An Encounter: The Beginning

A golden light streamed in through the blinds, casting long yellow lines across her smooth legs. She leaned back in her chair, her foot propped up on her desk, as she clicked away on her keyboard. A sigh forced its way out of her chest as she scrolled through the lists of wasted emails. Today, the men were taking the "spraying bullets" approach, sending email after email of irrelevant responses, totally unrelated to her posts. While helping her in her quest to weed through the losers, these online want ads were less than perfect.

'Markus L, Markus L, Markus L,' she scrolled as she thought, 'please stop responding to my posts. I never get back to you; just give up!' Then, she stopped. "A," a simple name, one she had not seen before. She glanced at the email preview; it read, "Wow. Thanks for the great post. It's good to see someone who..." She clicked on the email to read further, "...isn't all caught up in being 'perfect' and seeking others who are similarly shallow. As an 'average Joe'..."

Her interest was piqued as the email further explained how the sender was impressed by her post seeking "An Unathletic Intellectual." She responded to the email, writing, "Finally, a real person! I am glad you feel similarly. May I see a photo? I promise to reciprocate," before resuming her seemingly unending scroll through the incoming waste.

***

The blue light of morning slowly brought her from her sleep. She rolled over to face her laptop propped up next to her pillow, still playing music softly from the night before. Through a groggy haze, she could see that she had received 36 emails while she slept. She lifted a heavy hand to the trackpad and scrolled listlessly through them. Half-way down, she saw a "(2)" next to an email from "A." She clicked on it and read, "I am relieved to find that you, too, are real (and seemingly intelligent, I might add). I don't normally do this, but I have included a few photos for your perusal. I would appreciate the same courtesy and look forward to hearing from you." At the bottom of the email, two photos were being virus scanned. She clicked "view" on each, and they popped up in tabs to the right of her email.

Slightly excited and more than a little bit curious, she opened the first tab. At an outdoor table sat a man with tan skin; long, black, slightly wavy hair with prominent gray streaks; and a fantastic smile seated among a scruff of grey beard, his eyes squinting in the sun. He looked older, maybe in his late 40s—at least 15 years her senior, but handsome. In the next photo, he appeared in a pool, his head and shoulders above the water. The shimmer of the water accentuated the muscles of his upper body and the whiteness of his teeth. With his hair slicked back, and in the summer light, the photo looked like the images that come stock in new photo frames.

She felt a butterfly flitter in her belly. 'This could be something,' she thought. She wrote back.

***

Over the next few weeks, the pair exchanged messages, realizing that, though their lives were very different, they both felt the same desires. She eagerly awaited his messages in her inbox each morning and began to feel a yearning that grew with each passing day, with each moment of denial.

After two months exchanging emails covering a wide range of topics, from the heated to the philosophical, he asked her to come over. She complied without hesitation, feeling every molecule in her body pulling her toward physical contact with him.

***

He opened the door, and there she was. In the flesh, she looked slightly different from the picture he had in his mind's eye, but the animation of the previously still image caused his spine to tingle. She, similarly, felt her body become tense at the sight of him. A cool breeze of possibility blew between them in an instant as she gave him a crooked smile and shrugged her shoulders slightly, her hands firmly planted in her pockets.

He swept his arm in toward the foyer and said, "Come on in."

She stepped over the threshold, bowing her head slightly as she passed through the doorway.

"Welcome to my little piece of earth," he walked toward the living room. She followed a short distance behind. Thankful that his back was turned, she glanced around, taking in the layout, the angles of the Danish-modern furniture, and the cleanness of the sunlit room. The place looked more like a photo from a magazine than a place where someone lived. There had been no mail dropped haphazardly on the counter, no shoes kicked into the corner, no coasters scattered on the coffee table.

"It's nice," she said, feeling as if she needed to say something to avoid inadvertently coming across as discontent or nervous.

"I like it," he motioned to the couch. She complied, taking a seat on the nearest cushion and placing her bag on the floor at her feet. He plopped down on the other end, his back resting against a throw pillow that sat in the crook, and casually threw his arm over the back of the couch, one leg bent leaving his foot dangling over the edge while the other sat planted firmly on the beige carpet.

She twisted to grab the pillow that sat behind her and shifted into an Indian-style position facing him head-on as she hugged the pillow. Her eyes locked on to his, and she briefly scanned the lines of his face, admiring the sweeps of grey than ran through his hair; the hazel of his irises looked lighter in the sunshine streaming in from the sliding glass door across from the couch.

"So," she said.

"Here we are," he replied.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.