A Closer Vantage Point

Yvette hassled over the details with such a scrutinous eye that her roommate, Dina, had told her to calm down on six separate occasions leading up to her date’s arrival. She had ignored her friend on each and every instance. This was something she had never done before, at least not within her own abode, and so if she was able, she would make damn sure that nothing about this dinner went poorly. Her dish of choice was Cassoulet, something her mother in France had taught her how to prepare, and she had spent the better part of a day fussing over its ingredient ratios and its consistency and its temperature and (most importantly) its flavor. This too had been a factor of ire in her roommate. 

After asking Dina for a fourth time if she looked good in one of the outfits from her wardrobe, Yvette’s roommate had called it quits and left the apartment for the night, which only served to make Yvette doubt her own appearance and change clothes for a fifth time. She briefly considered going without make-up, and then decided against it and went about brushing away any blemishes she perceived upon her own face. This was all before she decided that she smelled and took a shower, forcing a re-do of her entire clothing and make-up routine. 

The date she had scheduled was set to begin at seven in the evening, and by the time she had finished finicking with everything around her at least twice it was already six-thirty. Seeing as she had literally nothing else to mess with anymore, Yvette was forced to sit and wait, and those forty minutes or so that it took her date to arrive were the most excruciating of her life. For almost the entire duration, she was irrationally paranoid that something she had prepared would find a way to mess itself up, causing a commotion at the least opportune moment imaginable. This incredibly unlikely scenario burrowed its way into her mind and refused to leave until the doorbell rang, and in those extra ten minutes after he was supposed to have already shown up, it was like a locomotive had made its way into her skull.

Derrick was a guy Yvette had met on a dating app, and he had been the one to approach her first. His bio had been blank and he had had only a single photo to speak of, and it was an unflattering selfie at that. What had compelled her to answer his request Yvette would never be able to grasp, yet since that fateful decision Yvette had had nothing but interesting conversations with the pseudo-mystery man on the other end of the internet. Now, on this fateful evening, she would finally meet that oh-so-intriguing person whom she had spoken so much with.

He was clad in a blue polo shirt and beige slacks, and he was about half a foot taller than her. Upon his face was a grin and in his hands was an expensive bottle of wine. Yvette took a deep breath before inviting him in, and then stepped aside to allow him into her home.

What would follow was the most successful date of her life, with someone who she felt herself immediately latch onto. He appreciated her non-American cuisine, he commented positively on the decorum of her apartment and on her outfit, and the two of them liberally (and most crucially comfortably) shared more details of their personal lives with one another. It was such a success that Yvette did something she had thus far never done in her life: asked for a second date. Derrick was more than happy to accommodate her wish, and within a week the two were getting coffee and spending time together downtown. Over the course of a month, they spent as much time as possible together. Derrick’s schedule was a bit more restrictive than hers due to work, as he put it, and so their meetings were often only twice a week, at most. However, Yvette never held this against him and was entirely willing to fit herself into his schedule wherever available. Having now met the fabled internet man in person, Dina had taken a much less annoyed tone towards Yvette’s fussing over herself, and had eventually come around to actively helping her roommate out whenever she was preparing for a date. 

The one-month anniversary of their first date became the excuse Derrick had given for finally inviting Yvette over to his house, a place which the two had yet to visit together. Though it was on a Saturday evening, and typically if they got dinner together it was on a weekday, Derrick told her that his roommate had gone to visit his parents for the weekend, which had freed up the house. Along with his typical schedule responses, Yvette took this in stride and accepted his offer with delight. 

She was, in a word, surprised that his house was an actual house when she arrived at the doorstep, having been under the assumption that Derrick lived in an apartment like she did. After being invited in with a jubilant smile and a hug, she removed her jacket and hung it on a rack next to the doorway. Her host quickly rushed off to the kitchen, saying, rather timidly, that he was still working on the meal. She gave him a light-hearted taunt about being less prepared for their date than she had been a month before, and then went and sat in the living room where he had told her to wait. His couch was one which looked like it could hold four, and he had a recliner in the living room as well. All the furniture was centered around a flat screen TV, one which sure looked expensive. In her head, she tried to think back to what it was that Derrick had told her he did for a job, and she suddenly realized that he had never given that bit of information, having only ever told her vaguely that he worked in ‘finance’. Yvette dismissed the thought by assuming he was an accountant, as she was pretty sure that the position was high-paying. There was a bookshelf adjacent to the TV, one which was almost full. The higher shelves held the usual suspects: King, Grisham, Clancy. It was the lower shelves which caught her eye, however, as the two closest to the floor held a number of books suited towards children, and young ones at that. Yvette frowned at them for a moment and would have gone on a mental tangent had Derrick not appeared in the room and announced that the meal was ready.

He had prepared spaghetti, and the two drank a red wine alongside it. Over dinner the two shared polite chit-chat about how they were doing, whatever struck their fancy. The food was well-cooked, the date another rousing success. It was this good atmosphere suffusing the home that spurred the two of them onwards, as their shared kisses on Derrick’s couch quickly became a lot more than that. She had only been with one other man in her entire life up to that point, and that had been less driven by emotion and more driven by alcohol. This time would be different, however, as she felt much stronger about this man than she ever had for anyone else. Thus, when he took her hand to lead her upstairs to his bedroom, she didn’t attempt to resist.

On their way to the bedroom he pointed down the hall and told her that the far room belonged to his roommate, and that she should avoid it because he was ‘dirty’. With a chuckle, she heeded his warning and followed him to his own bedroom. Derrick’s bed was queen-sized, and there was a bathroom connected to the room as well as a walk-in closet. Both the bathroom and the closet were closed, and Derrick didn’t bother to explain his overly-large room before leading her to the bed. Any and all lingering questions were soon swept from her mind and replaced with ecstasy. It was late when they finished, and Derrick fell asleep next to her.

Yvette lay back with her head propped up on a pillow and gazed at the far end of the room, watching a window next to a chest of drawers. Outside it was raining a steady, light patter which shone in the darkness of the night sky. The sound echoed in her mind as she gazed outwards, and it emanated in her ears as she turned her attention to the room. There was precious little decoration in the space, with bare walls and an empty carpeted floor. Two nightstands flanked either side of the bed, upon which sat a pair of lamps, the remote for the room’s small television, some keys, loose change and a box of tissues. She gazed at the chest of drawers next to the window, and upon it was what was likely the room’s only decoration. A framed photograph of a man and a woman in wedding attire, standing jovially next to one another arm-in-arm and laughing together. Yvette squinted and leaned up to see it as best she could in the room’s low light, and at this slightly closer vantage point it occurred to her that the man in the photo was Derrick. She had never seen the woman before, nor had he ever mentioned a past marriage, but various tidbits about him that had always tickled her in a funky sort of way came shooting back into her mind like the flow from a popped bottle of champagne. Yvette kept her eyes trained upon the photo and became very suddenly aware of the arm which Derrick had draped over her stomach while sleeping, an arm that all at once lost its warmth and gained in weight. She made no attempts to wake him, nor did she move out of his reach, but the comfort of the bed diminished greatly as she lay there thinking. Yvette turned her gaze downwards to Derrick’s sleeping face, and then to his hand. His face was blank, his hand held no jewelry. She looked once more at the photo across the room, sitting all alone atop the chest of drawers. It looked out of place by itself. 

She wanted to close her eyes and join him in his slumber. She couldn’t.