Challenge
Philosophy on Love (Completed)“Oh come on, you have to!” Herr friend Maja was saying. “I already looked at your palm pilot and your free. What’s one night going to do?”
“You went on a date with him before, you don’t need me.” She was searching through papers. “Where are my worksheets? I know I photocopied them this morning.” She was opening and closing drawers.
Maja sighed, “Can you please stop thinking about worksheets…’
She laughed at that remark, “You want me to stop thinking about my job?”
“Yes, for like three seconds. He has this friend, not necessarily looking for a date, but a friend and I’m not going to let him sit there while me and Rayver are going to do most of talking.”
“Well, that’s a consequence he needs to deal with since he signed up for it.”
“That’s the problem,” she put her hand on the stack of papers I was looking through. “I kind of volunteered you.” I glared at her in disbelief.
“What do you mean you volunteered me?”
She stood up straight, “He said that his friend just came back from the States and he wanted to go out and have a good time which kind of coincided with our date. That’s besides the point,” she shook her head, “Anyways, I said I had a friend who hasn’t been on in a date for awhile, and so I volunteered you to join us.”
“Great, you made me sound desperate and a loner.” I said finally finding the papers I was looking for and began handing them out on the desks. “Look, I don’t know, I’m supposed to go look for some new furniture and buy my sister’s wedding gift. And I have papers to grade, I’m busy.”
“Look, it’s only for a couple of hours, and I promise you won’t be disappointed. You can leave if you want to…but please give it a chance.” Maja smiled and left the classroom to get ready for her class.
So Kim hadn’t been on many dates before, but she sure knew what and how to love. She was the kind of person who truly believed in love at first sight, and happily ever afters. She was a hopeless romantic and she believed that one day, her soul mate would find her. But in the mean time, she needed to stay focused on the task at hand, which was to make a good living and begin living her fantasies of the dreams she had at night; meeting her one true love and being whisked away to their faraway castle.
She stayed in her classroom far longer than anyone else ever did, grading papers, making new plans and formatting new ideas to teach to her students. School ended at 2:30, and it was now 6:47. She yawned and her eyes were hurting from staring at her computer screen for hours. Kim organized her already organized desk and got her purse and briefcase ready. Before turning off the light, she stared at the picture of her parents on their wedding day. She could really see the love in their eyes, and one day she knew she’d have a picture like that. Kim smiled at the picture and left her classroom, locking up before leaving the premises.
Kim opened her daily planner and set her eyes on today’s date: November 3, 2009, and laughed when she saw Maja’s script: DOUBLE DATE @ BLUSH, 6:30. What the heck, after grading 150 papers, she needed a drink.
She parked her new 2009 Saturn Vue Green Line 2 Mode Hybrid next to Maja’s white Chevrolet Camaro. She stepped out, straightened out her grey high-waisted shirt and walked into the bar. She spotted Maja in her silver mini dress she usually during clubbing immediately. “Hi,” Kim mouthed and set her bag down to hug Maja.
“Kim, you made it,” Maja stood up and squeezed her tightly, “You could’ve changed,” she whispered in her ear.
“I’m here aren’t I?” Kim smiled and sat down and instantly caught the gaze of a man staring directly at her.
He was leaning back in his chair relaxed and holding his glass of whiskey in his hands. His eyes never left her gaze, not for a second. “Um…Kim, this is Gerald, Gerald Anderson, Rayver’s friend. This is Kim Chiu”
He held out his hand, and Kim put hers in his. He lifted it up to his mouth, and his lips grazed over her skin. “Pleasure.” He set it down on the table like a gentleman, and then waved his hand over, signalling the waiter. “A Cosmopolitan for our new guest.”
The waiter nodded and walked away. Kim eyed him carefully, “You think you know me enough to order me a drink. We were introduced.”
His lips twitched upward in a grin. “Not you in particular, women.”
“Oh yes, Gerald here knows a lot about women.” Maja chimed in.
“Is that right? Than you should know that I find it extremely condescending of you that you ordered my drink,” Kim answered her smile disappearing from her lips.
Maja kicked her under the table, “I’m sorry, Kim has this…She’s one of those independent, do it yourself type of girl.”
Gerald nodded, still staring at her. “Are you saying I ordered wrong?”
The waiter appeared with her drink and she took a sip, “I’m saying I prefer to order myself a drink.”
He finally relieved her of his gaze and looked down laughing to himself. “I’m sorry Ms. Chiu. I did not mean for it to sound condescending.”
Her perfect, red, supple lips formed into a little pout as she leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on the table in front of her. “So let my entrance distract you from what you were talking about. Continue…” she waved her hands in the air.
“Rayver was just saying how excited he was about getting a promotion at work. He’s going to be editor-in-chief to The Metropolitan. Can you believe that? I’m dating someone in a senior position.” Maja was extremely enthused.
