She was just someone I met at a party. It was one of those mundane things I went to, because I had to network. Actually, it was more of a business meeting with cocktails. From the moment I arrived, it seemed, I was itching to leave, until I spotted her.
I had never seen her before. From the moment I saw her, sitting on an ottoman in the large parlor at my employer's home, I could not take my eyes from her for longer than it took to make the person speaking to me think I was actually listening to what was being said. In fact, I have no idea what the older gent, obviously a little drunk and very preoccupied with himself and his position in the company, said at all. She was wearing a conservative business suit.
Dark blue jacket and skirt with a white blouse. Her matching blue stockings led down to spiked, yet still fairly conservative, blue heels. The skirt, as she sat upon that ottoman, sipping white wine from a crystal glass, rode up a bit on her luscious thighs.
I stood there mutely, as I nodded in what I hoped were all the right places in the old guy's monologue, and watched her. She was looking up at the CEO of our company, and smiling as he spoke to her; before he moved on to greet others. It was then that our eyes met across that spacious room.
Her eyes almost made my knees weak. I was embarrassed to be caught staring, but I could not avert my eyes from her gaze. She smiled, as she lifted her glass to her full, red lips. Her uncommonly light blue eyes danced, as she obviously knew she had an admirer across the room. As she brought the glass to her lips, she appeared to wink at me. I suppose I flushed red, because she smiled wickedly. The woman was a born tease, I thought. That idea made me want her even more.
Just then, someone spoke to her, and her head turned. Her auburn, shoulder-length hair tossed a bit. I almost gasped. I was young then. It was half a lifetime ago, yet I was not so young that I was a novice in matters between men and women.
She was toying with me. I knew it. She was about ten years older than me, and likely the wife of one of the division heads. She was probably just a thirty-something soccer mom enjoying the attentions of a testosterone-filled, junior executive who was watching her every move from across a crowded room. Or, she may have been an executive herself, I surmised, perhaps from one of the branches upstate. In any event, the woman enthralled me.
As I was mulling just who this woman might have been, one of my friends nudged my arm and handed me a fresh Heineken. He said something about the party being a lot like a trip to a proctologist.
I could only shake my head and laugh. When I turned back, I saw that she was gone. The ottoman was now vacant. To me, the vacant ottoman was a void. I found myself hoping she would return.
I glanced about the room, but she was not to be found. When she did not return for several minutes, I decided to go outside for a smoke. I slipped out onto the patio, as another smoker slipped past me back into the parlor. Outside, it was quiet. The patio was quite large and beyond it, steps led to a path down to a boathouse on the lake. I took a seat on a bench facing the boathouse and enjoyed the respite from the din of a multitude of shoptalk and poorly chosen music.
I usually smoke only when I drink, which happens only occasionally. I had, in fact, opened the pack of cigarettes some weeks before. The cigarette was good and stale as a result. After a couple of drags, I crushed it out on the bottom of my shoe, and tossed it in a small trashcan nearby.
"Nasty habit, huh?" The voice was feminine and self-assured. It had a lilt to it that was exotic and exciting without any effort to be either. In an instant, without looking over my shoulder to see from whom the voice came, I knew with absolute assuredness that it came from her.
"Yes, it sure is. I'm glad I only smoke when I'm drinking," I replied. I sat still. I wanted so badly to turn to her. To once again see her smile, but I was afraid I was only imagining it was her. Perhaps, I feared, it is only one of my co-workers who, like me, had stepped out more to avoid the boredom of the gathering within the home of our CEO. Perhaps, like me, she had only come to avoid saying the wrong thing, which would forever prevent her upward mobility.
I heard the click of heels behind me. They came close slowly. Finally, my intense need to look into those striking blue eyes, to see what they looked like in the light of a full moon reflected off the lake, overcame my fears that it was not her.
I turned to look up at her. At that exact moment, I caught the scent of her perfume. It was light, yet sensual. It became her and, indeed, it was her. There she stood less than a foot from me, the object of my attentions for the past hour.
