Actually, the fact that Erik was flirting with me at all was pretty remarkable considering I didn’t have any of the usual ways a woman impressed her man. No makeup, no cute clothes, and he was still flirting with me. I knew that should have given me a little more confidence, but it actually made me wonder more about him. Why was he flirting with me?
For a second, I let my mind think the worst. Maybe he was just flirting with me as a way of passing the time. He might not have any intention of actually getting to know me or anything like that when he was out of the facility. The thought sickened me.
He didn’t seem like that kind of guy. Erik certainly didn’t seem like a guy who would just want sex and then move on, especially now that he was sober. Maybe he had been like that in the past, but he wasn’t like that now.
The two of us had talked and gotten to know each other a little, but there were still a lot of things about Erik that I wanted to know more about. I wanted to know about his business and what it was and how he made money. It was clear to me that he hadn’t inherited his money like I had originally thought, but what else was there to the story?
The doorbell rang just as I was pulling on my dress. I had labored over which one to choose for nearly twenty minutes before finally sliding into a little, emerald green dress. My hair was pulled up and I had put on a touch of makeup to cover my dark circles from going dancing with Kaitlin the night before.
I slowly descended the stairs just as Erik was welcomed into our house by my mother and father. I hoped he hadn’t been standing there too long, alone with them. I hadn’t agonized over my outfit as much as I wanted to, but it had been a difficult decision to pick something that I wouldn’t feel totally useless in.
As his eyes looked up at me, I felt like I had made the right decision. He smiled and gazed at me like I was the last woman on earth. It made me feel amazing.
Chapter Fourteen
Erik
Every cliché about meeting a girl’s parents ran through my head as I got in the taxi to head to Cassidy’s house. I even imagined her father with a shotgun sitting on the front porch. So, when I arrived and there was no shotgun and Cassidy’s mother greeted me with a friendly smile, I was very much relieved.
“Hello, I’m Erik. Cassidy invited me over.”
“It’s nice to meet you. Bob!” sh
e hollered into the other room. “Cassidy’s friend is here.”
“Does he look like an asshole?” the man asked loudly from the other room.
“Bob, he’s in the house. He can hear you.”
I had to laugh at the way the two of them interacted. Before that moment, I had never really thought about what it would be like to grow old with someone. I hadn’t had an example of that sort of relationship in my house, so it had been difficult to imagine.
Sure, I had seen cute old couples at the mall or out at restaurants, but I never imagined that I might have something like that one day. But Cassidy fired those feelings up inside of me. We were obviously just friends, but she was an all-around great girl who I could see getting to know more. Even if I didn’t end up with Cassidy, I did have the feeling I’d settle down someday, which hadn’t really crossed my mind much before I had gone to treatment.
“Hello, young man. Are you a drunk, too?” Cassidy’s father asked boldly.
“I’m not currently,” I said as I reached my hand out to shake his.
He seemed to value the honesty in my statement and shook my hand firmly before going to the stairs to holler up. But before he had the chance to yell up the stairs, Cassidy had started to descend from the top floor.
It took me a moment to fully realize it was her, though. Cassidy had curled her hair and put some makeup on. Although she clearly didn’t need to do such things because she was beautiful without them – that was the truth.
Cassidy also had on a short, green dress that could be best described as a “fuck me” dress, or so my friends and I use to call them. It was a short dress, with enough movement to slide it up over a girl’s hips while you bent them over and had your way with them. Many of the women who threw themselves at me liked to wear dresses like that.
Of course, Cassidy didn’t look like that was the thoughts she wanted to evoke. The dress she had on wasn’t a body-hugging dress; it was loose around her body and skimmed her curves. But I could only think about how easy it would be to get that damn dress off of her. I stared up at her and watched every inch of her body as she moved slowly down the stairs.
“Oh, you look nice, honey,” her mother said.
“Yes, very festive,” I added as I tried not to sound like a total pervert.
“Are we eating?” Cassidy’s father asked flatly.
“Not yet, Bob.”
“Mom, Dad, this is my friend Erik from AA,” Cassidy said as she started to introduce the group. “Erik, this is my mother Katherine and my father Bob.”
“It’s good to meet you,” I said.
Meeting parents had never really been my thing, especially fathers, not that I had met that many. But in high school, my girlfriend had brought me home to meet her parents and I fumbled the whole thing. I tried to tell jokes, which weren’t received well. Then I tried to sit quietly, but when her father asked me a question, I basically yelled at him. It was fair to say that fathers and I didn’t mix very well.