Dish of the Day

“I don’t know what to have,” said Laura.

“Is that usual for you?” asked Brad, peering over his menu at her.

Laura lowered her menu further and smiled, “none of this is usual, is it?”

Brad smiled at her, “depends how you look at it doesn’t it?”

“OK,” she said, “it’s usual for you.”

Brad shrugged, she was wrong, but he didn’t want to dissuade her from this notion, “under other circumstances,” he said, “are you often indecisive?”

Now it was Laura’s turn to shrug. Brad wondered whether she realised that she had mirrored his own movements, “I’m not an indecisive person, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“I’m not,” he assured her.

“It seems to alternate with menus,” she told him, “sometimes my eyes immediately fall on the food I want and although I scan the rest of the menu, that is what I will order,” she took a sip of her wine, “I have to say that I dislike pre-ordering. The food that you like on the day you order, even if it is a banker, it never appeals on the day.”

“So you’re contrary by nature?” Brad teased.

Laura nearly bit, then grinned at him, “you sod! I don’t think I’m alone in that and I don’t think I’m alone in sitting down for dinner and being torn by two or three options on the menu.”

“Narrow it down to two,” Brad told her.

Laura raised her eyebrows, “I’m not used to this you know.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” said Brad, “and it’s good to broaden your horizons. Try something new.”

“It’s all about control though,” countered Laura.

Brad played with his wine glass, seeming to consider it before looking up at her, “or it’s about perspective. Letting go is the best thing a person can do, but all too often, it seems too difficult, so they don’t bother.”

Laura looked nonplussed.

“I mean,” smiled Brad, “what is the worst that can happen?”

Laura smiled uncertainly back at him. She would not voice her thoughts on this subject, even in jest, and Brad was banking on it. People worried and they had all these dark thoughts scurrying around in their heads and regardless of whether they paid them much heed or not, it was rare for them to bring them out in the world, instead they nurtured them and allowed them to cause more pain than any of the thoughts ever warranted.

“The fillet steak or the monk fish,” said Laura, “there you go, there are my narrowed down choices.”

Brad nodded slowly, then took up his own menu.

“Are you going to say anything?” Laura asked him.

Brad looked up from his menu but did not focus on Laura, instead allowing his gaze to amble in the space between them in a dreamy manner.

“You really are a sod,” chuckled Laura, “you know that right?”

Brad allowed a smile to flicker on and off for the briefest of moments, “I’ve been called worse.”

“Am I on the money?” asked Laura.

Brad, put a finger to his chin as though he was trying to make his mind up.

“Please don’t tell me that you’re being indecisive too!” cried Laura.

“Ah…” 

Laura looked up to find the waitress beside her.

“Do you need longer?” she asked, obviously having overheard Laura.

Brad placed his menu down on the table, “no, we’re ready,” he told her.

The waitress raised her device in one hand, stylus in the other, ready to take the order.

“Laura will have the fillet steak, cooked rare, and a side of the creamed spinach,” Brad told her.

The waitress tapped and scrolled and then returned her gaze to Brad, “and yourself?” she asked him.

Brad barely shook his head, the movement bordering on imperceptible. The waitress nodded and smiled, but did not leave the side of the table. The moment stretched out longer than it should have.

“You can go now,” Brad told her, and she turned and left.

“I think she likes you,” Laura winked at Brad.

Brad frowned, “really? What makes you say that?”

Laura shaped up to reply, gave her own frown and then seemed to think better of it. There was something about Brad. He was different, and things happened around him that didn’t make sense, but when she tried to address them, they seemed to dissolve before she could pin them down.

The food arrived and Laura tucked in. She was famished and it was all she could do to remember that she wasn’t the rabid teenager she had once been. Back then she had been a Pez dispenser and the savouring of food was a faraway option that she had not discovered and embraced until she hit her twenties. 

She was oblivious to the way Brad was breaking the rules and any awkwardness she may be feeling was deep down in the most ancient parts of her. There was an itch there, but it was an itch she wasn’t even considering scratching. Laura sat and ate whilst Brad watched her.

He had told her that he was on a strict diet devised by his personal trainer. Brad had told her that he had come a long way and had been so different way back when, so different that Laura would not have recognised the person he had been. His diet was a later stage of his ongoing transformation.

She had suggested that they could cancel dinner and do something different instead, but he had declined, telling her that he wanted some semblance of normality, that it would be good to go out and spend time with her. Besides, he had told her, he wanted to test himself, wanted to be surrounded with so much temptation and practice his discipline and self-control. He told her he valued the challenge, that he tested himself each and every day, it was the only way to stay sharp.

