FIC: A New Road - Chapter 7
Marie’s POV
On Friday I was having second thoughts about going out with Ken - feeling as if I was somehow cheating on Scott. Jubilee wouldn’t let me cancel, saying that it was just dinner and not like I was pole-vaulting myself over the wall into a men’s prison yard.
When Ken came to pick me up he was grilled good-naturedly by a contingent of my well-meaning friends with Logan noticeably absent from the throng. Jubilee leaned into me and whispered something about ‘my type’, but I didn’t have the time to get into a discussion about it. After reassuring my friends that he would return me safely, Ken managed to steer me out of the front door, where he gallantly opened the car door for me, which impressed Kitty and Jubilee who stood watching us. As we pulled away Kitty gave me the thumbs up sign while Jubes pantomimed what I assumed were Scott’s concussive blasts.
At the restaurant we produced photos and shared fond memories of our respective spouses. It was comforting and not as awkward talking about Scott as I’d thought it might be. We’d both had good marriages and were worried that we’d never be able to recapture what we’d once had. Then Ken related some of his dating horror stories that included one woman who asked him if he’d ‘found the light’ and then spent the rest of the date trying to ‘save his soul’, another who turned out to be a call girl and how the *date* ended up costing him $100 even though he didn’t have sex with her - that would’ve cost him an additional $400. There was the woman who insisted on bringing her pet snake along on the date and another who turned out to be a member of a militant animal rights group, who threw a conniption fit when he ordered a steak and started screaming at him in the middle of the restaurant. Then there was the recent divorcee who spent the entire date telling him what shits men were and his most recent encounter was with a woman who asked him if she could videotape them having sex to put on her pay-per-view website. I didn’t know whether to be completely horrified or laugh, but I did suggest he write it all down so that he could submit his misadventures to a magazine someday.
“So what’s your story?” he asked, “Any strange quirks - like turning into a bat or a werewolf every full moon?”
“Well, I’m a mutant,” I told him, half expecting him to jump up and run out of the restaurant screaming, leaving me stuck with the bill.
“Yeah, kinda figured that when you told me where you lived. The school’s real purpose is the worst kept secret in Westchester County,” he replied casually while remaining seated.
“Oh,” was all I was able to get out.
“I have no prejudices, Marie.”
And he just scored two more brownie points.
“You’d be surprised at how most people do,” I replied, my voice a mix of sadness and resignation.
“I’m not most people,” he told me. Then, his curiosity piqued, he nonchalantly asked, “So what’s your *gift*?”
So I explained the whole ‘life-sucking but under control’ thing to him and when I was done he took my hand and stroked the back of it with his thumb and told me that he was glad I had control because it would be a shame for such beautiful skin to go untouched, which made me blush a red deeper than the wine we were drinking. We shared the dessert and he was right, they did serve a killer hot fudge cake. We lingered for a little while longer over a refill of our coffee, and then he drove me home where we stood by his car saying our goodnights. Little did I know that we had an audience.