Scottie has all his boxes ticked, but where does that leave him?

“I can’t find any faults,” he said, “you’re ticking all the boxes for me.”

What he said was beyond romantic, as the wind and rain bashed against the car window. His stunning grey eyes and the smile on his face formed the icing on the cake, and we managed to get the car steamy enough for a comical hand-against-the-window moment, à la Titanic. I had to acknowledge the same back to him, but in the back of my mind I wondered if that night’s weather was pathetic fallacy … like when the storm arrived in a Shakespeare play.

From our brilliant first date the week before, things were going from strength to strength. Knowing there were a few years between us, I intentionally made sure not to contact him much – if at all – so that he couldn’t accuse me of being too young and eager. Instead, though, I noticed him calling me every day, sometimes twice a day. We would chat on the phone for ages, and although the same topics would come up – work, work and work – I still loved seeing his name pop up on the screen. It was if we were already going out with each other, and felt like we had known each other a lot longer than we did. All of this was a refreshing change for me, because it made me realise that I didn’t have to do all the chasing all the time. I was comfortable, thinking that everything was just fitting into place.

On the second date, we ended up going for drinks in a popular gay bar in the city, and I didn’t waste much time on getting our first kiss. I usually never make the first move, but the last week of contact meant that we both fully knew we were into each other, so there were no worries. Soon afterwards, we bumped into a colleague of mine and a friend of his. The friend was the typical twink type from a bad British porno. Thin as a twig, with a Birmingham accent and a raspy voice that would make you want to reach for the nearest shotgun. Neither of them saw me kiss my date, which meant that the Brummie thought my date was up for the taking. I got lost in conversation with my colleague, catching up and hearing the gossip about the latest office scandals, but every so often I was keeping an eye on my potential rival. I could see that my date wasn’t even slightly interested in the twink with Duracell batteries as he flounced around him. It was hard for me not to be just a tiny bit smug.

The two eventually saw that we wanted to have a bit of time to ourselves, although it look a lot longer for the twink to realise he wasn’t getting anywhere with his flirting, so they made their goodbyes as we finished our drinks. As they left, I broke out into laughter.

“What is it,” my date asked me, with a smile on his face.

“Just the English lad,” I said, “trying to flirt with ya. It was funny.”

“I wasn’t even aware that he was,” he replied, though I wasn’t able to tell if he was telling the truth. “How could you tell?”

“I’m good at reading body language,” I explained, with a bit of a smirk on my face. “You were leaning back against the bar, trying to keep something of a distance between you and him, so it was pretty clear you weren’t interested in him. He, however, was constantly trying to get closer to you. It doesn’t take an expert to see what he was thinking.”

He nodded and acknowledged my assessment with a simple “cool,” which made me wonder if I had revealed a bit too much about myself. Either way, we didn’t continue that conversation, as I could tell it was possibly wise not to.

Seeing as neither one of us were in the mood to dance the night away (which is kinda unusual for me!) he offered me a lift home, but when we came to the junction to turn onto my road he kept on driving. Instead, we went to a part of the coast which looked across to the city’s lights and the other side of the bay. I always found rain hitting a window to be soothing, so you can imagine how calm I was when we ended up cuddling in the back seat of his car, his arms wrapped around me as I gazed out of the window. We stayed there for hours, just chatting about anything and everything, as well as enjoying the few moments of comfortable silence. At that point, absolutely everything was perfect. No issues, no problems. Just perfect.

But nothing’s ever really perfect, is it…?

[To read the previous instalment of Scott’s column, click here.]

‘Scottie’ Illustrations by Stephen Charlick