Page 14 of Text Me A Kiss

Maybe I’d just signed a few thousand dollars of clothes over to a clothes donation, but I didn’t care. A quick call, an impatient, pace-back-and-forth wait, and I was in the back of a car on my way to The Juilliard School.

I’ve never been so glad and also terrified of being Graham Emerson.

When I walked through the doors, the woman at the front desk knew me immediately. “Graham Emerson!” she said, rising to shake my hand. “Good to see you, we weren’t expecting you. Are you sponsoring a student?”

“Sort of.” I glanced around the entrance hall, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions, wondering how to ask after Kitten, and plotting a different route out of the building if I left with Kitten so that I wouldn’t have to walk by someone who recognized me. “There’s a particular practice I’m looking for, if that’s all right. Should be from 3 PM to 6 PM?”

This would be a great time to flash my even pearly-whites, lean against the desk, and say “Please, Insert-Name-of-Woman-Here?” I really did need to get better at remembering names. Sometimes I felt like I was playing a crossword puzzle and all the words were names of attractive women I’d met—and if I didn’t pick the right one, well… suffice it to say I’d been slapped before.

“Because it’s you, I suppose it’s alright, although we usually don’t permit spectators to enter the studios. Upstairs, to the right, and down the hall; Room S12.”

I shot her a smile, thanked her, and headed for the stairs. Why were they so short compared to normal stairs? Two could stack on top of one another to make a single stair anywhere else. Getting to the top without taking any two at a time took physical restraint, but I managed and strode off quickly to find this Room S12.

I found it. My hand shook as I reached for the knob, then I twisted and the door opened.

It was like some kind of wonderland where everything was polished, beautiful, and clean. Soft tones of spring whispered from hidden speakers, and as I entered, the strings soared and a wave of dancers leapt into a flawless jeté.

Numbers and business didn’t leave much room in my mind for imagination. But, for just the first moment that I spotted my Kitten, the music and the very realness of her fantastic classical dancing turned her into a little woodland fairy.

She saw me within seconds. During those tiny, tiny split seconds when the head of a ballerina lingered before and after the spin of her body during pirouettes, Kitten’s eyes fixated on me, but she kept dancing. Beautiful, unstoppable, focused—my Kitten wouldn’t allow my presence to shake her flawless calm.

I had seen so many ballets and watched so many star performers wow the audience and capture the soul and beauty of ballet. In Kitten, I could see—I could feel—the same energy that fueled those stars.

So much impatience had filled my heart. Impatience to hear Kitten’s voice, to touch her skin and see if it was as soft and smooth as it looked, to know what her laugh sounded like and what drew it from her.

The second I saw her dancing, all the impatience washed away and I wanted this moment to last forever.

The moment didn’t last forever. It ended, replaced by a better one.

“Hi!” The music had stopped seconds ago, but my happiness took Kitten’s voice and turned it into a music for my heart.

“Hi,” I responded. The word itself was so inadequate, but I hoped that my outstretched hand and unwavered eyes said everything I couldn’t.

“So, honestly, your username was super hard to make a good nickname out of,” Kitten said bluntly, tugging me out of the way of a woman rolling a sort of prop out of the room. “So, in my mind, you’re Pridamant. From the play.”

“In that case,” I said, bending down elegantly and kissing your hand, “Maybe, like Dorante did in the ballet, you can introduce me to the magician that made you so talented and beautiful.

Kitten blushed at my admittedly rather clever compliment. “The Magician of Hard Work, it was, good Sir.”

We laughed together, and I wondered at how comfortably we had both transitioned from chatting online to talking in person. “Let me make my impossible username up to you. Will you join me for dinner?”

“Of course, Pridamant. Let me but change into more suitable attire, and we shall depart forthwith.” Dramatically, she took my hand, only to slowly and gracefully step away as she released it. I could swear I heard a giggle as she disappeared through a door at the back of the studio.

Apparently, Kitten was just as quick-minded in real conversation as she was in her responses during our chats. She took my flirty little joke about the magician, ran with it, and managed to act cuter than the animal from which she got her name.

Before, I’d been obsessed with Kitten. Now…. Well, I’d just have to let the evening play out.

Kitten returned after just a few minutes, bringing with her the adorable banter of someone comfortable around other people. So little changed from our conversations online, but those tiny changes thrilled me and turned our evening into something incredibly special.

When I said something funny, I could watch her face, smiling as the corners of her mouth dimpled into the adorable smile I’d seen so many times in pictures. And I could listen to her! Finally, I could give a voice to the clever, intriguing woman behind the words I hung on every day. Every little action, every little reaction—they were all little things I hadn’t been able to know about her until now, and I drank them up like a man in the desert.

And I kept noticing the stupidest, most random little things. Like when we walked into the restaurant, I held open the door, and Kitten thanked me and swept past me in her tall boots and warm coat.

I couldn’t smell fish frying, or buttery garlic, or anything else you might smell in a seafood restaurant. Kitten’s hair smelled like fresh flowers after a spring rain. That was such an absurdly specific thing for my mind to come up with that I stopped, hand on the door, until Kitten asked, “Booth or table?” Then, without waiting for a reply: “Booth? Excellent. Booth please,” she told the waitress.

Then, the waitress asked what I wanted to drink—or so Kitten told me later along with a giggle at how I had spaced out. I mean, give a man a break! Ignore my Kitten, bobbing her head and singing quietly along to the song playing over the chatter of the dining people? Impossible.

We both chose water, until I brought up wine and we decided to order two glasses.