Merlot Kiss

“So, you gotta go and be my wingman, hey?” Chet said as the doors to the subway car closed with a squeal and whish of air.

“Hm?” Derek arched his brows.

“You and me, go down and talk to the chicks in the bikinis at the pool at the hotel,” Chet repeated, slowly as though Derek was stupid.

“You’re assuming anyone will be there,” Derek shrugged.

“Eh?”

“Just because John saw many women last night, doesn’t mean anyone at all will be there tonight, maybe they’ve all left,”

Chet stared at him, mouth agape and eyes accusing. Derek chuckled and looked around the car. Posters and advertisements were plastered around the top; people actively avoided making eye contact from the seats where they waited for their stop. Such grey people in such a grey place. The only color was the spray-painted obscenities and the garish pleas for attention from the ads that littered the overhead.

“I’ll go with you,” Derek sighed.

Anything to avoid the grey.

Once Derek agreed to be wingman, Chet was on air. He’d run out of the subway and up the stairs to the street. Smiling, Derek chased after his friend who was whooping and cheering all the way to the hotel (thankfully not far, as Chet wasn’t in the shape to run much). Grinning like a loon, he hailed the elevator up to one of the floors their company had rented for the week they were here for the merger.

“Alright, go get your suit on and grab a towel and meet me at the elevator!” Chet ordered, trying to be commanding but really more of a plea.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Derek rolled his eyes and entered his quiet, beige room.

“…god I hate beige,” he grumbled as the door lock clicked behind him.

With a grimace and regretting that he had passed on dinner for (he groaned and grumbled at himself) the pool, he stripped off his suit, and wandered around in his socks and underwear, looking for his swim trunks.

“…Well… aren’t you…flamboyant…” Chet choked out over the bottle he’d been drinking from.

Derek scratched his chin and glanced down at his trunks. They looked like a Pollock painting. He didn’t see a problem.

Chet did a jig and fiddled all the way down to the pool, wringing his towel in his hands. Taking a deep breath, smoothing back his hair and beard and blowing out his puff of air as he put on his ‘debonaire’ smile, Chet sauntered through the doors to the pool. Derek followed behind. He looked around; some kids and mom were just leaving; two women were giggling over in the deep end. He rubbed his eyes. So much chlorine in here. Blinking rapidly, he walked towards where Chet had thrown his own towel.

Plip. Plip. Swhish.

Derek glanced to his right and saw there was a hot tub. Plip. And, a woman was in the hot tub. He walked closer, saw the glint of a gold chain on bronzed skin and the flash of ruby nails before he heard another Plip. Cocking his head, he watched. The juts churned and bubbled. And the woman…would catch and pop the little bubbles. Derek smiled and watched her, until a splash drew both his and the woman’s attention.

As she returned her attention to her bubbles, their eyes met, and she smiled.

Derek walked over to the side of the hot tub, leaned on the edge.

“Well, you’re easily entertained, aren’t you,” he returned her smile.

“Yes,” she smirked, arching a brow, and continued with her bubbles.

“May I join you?”

“This is a free country,”

Derek climbed into the HOT tub, trying not to wince as the boiling water hit his skin. “I’m Derek,” he offered his (already red) hand to her.

“Bonnie,”

“Bonnie! We’re going,” another voice called from across the pool.

“No, c’mon ladies, we’ve only just met!” Chet said.

The woman attached to the voice waved at Bonnie and Bonnie stood, reaching for her towel.

“Bonnie,” Derek said, touching her lightly on her wrist. “I’m going to call you tomorrow,”

She blinked at him. Then, she laughed. “No, you’re not,”

“Yes, I’m going to call you tomorrow,”

Still giggling, she shrugged at him, wrapped her towel around her red suit and followed the other women out the door. Derek watched her sashay out the door, sitting back in the heated waters.

“Man…that’s what I get for coming down on a weekday,” Chet grumbled. “And hey, where were you, wingman? I could have used some help deciding not to do that belly flop to impress them,”

Derek only had a vague memory of getting back to his hotel room after Chet’s failed expedition, didn’t recall going to sleep, and hadn’t been present with his work all day. In fact, Derek hadn’t been present since Bonnie. The gold chain on bronze skin. Red nails that matched a red suit. Derek’s mind was on Bonnie and on the color of the life he’d felt in those brief moments he’d met her. His attention wasn’t on the numbers or the codes he was supposed to be working with for the merger, it was on her smile and the way she played with bubbles.

