A Bearable Partner: First Date

So to get back into the swing of things I think I'm going to stick to shorter serials for the rest of the year. This is a straight-up gay paranormal romance; hope you guys like it. :) 

******

Laquan set up the date on Growlr; they had both swiped right, and agreed to meet at Bouquet of Books after a few texts. It was on the way home from Laquan's job, but not a frequent stop. If things went south, he could just avoid it for a few weeks and supplement his crippling journal addiction somewhere else. 

When the prospect of meeting was just a hypothetical, it sounded fun. Now that he was here, sitting at the Daffodil Table nursing a caramel chai and waiting for his date to arrive, the nerves were making it impossible for his leg to be still. He bounced it as quietly as he could as he stared down at his phone, simultaneously hoping for and dreading a message from the man -- Cody, wasn't it? -- who was due to arrive in another five minutes. Maybe Cody would have to call it off because of work, or traffic, or hopefully any other reason. That way, the nerve-jangling prospect of meeting a stranger could be postponed for some other day. 

Laquan sighed. If he were being honest with himself, this day would be as good as any other to meet someone. He would never feel ready for this kind of thing, and he knew it. It'd be best to just push on through the anxiety and make the best of it. 

He had been in the city for almost a year now, and had managed to make a few friends here and there. Coworkers invited him to parties every once in a while, and he had found a few other nerds as a regular to several comic book shops and gaming stores. But he didn't have a crew to hang with. Most days, he stopped at a shop, gabbed with the clerk behind the counter for about twenty minutes, and came home to work or binge a TV show. And most days, he liked it that way. But lately there had been an itch, a piece of grit somewhere in his soul, that told him he was spending too much time alone and if he weren't careful he might end up being one of those people who died alone in their apartment, only discovered because neighbors were complaining of the smell...

So he set up a Growlr account, thinking that if he ever felt the need for companionship he could do what he imagined everyone else did -- find a fellow local lonelyheart online for a casual hook-up or maybe a few dates, or maybe a brief, passionate fling. Most of the people he found there, though, were too much for him -- too arrogant, or too needy, or too forward, or too emotional. He had begun to think that maybe Growlr just wasn't the space for an introverted gay man to find companionship and that maybe he should go to poetry readings or antiques shops to find other quiet gays just looking for someone to be in a room with them while they read. 

Then he saw Cody. His profile screamed introvert, and said he was looking for companionship, maybe something more. He had the look of a hipster programmer on the body of a powerlifting lumberjack; a mane of dark brown hair spilled out around a steady but wary gaze, framed by small oval glasses that somehow looked old-fashioned. According to the profile, he was around 6'8" tall and weighed 340 pounds. 

Laquan was pretty sure that was an exaggeration, but he couldn't fault the man for that. He had given himself an inch or two more height in his profile (5'9") while shaving off a few pounds (185 lbs) just to make himself seem a little more fit. Almost nobody wanted to be the size they were, but you could tell a lot about someone from the size they wish they could be. It intrigued him that Cody had decided to make himself that big in his profile; it might have scared most people off, but then again, maybe that was the point.

There was something about the look of his profile pic, though. It was your basic bust of a white guy with a mane of dark-brown and a full mountain-man beard to go with it. The shine of the hair and the general shape of the beard showed he at least believed in grooming, though. And his eyes...

They were huge and dark, maybe darker than Laquan's own. Most people would say that Cody had a bit of a blank expression beneath the small, hesitant smile he wore a lot less comfortably than that beard, but it was clear there was curiosity there, vulnerability, a quiet wariness that spoke of a difficult life borne stoically. And, perhaps most intriguing of all, the desire to take his first tentative steps towards happiness despite that. Laquan had felt a kindred spirit there, even through a meat-market app where rejecting strangers was as easy as swiping a finger. They both didn't quite belong there, but neither of them knew where else to go for what they wanted at this point. 

At least, that was the dream Cody he had in mind. 

Now, faced with the reality of meeting him, it occurred to him that the big man could be markedly different from his profile -- or even exactly the same, just not the way Laquan had thought him to be. Hope could be dashed to pieces in minutes, and he'd be back on the app, trying to find someone he could relate to, only with a little less confidence in his ability to pick a potential match. 

He reminded himself not to consider an experiment a failure until he had actually gotten the results. They hadn't even met yet. And if, when they did, there weren't sparks, it was easy enough to walk away.

The door swung open, chiming a bell as it did, and an absolutely enormous man squeezed through the frame shoulder-first. When he stretched himself out, his head rose over the hanging lights above each table and his broad chest seemed to fill the entirety of the door. His hair had been corraled under a baseball hat that had maybe been naturally grey or worn through to that color, with a bear paw on the front over the bill. His torso stretched the fabric of a red flannel shirt the size of a tent, and denim creaked over wide, powerful thighs. The man took a step inside, then another, carefully nudging his bulk through the close maze of small tables, and scanned the room until he saw Laquan sitting there, mouth hanging open, cup of chai halfway to his lips.

