“Why don’t you come sit and have a drink?” He asked.
He was sitting at the bar.
“I will go home, I am tired”.
I didn’t say it as firmly as I maybe would have wanted to say.
I was just really tired.
I went to the toilet instead.
“Ok, I will have a tea”, I said when I came back from the toilet.
I was standing next to him, my bag in my hands.
“I just had a long day”.
“Don’t we all?” He replied.
“I was writing before coming here”, I told him.
“Yes, but when you are here, you are here”, he said with a firm tone.
I kept quiet for just a short time.
‘He was so right’, I was thinking.
“I had some personal news to process today”, I said.
“I am just not used to relax after work”.
I stopped talking, just to take a breath.
“It’s just not in my system to relax at a bar”.
“I never had that opportunity, let me say it like this”.
“Do you want another drink, or maybe something else?” He asked me.
I had finished my tea.
He was pointing at his glass.
I couldn’t say what was in it.
However, I could smell the alcohol.
“No alcohol, for me”, I said to him.
“My hormones are going a bit up and down lately and sugar and alcohol aren’t really helping”.
He kept quiet this time.
“Ok, I will have the same as last week”, I responded.
It was the bottle with the number, but I could never pronounce it properly.
So I just said the number instead.
“With some ice, please”, I added fast.
Although I was taking the alcohol to relax, my hormones shouldn’t suffer more than needed.
Ice would do the trick.
“I write about love”, I told him.
“Are you in a relationship?” I asked him.
“I am single”, he said.
“I can ‘get’ what I want”, he continued.
“I am good with my ex, but I just can’t leave and go spend a long time away”.
“I have my children and my responsibilities”.
He stopped talking.
“Perhaps you are looking for a relationship with someone that has the ‘same kind’ of baggage?”
“Or has been through something similar in life?”
I asked him with some hesitation.
“I had a date just the other day”, I told him.
He was in his mid thirties.
He told me, he couldn’t date anyone that is much younger, because younger people have a different mindset.
“Perhaps you feel less lonely if you could find someone that has also been through something large like yourself?”
I asked him.
“Would you give up your stability, if you wouldn’t know for sure this other person has experienced kind of the same?” In continued,
“Would it give you a sense of trust?” I ended.
I made me think.
‘Is that really what it takes to get into a relationship?’ That sense of trust.
‘Is that the feeling we need?’
“Well, but everyone deserves a change”, he said.
I was thinking about Christmas, a post I had written on my Instagram account.
“This year I was going to give a chance to someone”.
At least that is the wish I had put out.
Maybe it just starts with that he deserves a change?
But how would I know?
I was just wondering.