Kim smiled towards Rayver, “Congratulations You must be so excited.”
“I am…I am.” He took Maja’s hand in his and kissed it. “But my boss wants me to write a piece for him, something modern.”
“You should ask Kim for help.”
Kim shook her head, “No, I couldn’t…I don’t know anything about journalism.”
“So what do you know about?” Gerald cut in staring at her.
“Excuse me?” Kim didn’t appreciate his tone.
He smiled, relaxing her. “I meant, what you do?”
“She teaches English literature at the school I work at. It’s how we met.” She answered for me.
Gerald nodded, “Oh so you teach like Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Twain, Dickens, Hawthorne?”
Maja laughed, “Kim has a specialty of contemporary romance novelists, especially things like Romeo and Juliet.”
“So you believe in that crap?” He asked.
Maja moved back, closer towards Rayver, “Maybe you should stop him.”
“No way, this is the first who hasn’t given him what he wants.” Rayver was amused and allowed whatever to happen.
“It’s not crap.” Kim said, she taken aback, no one has ever questioned what she did. “I studied all these authors and what they went through in order to bring these amazing works is not crap. Shakespeare has met the love of his life and he wrote about the path bringing him there. If you dissect each and every one of these authors, you will see that their storylines have at least some truth in them, that mirror what they went through. Their works – especially the romance ones – talk about something beyond our understanding. They give us hope that one day, someday, we’ll figure out what Romeo felt about Juliet, and the meanings behind the words he said for her. That is not crap.”
Gerald nodded and then burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. I tried to hold it in. Are you trying to say that reading about these…fiction storylines, they make believe in love and wonder and happiness?” Kim glared at him.
Maja took Rayver’s hand, “Let’s go dance.” Rayver stood up at once leaving the two to battle it out.
“Sweetie, love isn’t a fairy tale. You can’t rely on authors to show you how to figure who your true love is. Actually, there are no such things as true love because love is just love. And you can’t pray or hope it’ll happen, because it’s all in the signals in which men and women present themselves. We all work the same, we were born with more or less the same brain, same feelings, same emotions. You read into the person in front of you, and you’ll understand more about everyone than what you can get from the books.” He explained his philosophy on life and love. He took a sip from his glass.
Kim nodded, “So you’re saying you understand women to the core?”
Gerald set his glass down and smiled confidently. “More or less, yeah.”
“Okay, show me. Tell me what I want, what I think, what I feel.” She challenged leaning in.
He did the same and took a deep breath, “What do you want…well, I’m not going to be specific, but I know that women want to fall in love. They crave that emotional attention from men. They want men to assure women that everything is going to be okay and they want us to perform their personal fairy tale.”
Kim’s smile faded, because that was what she did want. She wanted a man who understood her needs and who’d put her first above everything. But she shook her head, “Too vague,” she concluded. “Of course women want that, that’s like saying men want and need in order to survive.” She laughed, “I guess you’re not that bright.”
Gerald laughed at her resistance. “You’re right, but it’s not easy telling you want after one meeting.”
“Oh, and I thought it was all about the signals we give off.” She recalled smiling at him.
He laughed, “Touche. How about this, you see me again, and I’ll show you what I mean.”
Kim leaned back and stared at him. His clear complexion of half Filipino, half American. The way his facial features were perfectly placed as if he was a character directly off a book. His broad shoulders and masculine, powerful chest. She wondered how it feel under her fingertips. She shook that thought away, obviously he was an intriguing, attractive, y man that it would mean she going to end up alone if she didn’t say yes. “Fine. I’ll play along. You show me what you know, and prove my theory wrong. Prove that love isn’t perfect and can never be perfect; prove that men and women are the same, and that there’s unique about them. Prove that there are no such things as story-book love.”
“That’s a lot of pressure. What do I get when I do?”
“If,” she emphasized, “you do, I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Gerald smiled, “Whatever I want?”
“Whatever,” she assured.
He nodded, “One date. And I’ll show you what better than perfect there is,” his eye brow was raised in a ual, sensual way that made her blush. “I won’t wait for you to agree considering you already promised.
Kim her dry lips that made him want to taste her. Her lips curved into a seductive smile that showed she was willing to agree to the challenge. “But that’s if you win.” She finished her drink in one big gulp and took her bag onto her shoulder. She stood up giving him the chance to check her over which she knew he was going to do; he wasn’t the only one who knew what men want, and looked at him. “Will you tell Maja I left.” He nodded. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she grabbed a napkin and a pen from her bag. She wrote her number on it and put it against her red lips. “Call me,” she winked and walked away after handing it over.
Her hips swayed side to side, giving him the perfect opportunity to see her beautiful curves. He smiled at her gorgeous silhouette and stared at the napkin. “You bet I will,” he said slipping the napkin in his pocket.
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