We entered the park, and we decided to get something to snack on while we casually planned our night. It would also give us a chance to get to know each other.
I liked how Robert maintained eye contact with those smiling eyes of his. He definitely knew how to make a girl feel safe on a first date. Most men’s eyes usually darted around and scanned furiously. He seemed to recognize that women were taking a giant leap of faith when meeting a guy for the first time in a strange place. Making a woman feel safe and comfortable right out of the gate was a huge plus in my book.
We walked up to a snack stand. I was so bad as I had indulged with some funnel cake and Robert, who was a bit more cautious, carefully licked away at a plain vanilla ice cream cone. I had anticipated a few drips of ice cream making their way through his thick goatee, but he was a pro; he knew just how to dip it in his mouth. He definitely had a way with that tongue of his. Not that way...it was just enough skillful maneuvering to be commendable.
“So, have you had their funnel cake before?” Robert asked.
“No, first time,” I said.
“Let me know how it tastes.”
I stared straight right through his blue, piercing eyes. We weren’t talking about anything important, as it was just small talk regarding carnival food, but I started to feel a level of intensity there—or maybe it was the sudden sugar rush. No, in fact I sensed his radiant spirit and it somehow began to find its way to me. Could’ve it had been the natural chemistry that I hadn’t felt in quite some time? Was it a rush of insulin sparked by sugary, imitation vanilla and strawberry syrup, or the actual budding chemistry of friendship or romance?
Okay, I had to slow down and prepare myself for him to say something that was a deal-breaker like, “I love your dress. I have one just like it at home.” Or, “You know, you’re the first girl I’ve been on a date with in 10 years.”
Nope. Neither of those things surfaced.
He just smiled at me as if he knew a secret about me. It was very alluring. His confidence was building. It was as if someone released the air out of him and he was finally himself.
As soon as I felt the tension lift, he seemed familiar to me. “I feel like we’ve met before?” I said.
“No, no we haven’t. Funny though, I get that a lot.”
“You do?” I asked.
“It’s like every high school had a big muscular blond guy.”
“Muscular?”
“Oh, most of this love you see before you is 100-percent, muscle-bound beef.”
“Are you real strong?” I asked, thinking I was playing along with some form of sarcasm on his part.
“What does that mean?”
“It means what I asked,” I said, slowly realizing he might’ve actually been serious and compensating by his statement.
“Well, if you mean, am I strong like if I can fight, I’d say I really don’t know. I haven’t been in a fight in over 20 years. If you mean how strong I am in terms of weights, I once benched 315 pounds.”
“Once, huh?” I asked, playfully.
“Yeah. Once. I did it. I didn’t need to prove it again.” Robert looked at me and grinned.
“When did you do it?”
“When I was sixteen?”
“Wow, that’s a lot for any age,” I said, realizing he was serious, but trying to be sweet as he boasted about his high school glory years. Still, I couldn’t imagine lifting that much weight off any part of my body.
You profile says you’re 30?” Robert asked.
I looked at him and laughed. “You’re says your 39,” I snapped back playfully.
“I didn’t mean anything negative by it. Thirty was a good year for me.”
“Why was that?”
“It was the year I was able to quit my job and become a writer full time.” Robert paused, and looked me over. “Was 30 a hard age for you? I have a feeling 40 is going to be a real hard age for me. I’m not looking forward to it.”
“I like my age,” I said. “Despite saying a sad sayonara to my twenties, I felt like my current age held a unique advantage. I had lived in two completely different worlds: a world with the Internet, and a world that couldn’t comprehend something like the Internet could even exist. People often forgot what the world was like before the World Wide Web.
Robert nodded his head and agreed with me, “I actually enjoyed its primitiveness. It was where Thomas Guides sat on our laps instead of our phones. Also, inhaling that unique old book smell whenever we’d open up an encyclopedia we’d plucked from our shelves.”
“And who could forget board games on family game night?” I said with an excitement.
“How about shopping for our favorite music inside actual record shops?” Robert said with cute grin. “Ah, nostalgia...poison for progress.”
“But who doesn’t love their childhood?” I said.
“Where did you grow up?” Robert asked.
“Right here, in this town Buena Park and Fullerton.”
“You never moved.” Robert asked.
“I have another place in the mountains.”
“Sounds cozy.”
“It is,” I said, playfully.
“Your place in town,” Robert asked. “Is that the same house you grew up in?”
“Yes, it is. It had been my parents’ home before they both passed at different times a couple of summers ago. I was their only child. I own the house now, but I only live there for part of the time.
“The other time you’re in your little, cozy, cabin in the mountains,” Robert said with a confident wink at me. It threw me off. The wink is a risky move. If done wrong, you can look extremely strange. Not Robert. He gave me his wink and that was all there was to it. He owned the moment. “How often do you go up to your cabin?” Robert asked.
“Every now and then, I escaped to it. I had to. After my parents’ passing, it was hard living at my house alone. Even after repainting and refurnishing the home, and adding a back room with my inheritance, I’d still get choked up living there. Sometimes, as the morning sunlight brightened my room, I half-expected my mom to wake me up and tell me I was going to be late for school.”
