Along with all of its other luxurious appointments, the owner of the apartment also kept a full wine rack and liquor cabinet, along with a smaller refrigerator that held bottled beer and mixers. Seth opened a bottle of Chardonnay for her, while he settled for scotch. They sat down cozily on the buttery leather of the living room couch. He started off by saying "Linda, I'm not getting any younger. This fall I'll be thirty years old. I'm tired of running around and I want to settle down."
Linda felt as if she were sitting in the middle of a soap opera with a bad writer. "But, why me?"
"You're the only woman for me." He gazed down at her and his look did seem sincere.
Linda nodded. Something suddenly occurred to her. "Are you serious? Is this a joke? Some kind of a bet between you and Greg or something?"
Seth's mouth dropped open and he sat, silently, staring down at her for a moment. He tried to speak, but his lips only trembled. He put his head down.
When he covered his face with his hands, Linda felt bad. She realized that he was serious and that she'd probably just humiliated him.
She cuddled in closer to him, putting an arm around his shoulders. "Seth, I had no idea. I'm so sorry."
For a moment, she thought he was going to cry, but instead he shrugged and talked normal, in one of his signature sentences. "What do you have to be sorry about?" he said. "I'm the one who just made a dork of himself."
"Well it took me so much by surprise," she said. "We haven't talked in about a month. I thought we were just friends. To tell you the truth, I'd given up on you."
"But I haven't stopped thinking about you!" he went on, looking boyishly vulnerable as his voice cracked. "If you're totally freaked out about this, maybe we could see each other more. Get to know each other."
She already thought she knew him well enough, but she said something she hoped she wouldn't regret. "I've got an idea. Why don't you come to one of the dance parties?" It would give him a first hand chance to see what they were like, that they weren't all filled with silvery haired matrons and gay man, the way he seemed to think they were.
After they talked for two hours, during which Seth confessed to a whole trail of different women he'd known ever since they'd met. He always came back to the same refrain "But you were always special to me." When he finished his list, it surprised Linda that it wasn't as big as she thought it would be.