He was going to call her.

Once he was mercifully freed from the obligations of his work at five sharp he ran from the building to the subway and from the subway to the hotel. He bolted up the four flights to his floor and into his room where he made reservations at the hotel restaurant and then called the front desk for Bonnie’s hotel room and number.

Standing in the shower and letting the warm water flow over him he thought about his predicament. There were sixteen Bonnies staying at this very hotel. Sixteen calls to make. However, Derek showered, dressed, and called each one, asking if she remembered him from the hot tub. He’d been hung up on four times, gotten seven wrong numbers.

Now he sat, the other end of the line was quiet. Had she heard?

“..yes. Yes, I remember you, Derek,”

He was quiet this time. He’d found her.

“I told you I’d call,” he said, smiling into the phone.

He heard her smile back as she said he had.

“I made us reservations, at the hotel restaurant. It’s for eight, will you be there?”

There was another long pause, longer this time. His mouth began to go dry. “Well, I’ll be at the hotel restaurant, at eight. I hope that I’ll get to see you there, Bonnie,”

He waited a little while longer, then with no reply, he said goodbye and hung up.

Derek paced his room for a good half hour. Then he went back and shaved again, just in case any five o’clock shadow had crept up on him in the twenty or so minutes since he’d last shaved. Then he put on a splash of cologne; then he changed his shirt because maybe that was too big a splash of cologne. He spent about ten minutes going between his two favorite ties. And then he had to walk fast to make it to the restaurant on time.

He fiddled with his watch, trying not to keep glancing at it. He tapped his fingers. He wanted a beer. He had gotten them both waters to start with but man oh man he wanted a beer. Nice, cold, fizzy, and pungent. But tonight was going to be more refined than that. Bonnie seemed more refined than that.

“Derek?’

He bolted up from his chair, catching his knee on the table. “Ah, B-Bonnie,”

She smiled, and looked around, fiddling with her purse.

“Sorry I’m a little late, an hour is fairly short notice for a date,”

“You look amazing,” he said, pulling out her chair.

They sat for a moment, glancing at each other and around the restaurant.

“Good evening, Sir, Madam; are we ready for our menus and an order for drinks?”

“Eh, yes,” he nodded, and she smiled. “And, we’ll take a two glasses of your best Merlot,”

“Oh,” her eyes went wide with surprise, but glinted with excitement. “We are making it an evening,”

“Bonnie, tell me about your life,” Derek said with a tilt of his head as he leaned in to listen to her.

She giggled at him. “Don’t you want to look over the menu?”

“Does it include a dish of my date’s life-dreams and big goals?’ he chuckled back.

She shook her head and hid her laughs behind her menu.

“I’m just a girl from a small farm town here in the big city for work. How about you Derek, you don’t sound like you’re from here,”

“I’m not, just here with my company on business,”

“Just a stranger here on business, my that sounds dangerous,” she smirked coquettishly at him over her menu.

“I’m a small-town boy who grew up on a farm who liked computers who got into I.T.”

“Ah, you’re a Pondexter,” She put down her menu and leaned closer to him over the table.

“I managed a date with a beautiful woman such as yourself, eh?” he leaned closer to her too.

Her eyes showed her surprise and she looked down, playing with a bracelet, moving a lock of hair behind her ear.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Yes, I am a nerd. Hopefully one of the ones who will be at the top making all the money,” he joked, reaching for his water glass.

“I always wanted to open a little shop with my sister, and we’d sew monograms and embroider shirts and kerchiefs and the like,” she said, looking up at him with honest green eyes.

“I think that’s—”

“Sir, Madam, your wine,” the waiter said, bringing two glasses and a beautiful bottle which he opened for them and poured after passing the cork between the two. “Are we ready to order?”

“I’d like a salad, and your fillet minion, please,” she glanced at Derek again.

“I’d like the house soup, and the fish and chips,” he said, passing their menus.

Left alone, Derek forgot what he’d been saying to her. He cleared his throat and wiped his hands on his pants under the table.

“How about a toast?” he said, raising his glass of dark wine.

“Heh, to what?” she asked of him, raising her own. Her nails glistened like rubies against blood as she held her glass up toward him.

“To strangers on a first date, to your dream of your shop with your sister, and to the wine that gets to kiss your lips before I do,”