“I could see how that would be hard. Why don’t you sell the place?”
“I don’t know as much as it breaks me to live there, I take comfort in the walls. I take comfort with the house’s ambience. My cabin, however, was about a third of the way up the San Bernardino Mountains, right before you hit Arrowhead. In the city of Crestline. It’s not the same. It’s not home. I like it, but it’s not home.
“Crestline? That is where Lake Gregory is, right? Robert asked.
“I like the snow. I have never been in that lake. Whenever snow was in the forecast, I’d drive up for the weekend to stay there. There was something magical about snowfall.”
“Except on the rare occasion you have to shovel it from the driveway. I damn near almost slipped a couple of times and bonked my head on the icy concrete last winter when I was up east.”
“You spend a lot of time in the snow?” I asked.
“I have a time share on the east coast and some days the snow is rough.”
“You’re telling me,” I said. “I have to make two or three trips out to my drive way until I get enough snow off my driveway to go somewhere.”
“I was pretty bored tonight before you called.” I said changing the subject.
“Thanks a lot.” Robert said.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I was real glad to get out. I had a feeling,” I said.
“A feeling?” Robert asked.
“Something in my gut was telling me to go tonight. I felt as if I would be letting a night slip underneath my fingertips.”
“Wow that’s a lot of pressure,” Robert said, laughing.
“It doesn’t have to be about you?”
“That’s good. I guess. Wait.”
“Look, Robert, I want to take any pressure off of you. I get feelings all the time.”
“How accurate are your feel
ings?”
“High eighties,” I said.
“Percent?” Robert laughed.
“Sorry, lets both forget I said that.” We paused and I decided to change the subject.” I want to tell you a little bit about me.” I said.
“I would love to learn more about you,” Robert replied.
“Okay, this might sound a bit weird.”
“Try me,” Robert said with a bold confidence.
“Well, how are you on interpreting dreams?” I said, with a bit of hesitation.
“I’m not a biblical prophet to King Nebuchadnezzar or anything, but some dreams are interpretable”
I looked at Robert and questioned if I should tell him my dream. It would be a leap of friendship faith. Not too many people know about this dream. I didn’t know why I felt comfortable enough to tell him.
“I have this recurring dream,” I said.
“I would love to hear it,” Robert said.
“My dream is always the same. It’s cloudy outside and it looks as if it is going to rain. I’m at an outside market where you can buy fruit and what not. At the market, I always pass by a man with a large hunchback. From twenty feet away, he’s menacing. Yet, I continue to get closer and closer to him. I stand before him and avert my eyes out of fear, pity. But I’m curious, and I stare at him anyway. When our eyes meet, it’s always the same. I’m always blown away at how beautiful and honest the hunchback’s eyes are. In my dream, there is a beauty deep inside that man that intrigues me to the point of love.”
“Wow,” Robert said. “That dream moved me. Let me ask you this,” Robert asked. “What do you think your dream means?”
“That’s your job,” I said giggling. “You need to tell me what it means.”
“How many people have you told this dream to?” Robert asked.
“About five,” I answered.
“And you told me,” Robert asked. “Wow, I feel honored.”
“What do you think it means?” I asked Robert.
“I think you know what it means. You don’t have to ask anyone.”
“You think it’s that simple to figure it out?”
“My ten year old nephew could figure it out,” Robert said laughing. “Look, Sahara, you don’t need me to tell you that maybe at times you have been shallow?”
“You’re not the first person to say that,” I said. “I don’t think I’m shallow.”
“It’s not that you’re shallow all the time, Sahara. Just in some cases. I think your dream is telling you to open your eyes and see all the beauty around you.”
I looked at Robert impressed in how he worded what he said to me. He called me shallow, but yet I found him to be poetic.
“I had always taken away from this dream one belief, or wish, or hope,” I said to Robert. “That somewhere out there in the world is a place where my heart would blend together with another into this deep, intense, love-filled bond. What I was looking for was an intellectual and emotional connection that rocked my world. I was seeking the passion of a man’s stare, not the beauty of his eyes.”
Robert looked at me and was quiet. He slowly took in everything I said. He retained his sweet smile, and peered intensely into my eyes. “I think you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve laid eyes on.”
I pushed my funnel cake aside and wiped off my hands with a napkin.
I said, “Hey...um, you really meant that?”
“Huh? Yeah? Why?” Robert said, very confused.
I took a deep breath and paused. I quit fidgeting for a moment.
“I meant what I said. You’re exactly how I imagined you through your profile pic and our conversations.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh...”
I was overwhelmed with this bizarre combination of validation and adrenaline. I took a step toward him, looked him in his blue eyes, and held my stare. Then as natural as breathing, I fell forward and suddenly our lips embraced.
Wow! Could he kiss! So much passion. Just enough of all the things I liked in a kiss. Force, nibbles, gentleness. His kiss had it all. He just might surpass Bobby Mulholland, my ninth-grade boyfriend, as the best kisser I ever had—or maybe it was the bizarre combination of validation and adrenaline that made it seem that way. No one, I mean no one had ever suggested I was one of earth’s grandest beauties. I still didn’t believe it, but any man who sincerely meant that about me, deserved a kiss.
