A Lot Like Attraction

That last post was a cliffhanger, no? Here’s what happened next with The Fake T and The Real Mr. T.

I looked back and forth between The Fake T and The Real T. Not a Lucky Girl and Shoes looked nervously at each other and at me.

What’s she going to do?

I burst into laughter.

It opened the flood gates, and within seconds, all of us were bellyache, wiping away tears, laughing.

“Hey, I’m C,” I stuck my hand out to Fake T, feeling a reintroduction necessary. “Who are you, really?”

“I’m Andy, pleased to meet you,” he said with a dramatic, fake hat tilt. Everything about him was fake.

“I was totally duped!” I admitted.

“I didn’t think so for a while. You almost had me with all that foreign stuff, but I just agreed with everything you said.”

I rolled my eyes at myself. If gullible were written on the ceiling… I looked up, thinking it to myself.

Doh.

I tuned back in to see him gleefully laughing. He was quite pleased with himself that he pulled off the heist of the century, or at least of the evening. I was amused, too, and a little flattered. I shook my head at him and turned back to The Real T.

I hopped on the bar stool beside him. “It’s great to finally meet you,” I grinned.

“This,” he nodded at the scene around us, “is quite the introduction. It’s good to meet you, too.” He smiled back at me, and our eyes stayed lock for a moment longer than necessary.

His smile is nothing short of an orthodontic commercial. It’s big and inviting and keeps me smiling in return. It was similar to getting lost in McDreamy’s smile, without the wedding ring glare in my eyes.

“So he really pretended to be me?” he laughed. “I can’t say I blame him.”

I blushed a little and retorted, “It’s true, you must be onto something if you schlepped all the way out to H Street.”

“Well, I felt like I had to go ahead and get it over with,” he joked, nudging me.

With that, our meeting subtly shifted into more of a date, but it felt like we were friends hanging out over a beer. It was 2:00am before we came up for air from talking, laughing and toasting our shared Foreign Service journey.

And then it was time to dance. We paid our tab, leaving Shoes and Fake T downing another shot without us and ran (literally) to Little Miss Whiskey’s.

(Halfway there I nearly ran straight into The Bartender. I haven’t seen him since he stood me up about 15 times. It didn’t faze me but rather, almost amused me.)

We continued running until we were upstairs at Whiskey’s, where we ran into… nobody. The dance floor was empty. I’ve truly seen it all now. This didn’t impede our mission.

“We have to dance on stage!” I exclaimed, and his eyes lit up in agreement.

“I’m going to spin you now!” He declared, back safely on the main floor.

It felt like our drinks had been laced, but I think it was our excitement at having met someone so cool that made us feel high, or we were just drunk.

He spun me until the centrifugal force brought our lips together. I sunk into the kiss, the synapses in my brain rapidly firing with a mixture of pleasure and pure appreciation for how goddamn good it was. I don’t know how many first kisses I will have at LMW, but it most certainly got another tick mark with that one.

We danced until closing and made our way outside. He walked me home and kissed me on my doorstep.

Mr. T is a lot of things – namely, not Fake T. He’s also laid back – looks more like he should be on an island or climbing a mountain somewhere than doing the suit-required work he actually does. Mostly, Mr. T is hard to know, like really know. Our conversation was effortless, and I laughed more than I thought, but after our whirlwind night I woke up wondering about the familiar stranger in my dream. Was it real?

I rolled over and felt his arm wrap around me. I guess it was…