"Laquan?" The man's voice was a quiet rumble. He was at the table with another pair of steps, work boots loud against the wooden floor. 

He only nodded, then remembered himself a heartbeat later. He stood up quickly, secretly glad that it was hard to tell when he was blushing. "Yeah, that's me. Cody, right?" He smiled and stuck out a hand.

The big man swallowed it in his mitt and shook once, then let go. Laquan tried to ignore his pinched fingers. "Yeah," he said, what sounded like relief in his voice. "Nice to meet you."

"Glad you could make it out here," Laquan said, and found out he meant it. Once you got over the shock of the man's size, he seemed...almost timid. It put him at ease. "Do you want to go up and order something?"

Cody looked at the counter. "Oh yeah, guess I'd better. What's good here?"

"They brew a really good cup of tea if you don't mind the wait. All right coffee, great espresso drinks. The lavender honey latte is the seasonal, and you can't go wrong with that. It goes pretty well with their stonefruit tart."

The big man made a satisfied rumble. His beard bristled. "That sounds great. I'll be right back." He lumbered gracefully over to the counter, mumbling apologies whenever he thumped a table aside.

Laquan watched him at the register. The barista took an instinctive step back when he loomed over her and put in his order, but by the time she handed him his change the smile on her face seemed genuine. It was an amazing skill to him, the way Cody seemed to put other people at ease. Try as he might, he'd never been able to crack it. He was nowhere near as big, but when you were a black man you didn't need to be in order to make people uneasy. 

Cody came back with the little metal stand holding his order number in one massive paw, twirling it between two fingers. "They say it'll be a couple of minutes."

Laquan nodded. "It takes a minute, but it's worth the wait." He gestured to the seat across the table. "They'll bring it out when it's ready, you can sit down."

Cody looked down at the little wooden chair doubtfully. The seat might have held one cheek if he sat carefully.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Uh...we can get you a booth if you'd like." 

"No, I can make it work." To his credit, he gripped the chair's back and lifted it like it was a piece of paper, setting it back about a foot. Then he wedged himself into the space with surprising precision for a man his size, mitts covering half of the table as he slowly lowered his weight. Laquan could have sworn he heard the legs complain as they compacted. There was a frozen heartbeat where both of them held their breath, but the chair held. The entire bookstore/cafe/florist shop resumed its bustle all at once.

"I really appreciate you coming out here on a Wednesday night, man." Laquan sipped his latte, trying to keep his tone casual. 

"It's a nice place," Cody said, looking around with his nose tilted like he was smelling something. "I really like the flowers."

"Do you garden?" 

"What?" Cody seemed caught off-guard by the question. "Oh, no. No, not really." 

"Oh. Just like learning about them?"

The big man gave him an uneasy grin and looked down at his hands. "Something like that."

The anxiety was rolling off of Cody in tangible waves. It made Laquan forget about his own awkwardness for a moment to draw the other man out of his shell. "What do you like to do, then?"

"Hiking," Cody said immediately. "Fishing. Outdoors stuff."

"You look like the type," Laquan laughed. "You probably know how to clean and filet a fish in seconds."

This time the smile was wider, and there was a rush of color in Cody's cheeks. "Maybe not that fast. But I know my way around stripping one."

"Mm-hmmm," Laquan said, eyeing Cody meaningfully. "I bet you do." He had no idea what on Earth possessed him to make that comment. It had slipped out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying. Again, he thanked his melanin for hiding his blush. But the man was...attractive. Laquan caught himself imagining running hands over that barreled chest, up the bullish slope of his shoulders, down that broad back...

"Do you go out hiking?" Cody's eyes locked onto his, and Laquan realized he had been staring. 

"Uh...no. No, that's not for me. I come from a city family, we don't do the woods."

"Why not?" 

Laquan shrugged.  "Never really got into it when I was a kid, and no one I knew ever went camping. Just never found an excuse to go."

"Oh, it's great," Cody said, and straightened. "Especially at night. It's so peaceful, but noisy too. And you look up to see a sky full of stars....it makes you feel like a small being in an endless world. It's incredible."

Laquan blinked, impressed. "I have to say, you're kind of selling me on it."

Cody smiled. "I hope I can be your excuse to come see it sometime."

And that was it. Laquan felt a warmth spread over his face, like a blush that somehow fluttered his stomach at the same time. It was then he knew there'd be a second date, and he was already looking forward to it.