I have to play the A game. High and fuckin' tight, no chaser, no fuck ups, not a hint of weakness, nothing.

I make sure to arrive later than her.
I take care of an errand of mine before walking to where she is.
I have something in my hand that's a cue to subtly suggest I was held up by the counter girl talking my ear off. Enough to let her fill in the details.

She breaks into a smile when she sees me but I am unmoved. I look at her the way you look at a girl you know wants you but has not impressed you. I look at her with the look of a man who has known many women and is not easily moved nor impressed with tawdriness and certainly not petulance or jerking around.
I hold frame hard and fast.

I give her a pleasant smile and she goes back to her choosing of ***** in the store.
She asks my opinion and I keep it terse and preciously concise.
I don't mince my words but I am considerate in actually giving her my honest opinion. I reward her with one thumbs up out of perhaps the first 4 things she shows me.

I don't kiss her.
I don't take her hand.
I walk with her like I would a girl who is completely platonic to me, a girl who my presence is doing her a favor, not granting me some audience with a woman I desire.
I make her wait.
She breaks before I do.
She reaches in and hugs me and though my arms and chest press against her I do not lean in to kiss her. I make her do that.
I have to withdraw before she does to flip the script.

We walk and she takes my hand with her soft squeeze but I don't allow my emotional frame to shift inwardly. My heart and my mind are still far away. I let her speak more. When she asks me something I shrug or nod or dismissively laugh.
I do the look, the faraway look of consideration where it's like you're inwardly considering if you want to invest any more time in this interaction or in this person at all....because that's honestly what I'm doing. I'm having the dialogue in my brain and it leaks through in a way I know she will sense.....
---

She says she will figure me out.
I laugh the same laugh I have every time a woman has made such an outlandishly absurd claim.
My demeanor suggests she is cute in a little sister young girl kind of way. She enjoys filling that role so I provide the space for her.
I tell her she would be the first and to save herself the foolishness of such a pursuit.
She asks if I'm bored. I don't answer her question, save a shrug that suggests I don't have anything else to do so this is fine in the absence of my having gone to work.


She playfully gets mad that I'm withdrawn but she's leaning into me as she says it so it's just verbal irony. She wants, no needs, no desires to work for it.

I motion for her to take my arm at one point as a sole reward to her and because my shirt is soft and I know she'll like it. She does and comments on it.

I walk her out and she asks what I'm doing for the rest of the day. I tell her again that I don't know as I shrug but kiss her goodbye and smile my reserved laconic game smile I use when I'm holding back the iceberg from sight from a girl who desperately loves an inscrutable man.

Good luck and happy hunting,
        - Yrs. in Christ