He'd said survive.

The only way to survive. It was Laura that had rationalised this and made it a part of the success story that Brad obviously was. He oozed success. There was a confidence and self-assurance about the man that both frightened her and reassured her. Brad frightened her because he was powerful. Not only was he a slab of muscle that she struggled not to allow her eyes to linger upon, but he also had this drive that drew her along in its wake. Laura had never been swept up in that way before and part of her thrilled at that abandonment, whilst another screamed at her to stop the ride and get off right now. 

There was that assurance of his though and that overrode any reservations that Laura may have had. Brad was where she was meant to be. She deserved this. Laura had been on the dating merry-go-round for long enough and she’d encountered more than her fair share of creeps and losers. She’d almost given up on finding a real man, feeling a despondent resignation and a crushing acceptance that the age of man was over and that she lived in a time when women had found their true place in the world and that place was ahead of the curve of the menfolk. Men were weak, pathetic and redundant. Laura had not encountered any man that was her equal.

Then Brad happened to her, and here she was allowing a man to order a meal for her. Taking her foot off the pedal for the first time in her adult life and finding out that it was possible to enjoy the ride as the passenger, not the driver. Her life had deviated from her carefully constructed plan and she didn’t care. 

That was the Brad factor.

The waitress returned to the table as Laura finished. The timing was remarkable and spoke of an attentive service that few establishments managed to attain, but then Laura saw the way the waitress was looking at Brad and she understood that this was not the usual customer service. She bristled as the waitress asked Brad if he’d like anything else. Laura barely existed and this grated. It could have gotten a lot worse and the old Laura would have taken the waitress down, but she was content to watch the poor girl try her best knowing that it would not be enough. Brad was hers and that was all there was to it.

“An espresso martini to round off with,” Brad told the waitress.

The waitress smiled, took up Laura’s plate and scuttled off to do his bidding.

“Yup,” said Laura, once the waitress had left them, “she’s smitten with you.”

Brad shook his head, “it’s not quite that.”

Laura toyed with her wine glass and took in the man opposite her, maybe it wasn’t like that. Brad was a rare animal and people interacted with him in a way she’d never seen before. He was a force of nature and he induced behaviour from those around him. There was something magnificent about him and Laura saw the waves of respect that issued forth from him. He was the moon above a sea of people, there was something godlike about him and Laura had a fleeting moment of concern, was she awestruck and if that was the case was she in danger of doing something stupid? She’d seen her fair share of starry eyed lovers and the bubble of idiocy they lived in. She’d been subjected to that sort of worship from suitors who were beneath her. She moved quickly on from thoughts such as these and didn’t ask the obvious question of herself, was she weak in the face of Brad’s power? Was she dumbstruck as well as awestruck?

The waitress returned with two martinis.

Brad raised an eyebrow and considered them, “I said an espresso martini, as in a singular drink.”

The waitress was nonplussed and looked from the offending second martini to Brad and back again, caught in a loop of angst that she was incapable of breaking out of.

“Never mind,” he told her, “she will drink them both.”

The relieved waitress put both glasses down on the table between the two diners, “I will only charge you for the one,” she told Brad.

He raised a hand to ward her off, “it doesn’t matter.”

His attention was completely on Laura now and the waitress lingered for a moment longer looking completely crushed, wanting something from Brad, an acknowledgement or some simple and small piece of attention, when none was forthcoming she eventually shuffled off.

Brad nodded at the martinis, “well?”

Laura smiled and shook her head, “are you trying to get me drunk?”

It was Brad’s turn to smile, “not me. The waitress is though, it must be you that she likes.”

“You’d like that wouldn’t you?” said Laura.

“You’re confusing me with someone else,” retorted Brad, “you are my total focus.”

Laura liked that, she liked that a lot. She took the first martini and tasted it. She’d not had an espresso martini in an age. It tasted good. Really good. Like it was just the thing she needed right then. Damn Brad for being right yet again! 

She barely noticed that she’d moved to the second.

“I take it this is my dessert?” she said as she started in on cocktail number two.

Brad nodded, “and you’re mine.”

Laura felt a tingle of anticipation. They had not gone there yet, and she had hoped that tonight was the night, now Brad had confirmed that that was the case. Her eyes travelled downwards and she took him in, it would be nothing but good with Brad, that had been obvious to her from the outset. Now her mind was frolicking through all the possibilities. She had never looked at a man’s chest and wanted to draw her finger along the firm muscular skin before. To feel him for the first time, a prelude to so much more.

