**Part I** *Saturday, June 5th* *** He wondered if people were looking at him, silently forming judgements about the ghostly man that stared--drilled holes, really--into the silverware on the dinner table. He pondered, as he often did, about the versions of him that existed in the minds of others: was he thoughtful? Curiously observant about the minutiae before him, penning parables and tales behind curtains of grief? Was he analytical? Calculating, with awesome speed and precision, some important equation that once stumped the world's best and brightest brains? Was he, perhaps, just a little bit stupid? A simpleton gaping mindlessly at the world that passed him by, waiting to included or--at the very least--asked to mind his manners? He was none of these, of course, though the latter seemed to be the most apt description he could find at the moment--for while his body stayed the course and navigated its way forward in time, his mind was altogether a different story. Frequently he found his thoughts drifting, wandering far from what he would typically consider productive, and always they arrived to the prior evening. Though he had relaxed, and showered, and brushed, and fed, and jogged, and showered, he could not yet explain the peculiar events from the night before--much less put it to rest. He supposed that was unsurprising, given how little he'd slept since the 42 minute interval. Still, he had hoped after hours of mulling the experience over under the surface, his mind would come up with *something* in the way of a hypothesis. But alas, neither he, nor his poetic (nor his mathematic, nor his simplistic) counterpart could produce a hairline fracture in the mystery. And before he could donate the question any more of his time, he looked up to see his date walking to the table, returning from the bathroom. He had met Jordan through a friend several months ago, but having found himself recently single--practically speaking for only the past twenty-two hours, though he had been emotionally such for at least a week now--he saw no reason not to accept Jordan's mid-afternoon offer for dinner this evening. It was either dinner with Jordan, or a sleazy sounding party at a new-money apartment his friend invited him to. *Whose party is this?* he'd asked Carly in response. *Some guy on Nextdoor*, she'd said with full conviction. *Fucking Nextdoor,* he'd kept to himself. Jordan approached and made eye contact, beaming a wide smile as he pulled his chair out to sit. His eyes were a soft shade of blue, cool and inviting, but not icy. His rounded features seemed to be most comfortable falling into an expression of curious innocence, almost verging on naïveté. From the little interaction they'd had together, he was pretty sure this physical attribute was also indicative of Jordan's social mannerisms. "Welcome back," he greeted Jordan with exaggerated enthusiasm. "I was beginning to worry you had climbed out the bathroom window." *Stupid. That was fucking stupid.* He had a terrible habit of letting dumb jokes reach his mouth unchecked. But Jordan smiled, and chuckled, and rested his elbows on the table, hands clasped together up near his face. "Well I was trying but I couldn't figure out the latch. Figured I'd try the women's room after appetizers." He met his soft blue eyes again and allowed his amusement to show--something he didn't often do, being his own smile's biggest critic. "Speaking of appetizers... thoughts on splitting a plate of buffalo sticks?" Jordan eyed him with one eyebrow raised, the tell-tale expression of somebody asking a question. To further highlight the interrogative nature, the sentence had ended with an upward lilt in pitch--the unmistakeable cadence of a query, pending an answer. And yet, despite overwhelming evidence indicating the purpose of Jordan's inquiry and the appropriate nature of response, he couldn't help but ignore Jordan's latest addition to the conversation, instead opting for a question of his own. "Why did it take you so long to ask me out?" *And what the fuck kind of question is that? Are you insane?* Jordan paused, looking up to establish eye contact once again. For an earsplitting moment, the temperature in his refreshing pools began to drop. But then... he smiled again. He closed his almost-icy eyes and released another chuckle, and when the lids lifted again, the orbs were back to their inviting selves. "Well," he sucked in a breath through his teeth and clicked his tongue, "Carly *did* tell me when she introduced us that you were not... strictly available." He tilted his head down, but maintained eye contact--a misbehaving dog caught in the act, pleading for forgiveness. *Showtime.* "So that night at the bar, when I had to shut you down..." Jordan grimaced, and as he watched him he kept his smile inside. He always enjoyed making them squirm-- especially when he could tell they expected him to explode. "You knew I had a boyfriend?" Jordan just nodded. He morphed his face into a grotesque combination of repulsion and anger, bringing his pupils closer together, brows knit tighter than the watch on his wrist--probably his best work--and sucked in a deep breath. He tightened his eyelids more than was necessary, even for being dramatic, and slowly allowed his mouth to open. But in the last microsecond, he relaxed into a smile, opening his eyes and jumping headfirst into Jordan's pools. "That's a relief! Here I was becoming convinced my relationship status had been doing damage to my sex appeal." He hoped that was funnier than it sounded to himself, but he didn't look at Jordan's face to find out. Jordan cleared his throat. "So... thoughts on splitting a plate of buffalo sticks?" Deciding that he was, after all, going to order the chicken quesadilla appetizer as his meal, he closed his menu and set it to the side. He then realized that Jordan had said something--something that had all the makings of a question he should answer. He was not willing to sacrifice his pride in his sense of hearing--which is not an insecurity he particularly even has, but enough time had passed that he resolved to pretend it is, lest the pause become awkward. So he ignored it. Again. Which Jordan had had quite enough of. "I'm getting buffalo sticks. You can have a few if you want." Jordan immediately took a sip of his water to conceal what might have been irritation in his voice. For whatever reason (at no fault of his own, of course), the imperative proved to be, wholeheartedly, a more effective method of introducing the concept of 'buffalo sticks.' And, to that regard: "What the hell are buffalo sticks?" he said, with the remarkably impressive air of someone