At the Bar [contemporary Love Story]
Copyright© 2025 by Laxu
Chapter 9
This isn’t me trying to trick a woman to sleep with me by pretending I’m something I’m not. This is me introducing myself. That’s it. I don’t even care if we end up having sex. All I want is to meet her. From that, the seeds would be planted, and in the end, we will end up together. There’s no tricking or fooling her. Just me talking to her and letting her know she isn’t trapped.
“Can we go to my car now? Your gift is in there and I don’t want it to get stolen or anything,” the perfect woman tells her husband as I start to walk towards them. She says this with a bright face, showing she put in thought at whatever gift she got him.
“Oh, c-c-can we finish our drinks first?” the crying man asks in an apologetic manner. The feeling of cringe runs over me again as he doesn’t see how bad that sounds. Plus, this bar isn’t exactly in the best place, things can be stolen here.
I know he denies her because he wants to draw out the fact that he doesn’t have anything for her. He knows when they go to her car, he’ll have to admit he has nothing, and a fight will start. But that’s not what she sees. She thinks her husband doesn’t want to spend time with her or see the thoughtful gift she got him.
Another smile moves over my face as yet again it feels like the universe is making this too perfect for me. She’s already dejected, so when I give her some real, non-sexual attention she’ll light up. It’ll be too easy to make an impression and steal her away.
Time seems to slow as I step up to their end of the bar. When I do, I see the perfect woman turn to look at me. A small smile already begins on her face at the sight of me ... or at my t-shirt. A smile that screams that all she wants is to feel special tonight. To be loved.
More than that, I see how perfect her hair falls, the smell of her perfume and even how cute her glasses are now that I can see them up close. Being this close lets me see she is even more perfect than I thought she was from across the bar.
The crying man turns to look at me as well. But he gives me an expression that I wasn’t expecting. I know I may be stereotyping, but men like him then to have very few emotions. Well, they tend to have two emotions, angry and happy. In this situation I expected to see anger towards another man walking up to his wife. But that’s not the expression he gives.
My heart aches horribly as I see FEAR on his face. True fear. He’s scared. Scared of me.
This entire time I’ve been thinking about how perfect she and I would be together, but now I see that I’m not the only one who’s been thinking that. He saw me across the bar and had the same thoughts. Knowing that someone like me could easily take his wife away from him, the wife that he loves so much. That’s why he’s been sitting there worrying about how to make this right.
Heartache hits me like a kick in the balls. Heartache from being cheated on and dumped unjustly. It makes my body twinge in pain, where I get so very pissed off at him. All I feel like doing is grabbing the asshole, slapping him and screaming that she doesn’t care about any Valentine’s gift. All she wants is to know he loves her. To show a fraction of the emotions he was sharing with his friend and to tell her about the stupid-fucking-app he couldn’t master at work. She wouldn’t think he’s stupid but would just want to help.
These feelings take me back to all those lonely nights in my house. Nights alone in my bed, like when I learned my ex-wife had cheated on me. Where I replayed the conversations when we promised each other that if the other fell out of love we would be honest and tell the other. That we would never cheat because we knew it would hurt the other.