She looked back up, feeling Brad’s eyes upon her. The intensity of those dark eyes almost stopped her heart and her breath caught in her throat, she wanted this more than anything. She wanted Brad more than she had wanted anyone and their being in the midst of a restaurant right now was a huge inconvenience. She wanted him now!

“Shall we?” 

Brad’s words snapped Laura out of her thoughts and brought her back to the here and now. She glanced down at her glass and was surprised to see it and its twin were both empty.

“The bill?” said Laura still struggling to catch up.

“Taken care of,” Brad told her.

Laura nodded, of course Brad would have it taken care of. That was the sort of man that he was. He was standing now and moving her chair backwards as she stood. As they left the restaurant their waitress made a point of walking over and thanking Brad. The way she thanked him was over familiar and Laura almost missed her pressing a piece of paper into the palm of his hand. Her number no doubt.

There was a taxi waiting for them at the kerb and Brad had the door open for Laura, climbing in next to her, Laura felt an electricity between them as they sat next to each other almost touching, but not quite. She’d wanted to fall into his embrace there and then, the desire to kiss him was overwhelming, but he’d sat bolt upright and his body language invited no contact whatsoever. The way he held her at bay in the taxi was maddening and she bit her lower lip in frustration during the short ride home.

Laura didn’t fully register the taxi pulling up outside her home. She’d assumed they would go back to Brad’s place, but the familiarity of her home territory suited her even better. At no point did she think about how it was that Brad knew where she lived, Laura had never given him that information. 

All Laura wanted was to get through the front door of her house and indulge in what Brad had called dessert. That was all that mattered now. They were so close and her hand trembled with her growing excitement and anticipation as she held her key and tried to get it in the lock.

“Allow me,” Brad, ever the attentive gentlemen.

He wrapped his hand around hers and his touch sent a jolt of something approximating pleasure through Laura, she barely registered how cold his hand was.

The key turned in the lock and Laura almost fell through the door in her haste to get inside and have Brad to herself at last. She had never felt this level of excitement and lust before. This was wonderful and maddening at the same time, never mind dinner, she wanted to eat Brad all up over and over again.

She almost fell through the door, but a strong arm around her waist arrested her stumble over the threshold. They moved as one through the door and as her hand raised automatically for the light switch, Brad’s firm cold hand caught Laura’s wrist and propelled her far enough into the hallway for him to kick the door shut.

Now they were alone. Alone in the darkness of Laura’s home. Alone for the very first time.

Brad turned Laura as they came to a halt and pushed her against the wall. She was pinned by that hard muscular body of his and the breath was driven out of her. She looked up at her new lover and she choked. An inexplicable reaction to a moment that she had anticipated and wanted with every fibre of her being.

In the sparse light of the unlit hallway, Brad’s features looked carved from marble. From the very first moment Laura had seen Brad she had thought of him as a Greek statue of a god brought to life, but now, the cold hard stone she was peering at was lifeless and cruel. 

His grip tightened around her wrist and she felt a sharp pain as his fingers dug in and pressed deeper than they had any right to, a vice crushing her bone. The pain heightened everything and as Laura stared into the black, soulless eyes that bored into her she lost something of herself in the terror of recognition.

“Starters,” Brad whispered as he lowered his head to her neck and bit down.

Laura’s head swam and she span away into her dreams of a happy ending. Pleasure filled her and made her delirious, so delirious that she was oblivious to this being an ending. Her ending.

Brad tasted her, taking his time and enjoying every moment. Savouring the hints of fillet steak and spinach, the rich, ruby tones of the red wine and the sweetness of those martinis. The alcohol and caffeine sending spikes of pleasure through him.

He missed food, he missed it with a vengeance and for so long he had absented himself from the rituals and pleasures of mealtimes. He had lost so much and his altered existence had not compensated for those losses. 

In the end, it had been after he had snacked in the doorway of a closed restaurant that his eyes had fallen upon the menu and he’d been reminded about everything he had enjoyed when it came to eating out. Once his eyes were open, it was simply a case of adapting the way he enjoyed his meals. Laura was just the start. Brad had a lot of catching up to do.

So simple really, and he could taste the difference.

He raised his head and stepped back, guiding Laura along the dark hallway and to the lounge, lowering her to the sofa. She leaned back and raised her arms in the invitation of an embrace and he obliged by moving in towards her.

“Main course,” he whispered in her ear as he resumed his meal.

Later, they would go upstairs for dessert.