fully attentive to the details of the present conversation. "They're like mozzarella sticks, but they come dressed in like, a spicy... buffalo... sauce." Jordan either couldn't keep his bitter expression to himself, or made absolutely no effort to. "That sounds... really unique." He strained to hold back his smirk, hoping to keep any more animosity from joining the conversation. But Jordan chuckled, looking down at the table. "They're something else, I won't lie." A warm smile joined his features, juxtaposed nicely against his sparkling ponds. "You should try a bite." "That'll be contingent on the aroma that accompanies them." Jordan didn't laugh at that one, though. Cringing inside, he sent out a telepathic cry for a diversion, which the waiter wasted no time in answering. "Do we wanna start our evening with some appetizers--maybe onion rings, or fish tacos?" "We'll do an order of buffalo sticks--two plates to share, please." Jordan made eye contact with the waiter for the latter half of the sentence. He swallowed the pang of jealousy, and noted the territorial significance he instinctively associated with Jordan's attention. "Buffalo sticks! One of our more obscure menu options," the waiter commented as he documented the request, ignorant to the social ramifications of his tone. "I'll get those in and out for you ASAP!" The waiter returned the conversation to the two of them and made his way to disrupt another couple's tense evening. But the conversation didn't start up again. Jordan, hands on the table, stared at the space between his fingers, tapping out some unheard rhythm on the cloth. He could almost hear Jordan's train of thought slowing to a halt as it pulled into its destination, and he resolved to make his next move. Jordan lifted a hand, hinged at his elbow on the table, and opened his mouth. But he didn't say anything--and after a brief pause, he moved his elevated hand down to his waistline. And pulled out his phone--ringing, from *Amber*. "Excuse me--sorry this... might be important." Jordan slid his chair back and stood, walking toward the lobby at the front of the restaurant, and answered the phone call. He passed the seconds of Jordan's phone call by once again drilling holes into various items on the dinner table--his water glass, primarily--all the while avoiding any eye contact with the the crowd of dinner guests that were most assuredley throwing him pitying glances. He had no doubt let slip one too many distasteful jokes, all at once revealing the cards of just how unserious he was by his very nature. A mistake he was sure he had made many times prior--and one that, whether by internal design or glorious happenstance, was consistent in triggering an abrupt change in attitude with regards to the present circumstances. So, when Jordan sauntered back toward the table, to deliver the untimely news of his urgently-required presence, somewhere else, he felt remarkably little in the way of disappointment. "I... feel horrible about this..." Jordan began his lame excuse (which he did not actually pay any attention to, though he would not openly admit this detail upon later recountance), and when he was finished, he added, almost genuinely, "Can we reschedule?" He forced himself to make eye contact with Jordan--and slipped, headfirst, into his twin ponds. He suddenly found himself unable to maintain his bitter demeanor as he responded, "Not a problem--text me!" He tried not to show to cringe visibly at his own words. Jordan moved quickly around the table and bent forward slightly, planting a kiss on his cheek. "I will," he promised. And then Jordan was dashing back toward the lobby, past the hostess, and out the front entrance. He stared at the closing door, imagining how it should--how it would--swing open, and how Jordan would come running back in and fix it. But the door never opened. And Jordan was gone. But someone, he realized by the hair rising up the back of his neck, was standing at the table behind him. "One order of buffalo sticks for the table!" The waiter, it seemed, felt he had spent time enough standing in awkward silence. "And two plates to share." And, apparently, felt it would be more appropriate as a moment of awkward loud. "Excellent," he responded, finally breaking eye contact with the door, letting his illusion vaporize into mist, and turning his attention toward his newly received blessings. The waiter set the plates on the table one after the other--his first, then the ghost's, significantly more hesitantly. After the waiter retreated to fully vertical, he wove his hands together pityingly behind his back. Looking slowly from the empty seat across him to the upsetting dish between him and the void, he managed to squeeze, through tight lips, a very distasteful, "Thank you." for the buffalo sticks, following it with, "and the bill, please." *** **(Part II)** He switched off the engine Of his dusty BMW, but sat in silence in the cabin rather than getting out. He wasn't fully convinced his celLular-powered navigation tool had brought him to the correct address--or perhaps he'd typed it in wrong from Carly's text, because he was always too proud to copy-and-paste-- but after catchIng sight of the leftoVer buffalo sticks in his passenger seat, contained in a to-go box that was liberally dotted with vEntilation holes, he decided he would Risk it anyway. When he got in front of the car, it became clear from the sight (and, he could have *sworn* the smell about the property-- though he was likely delirious, a common side-effect of prolonged buffalo inhaltion) that his destination at the end of the 20 yard walkup was *very* new-money. And he could not, for the life of him, diagnose what aspect of the enormous home would lend itself to being classified as an apartment. %% All-in-all, the entire building had a very contemporary architecture style, sporting a vertically juxtaposed open-concept living room, framed in plain view by large glass window-walls. The main flesh of the house *appeared*, from this distance, to be solid marble--he assumed this was an intentional illusion, because marble, in his opinion, would be an incredibly impracitcal material choice for the suspended-and-elevated style chosen here. (He would *not*, at this moment, consciously acknowledge that he knows remarkably little about architecture or construction.) Fortunately, by the time he had finished mentally critiiquing the location of the party, he had arrived at the front door-- or what likely would have been a front door, were it not two sliding glass panels, fully moved to each side to allow entry for the mass volume of people seen bouncing about the front entry alone.