We both cleared our throats, sat down and tried to act natural. Robert took a napkin and steered my plate that had the half-eaten funnel cake toward me. He finished his vanilla cone in a couple of bites and continued to smile at me. I could tell he was trying to think of something to say. It was as if he was keeping something from me. What? I didn’t know. Maybe he was lactose intolerant and doing his best in hiding a silent but deadly gas moment?
Finally, I said, “I still had more than half the funnel cake left. Do you want to share it? It’s humungous. I swear the thing is going to give me type 2 or something.”
I looked at Robert and he was looking in another direction. He seemed to be fixating on a certain person. I looked across the way to see who he could be looking at. But I saw nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. I saw families and couples rushing to get to their next ride or snack.
Robert looked at me and said something very strange. “I would love to eat three funnel cakes.”
“Huh?” I said.
“To answer your question I would love to eat three funnel cakes.”
That was a really weird way to say no to having some funnel cake. Or was he saying yes? I couldn’t tell. The man apparently liked his funnel cake.
“You know they asked me if I wanted extra strawberries on it. It was already enough to feed five people,” I said, “Please take it.”
Robert briefly looked away then back to me. He made me realize I had funnel cake all over my hands and face.
My embarrassment didn’t last long as he said, “You are so much prettier than your pictures,” Robert said. “I mean I thought you were pretty in your profile pic, but in person, you’re breathtaking.”
“Even with funnel cake all over me,” I said, smiling.
“Especially because there is funnel cake all over you,” Robert said with his sexy wink.
“That just might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.” This was getting too serious, and way too fast. The kiss was nice, but I needed to keep it fun. “Hey, do you want to log-ride it up?” I said, trying to be hipper than I was humanly capable of being, but I said it anyway.
He looked at me, puzzled.
Robert had no idea what I’d asked him to do. So, I decided to say it very thirty-years old-ish. “Robert, would you like to accompany me on the log ride and proceed to have a wonderful amusing time?”
“That was what you were trying to say?” Robert started laughing. “No, no, no. I’m far too uncool to ever catch onto a phrase like that. ‘Log-ride it up.’ Do people say that?”
“No. I just made it up.” Now, I felt really stupid.
“Well, yes, Sahara. I would like to log-ride it up with you.”
“Okay.”
Robert stood up and helped me up from the bench. He was very courteous, and something I was not used to responding to. I liked being a treated a lady, but not an old lady.
We made our way over to the log ride. This area of Knott’s Berry Farm catered to coal miners, cowboys, water rides, and enthusiasts of water rides who didn’t mind getting wet on a sixty some odd degree night.
Robert held my hand the entire time on the way to the ride. I was a little surprised by his sudden public display of affection, but none of it seemed forced.
As soon as we were last in line, he let go of my hand. I forgot how long the log ride line was. It would be a 45-minute wait, according to the sign. So, he and I were going to get to know each other, whether we liked it or not.
I looked at the people in line with us, teenage couples everywhere, and we looked as if
we were chaperones.
As if the log ride was the make-out ride.
Wait! The log ride is the make-out ride.
Everybody from Orange County knew that. I knew that fact even in high school, where even then it was nicknamed the tunnel of love.
Doubt Robert knows that? I hoped he didn’t think that’s why I had picked the ride.
He’d said he grew up in Anaheim, the heart of Orange County. I wondered if he thought I suggested this ride so we could continue to make out.
Of course, he doesn’t think that. He’s too sweet...
I gazed up at him, as he’d seemed to have grown another inch for some reason. He smiled back, reached in his pocket, put a breath mint in his mouth and flashed me a confident wink. Oh, my goodness, he was planning on having a full make-out session on this ride. Why did I kiss this guy so fast? I didn’t want this to be the type of date where we were really affectionate and we never went out again and whenever I thought back to the date, I would always wonder what the hell happened.
Well, I had bad news for Robert. This wasn’t going to be a make-out ride. That kiss back at the food table was special because it had been spontaneous, or enhanced by a bizarre and momentous sugar rush.
I decided not to worry about it. After all, I had initiated the first kiss and it was possibly the best kiss I’d ever had. I looked at Robert and we were forced to be a lot closer than what was normal because we were packed in like sardines while waiting to get on this ride.
Robert and I talked and continued to learn more about each other as we waited in such close quarters. I learned that he collected sports memorabilia. He learned that I was in love with Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block from age six to age 12.
I’m having some crazy thoughts about this guy.
Robert then wrapped his arms around me from behind like we had been dating for years. I let him. He knew I’d let him. How a man who I instantly trusted, by instinct, would feel just as comfortable as me and embrace me without hesitation.
The more I leaned into him, the stronger Robert held me.
It was nice. Pleasant. I felt warmth.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so comfortable, but I did. That didn’t happen too often. Especially this early into a first date.
This date was starting out really weird. Things were just too comfortable, too fast.
Chapter Three