The Little Green Bottle

At least The Little Green Bottle was an upscale place to be stood up.

I was staring down into the glass of Merlot I’d been nursing for the better part of an hour. Yeah. Brian probably wasn’t showing up. There was a guy who peered through the front window of the wine bar about thirty minutes ago that I swore looked like Brian’s online photo. Maybe I just didn’t look like mine. Or, maybe, he’d scoped me out and decided that the bill would be too pricy to spend on a girl like me.

I didn’t hate myself or anything. Not exactly. But awkwardly picking at appetizers and sipping wine for a small eternity alone isn’t a recommended confidence booster. Neither was pretending to be profoundly uninterested in companionship in some vain attempt to avoid any pitying side-glances. A man over at the far table had shot me at least three such looks in the past thirty minutes.

Maybe it was because I didn’t look confidant enough to be drinking alone—everything about me was safe. I had a safe haircut, shoulder-length, modestly styled, and dyed chestnut to cover the strands of grey that had started to insidiously snake their way in while I was still in my twenties. I had a safe job; I was a mid-level employee processing documents for a large legal firm. I wore safe clothes, form fitting, but not overly so. Just enough to show I had some sort of shape, without laying any sort of claim as to what exactly that shape was.

A sharp laugh cut through the dim chatter and I looked over at the woman who had made the sound. She was at the table with the man who’d been giving me those pity-looks. She was wearing an entirely white pantsuit, the cut showing off her tall, lean frame. Her black hair was cropped into a pixie cut which outlined her face, making her already sharp cheekbones more prominent. The lipstick she wore was a bright, cool red that looked fresh and perfect even though she was on her third glass of wine. If only I could be half so bold as that, maybe I wouldn’t be stood up as often.

The wine bar was atmospherically dim; empty wine bottles had been converted into clusters of lights, giving the whole place a green-tinted glow. Since the date was a bust, might as well double down on the wine. I drained the dregs of the cup that had been my only companion for the night and ordered another at the bar.

I put the glass down on the counter. “Same thing please.”

The bartender took my old glass and replaced it with a new one instead of refilling it. The previous glass had become so cloudy with my fingerprints that it looked more frosted than clear. I blushed, embarrassed at how grimy I’d somehow managed to make it.

I took my new glass and turned to slink back in defeat to my corner table. I ran headlong into a someone standing behind me and the newly-filled cup of Merlot sloshed over the brim and all over the person standing there. All over the dressy white suit I’d been admiring earlier.

I was so surprised that I tried to catch the wine that was spilling out. Once it left the brim of that glass it was doomed to spatter, but some part of me still thought it was a salvageable situation. Much like my love life. I somehow managed to drop the glass. The second half of the Merlot spattered spectacularly across the floor in a sparkling wave of wine and shattered glass. And all over the woman’s impeccable cream-colored pants.

“Oh,” I said. Like that would fix anything.

For a moment I stood there in shock, unsure of what I was supposed to do next. Then my good “friend” anxiety kicked in and my fingers started trembling as I stupidly reached down to start picking up the shards by hand.

“Miss! Don’t worry about it, I’ll get someone to clean it up!” The bartender cried anxiously.

While accidentally slicing my fingers open would have felt like proper penance for my shame in that moment, it probably wasn’t a great look for anyone. So, I froze again, the one task my numb and tingling brain had come up with snatched away from me. Then I made eye contact. I probably looked like a startled rabbit, or maybe an overly anxious guinea pig.

The woman smiled, completely unabashed about looking like a murder victim, covered in the drying splatters of red wine. “Sorry. I really messed that up, didn’t I?” She laughed.

“Y-you?” I stammered.

“Well, I wanted to see if you’d like to join us, but, uh, I think I have to go home and change now.” She casually gestured back over to the table where two other people were sitting. The man, who had been shooting me the pity-glances earlier, was rubbing his temples and shaking his head. The woman looked like she was trapped somewhere between horror and voyeuristic glee as she stared fixedly at the suit. “Don’t mind them, they just told me I’d mess it up and, uh, well… here we are. I’m Allison, by the way.” She spread her arms wide to show off the tragedy that had befallen her clothes and gestured to herself by way of introduction.

“Oh. I, uh, I have some gym clothes in my trunk if you’d like to…” I trailed off, stuck by how stupid my suggestion was. This woman—Allison—was at least 5’11”, tall and willowy. I was around 5’3” if I did some very generous rounding up. My gym shirt would probably look like a crop top on her, and my leggings would absolutely end up masquerading as capris.

“Really? You wouldn’t mind?”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t mind lending me your gym clothes? There’s a drycleaner across the street, so I might be able to save the suit if there’s something I can change into.”

