The Perfect Evening

There she is. Sitting at a table for two and the first one to arrive at this spontaneous blind date.

She met him online when they first started talking and to be honest, though she found him a bit charming, she wasn’t really looking to be swept off her feet. In her mind, this date was more of a test to determine whose company she preferred more: her own? Or, hers plus one? At the moment, the answer is happily becoming abundantly clear.

The man is late, yet she couldn’t feel sexier – she couldn’t feel bolder. A single candle tall and white lit in the middle of the table illuminates the Italian restaurant just enough to see the highlights of her face and subtle curves of her body. She’s wearing a dark bronze halter dress with a gold tint and a cowl neckline exposing a subtle yet sensual amount of cleavage. She holds herself in such a way that just looking at her would have you thinking the words, “Stunning or striking.” All of the most powerful and confident adjectives spill around her aura as if she was a dictionary radiating them. It’s hard to imagine such self-assurance coming from the girl seemingly being stood up on a first date.

She smiles gently to herself and lifts the glass half-full of dark burgundy Acquaforte merlot to her lips and takes a small sip staining the rim with her lipstick of the same color – and it’s delicious. Warm and robust sliding down her tongue towards the back of her throat, and she can taste the notes of boysenberry and cherry singing within her as she swallows. Her own private concert of magic with the flavor of music only adding to her already bold presence.

“It’s a beautiful night,” she thinks to herself, sitting next to a large, opened window held together by 2 cream-colored brick pillars. The merlot being the perfect partner to this already wonderful evening as she relishes in the company of herself. She takes another sip reigniting the fireworks within her mouth and stares at the stars sitting frozen above her like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

“How lovely,” she thinks, admiring the artwork of the universe, and in that moment she catches a rare but brilliant flash of light race across the sky. A shooting star. Her eyes close as she begins the nostalgic, childhood ritual of making a wish on it. She licks her lips, tasting the remnants of merlot still decorating them and smiles gently. “If I could make one wish tonight,” she states quietly to herself, “it would be to freeze this moment in time, just like the stars. To keep this piece of perfection like artwork in the history of the universe. This beautiful slightly breezy weather, the magic of the sky, and this glass of merlot. Dark red and delicious, just like I feel. Adding anything else to this evening would be wrong. Because it is already brilliant just the way it is.”

She lets out a gentle laugh and opens her eyes winking at the stars as she tilts back and swallows the last bits of concert in her glass, savoring the music, the magic, and the taste for a little while longer. Before she leaves, she pulls out a small, black, notepad from her clutch and tears a sheet off the top, writing a note to the man who is beyond fashionably late. She sets it down softly on his empty plate.

“Thank you for a lovely first date, it went even better than I imagined it would.”

She pours him a half glass of the merlot as a courtesy and walks away, confidence in hand and arm in arm with herself, the perfect company.