He only got cheese pizza because it was the cheapest. He felt bad that he had to have her pay for his meal. His father always taught him that he was the man, and he needed to pay for the woman. That he needed to protect woman, and treat them with respect. Even though he was already 30, he couldn’t say that he had ever been in a serious relationship before.
Come to think of it, he couldn’t even remember the last time he went on a proper date. He had had a lot of woman in his life, but he always knew they were just using him. He was using them too though. He thought that maybe there were no good woman in the world, that they were all just using him to get something. But as he was thinking about it, maybe it was him. Maybe it was just the fact that he wasn’t around woman that had respect for herself.
Though, he knew if it wasn’t for the fact he needed a phone right then, woke up in an alley way, and ran into Aspen, he wouldn’t have looked at her twice. He watched her, just like the dogs. She was watching the person jugging. Ethan thought, She’s too good for someone like me.
“How did everyone back there know you?” he asked.
“I’ve been going there for years. The manager, I trained his little dogs. They had a bad peeing problem. I fixed it, and possibly fixed his marriage, I’m not sure.”
“So, you know people at the coffee shop, and pizza shop. You sure know a lot of people,” he said, taking a bite of his pizza. “I don’t understand how you can like so many people.”
“Maybe if you give them a chance, you would be surprise at how many people you would like,” she told him, turning her head, watching him with her doe eyes.
He just shrugged. The sun was going down, and Ethan didn’t want to be in the city at night. He wanted to be at his apartment, sleeping and dreaming away last night. How could he repay the girl who had done so much for him without even been asked?
“What time do you want to get?” she asked, stilling watching the entertainer.
Ethan looked at her small hands. They were like children’s hands, very weirdly short. She had chipped bright blue polish on her nails, and two rings, a moon on her right index finger, and a ring with a pearl on top on the left pinky finger. It had to be fake, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care that her hands weren’t perfect. They looked more real, more human that way.
“Soon,” he said, not caring about the person juggling ten bowling pins on fire.
ns 15.158.61.21da2