“Sure… I uh… yeah. Sure.” I numbly led her out to where my car was parked in the back lot of the bar and popped my trunk open. When I turned around to hand her the gym bag her jacket was already off and the dress shirt below it unbuttoned and billowing open.

“You don’t want to change in the bathroom?” I asked, alarmed.

She shrugged, and I became keenly aware of her lacy bra, also white. Somewhere in the back of my animal brain I wondered if her panties matched.

“Underwear is just a hidden bikini.” She winked.

I felt myself go instantly red, heat rushing up to my cheeks. My fingers tingled as I handed the bag over to her. She pulled the gym shirt on and I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. The shirt didn’t look like a crop top. I was suddenly very thankful for my penchant for picking slightly oversized clothes. Though, I had to admit, she really wouldn’t have looked bad in a crop top. She pulled her pants off next and I looked to the side, going redder than I already was.

They do match. The ghoulish little animal part of my brain whispered. I inadvertently made a gurgling sound that I tried to play off as a cough.

My leggings absolutely looked like capris on her. Her legs were long and well-muscled and the pants came up to the middle of her calves. I would have been mortified to show off half of my calves, but she didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. Though, with legs like that, there wasn’t any reason she should be.

“I just realized; I didn’t get your name…?” She raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“Oh, um, Katelyn.”

“Well, Katelyn, give me a second to drop off the suit. Meet me back at the bar?” She took off across the street and as I watched her go it dawned on me just how much those leggings actually showed. She was also still wearing her cream-colored pumps—the shoes looking decidedly out of place now that they were paired with activewear. Yet somehow, she owned her new outfit just as confidently as she had the old one.

“Uh, yeah sure,” I mumbled, but she was already too far away to hear me.

I was so embarrassed I considered driving away right then, but the idea of Allison keeping my gym clothes in perpetuity stopped me. Would she wear them on a lazy Sunday and wonder about the strange woman who fled after lending them to her? I walked back into the bar and heard her friends talking.

“Oh, I don’t know, I think it’s a pretty good first date story.” The woman was saying.

The man shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. If she actually asked her out.”

“Oh please, it’s Allison, she definitely asked her out, how could she… oh… um… hi… I’m Brie.” Midway through her sentence the woman looked up and saw me standing there.

“Dylan,” the man said by way of introduction. “You uh… you heard all that didn’t you?” He had the good sense to look embarrassed.

I nodded. “What do you mean, ask me out?”

“Oh, well, she saw you sitting at that table earlier and thought you were uhhhh… wait, she didn’t ask you out?” He raised his eyebrows, honest surprise on his face. “She’s usually pretty fearless about that kind of thing.”

Brie laughed. “She gets turned down a lot but that never seems to stop her.”

An arm was slung around my shoulder and I smelled a rich, woody perfume. Allison was there, grinning, face flushed with the chill outside and the wine she’d been drinking earlier. “You gossiping about me?”

“Just about you asking her out.” Dylan said dryly.

Allison went redder than I’d been in the parking lot. So, she hadn’t heard that part of the conversation. “Y-you just told her? Guys! I had a wine related emergency! Brie, stop laughing! You’re the worst wing-woman…” she was glaring at her friend, but I could tell she wasn’t truly angry.

“Oh, I don’t know, you did change in front of me,” I said. “That’s a bit forward, isn’t it?”

Dylan looked at her and rolled his eyes. “You changed in the parking lot? Allison, it’s like fifty degrees outside.”

Something hard and brittle that had been growing in me since I’d sat down alone at the corner table earlier that night cracked when I heard that. I burst into laughter.

“Oh, no, I’m sorry, it’s just… I just…” I was wheezing from laughing so hard “…the cold… it’s just that after everything that happened tonight that’s the part… he thinks is weird…”

“It’s not that funny, jeeze,” Allison mumbled, looking towards the ground, her cheeks still glowing. I could see a small smile playing at the edges of her lips. “It was good line though, right? Matching underwear is just a hidden bikini?”

Brie, who was in the middle of sipping at her drink, choked and sputtered. “That’s the tackiest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“I dunno, it worked on me,” I said. Only when I said it did I realize it was true.

“It did?” Allison brightened again, and with that glow transformed back into the confidant woman I had seen earlier that night.

“Yeah, I guess it did,” I said. The admission filled me with a strange sense of freedom.

A little of that earlier uncertainty flickered across her face. “Well, you want to go on a date sometime?”

“I thought we were already on one.”

She beamed. I had never known until that moment that I could be so uplifted by someone else’s joy. She was happy to spend more time with me. In that moment I felt myself grow just a little bit bolder.

“Well then,” she said, gesturing towards the empty seat at the table, “it’s a date.”