That's A Date

The Stare, pt.3

During her lunch meeting, Lisa kept finding her mind wandering slightly, as she tried to analyse her feelings. She managed to get through what her client needed to discuss, but she couldn't help feeling distracted and somewhat taken out of herself. She felt that part of her mind was looking at herself from outside, seeing herself as a separate person, maybe as the girl had seen her: seeing herself as a woman, as someone to smile at across the carriage, as someone to notice, to try and attract. Someone to fancy, she thought carefully, rolling the unfamiliar concept around her mind of being fancied by another woman. Someone attractive, to this other woman.

Lisa liked the knowledge that she had been found attractive. Dave had stopped telling her she was attractive a long time before they split up. She hadn't noticed any men look at her with much interest for a while, before or since splitting with Dave, and if she was honest she probably hadn't been paying much attention anyway. But she'd noticed the girl notice her, and she couldn't deny that that was surprisingly nice. The girl's interest in her was somehow a less aggressive interest, less likely to set her on edge if it got too intense. Not that it hadn't been real - or pretty obvious once she'd noticed; but Lisa didn't mind that, she found.

She also found that she didn't mind the fairly obvious assumption which followed, that the girl fancied her, that the girl's interest was at least partly a physical response. Sexual even, presumably. Lisa was surprised that, far from being an uncomfortable thought, it was actually rather intriguing. The thought of someone being aroused by her had always caused her to be aroused slightly herself, and she was pleasantly surprised that it made no difference that in this case it was another woman.

Dragging her attention back to her client, she managed to focus on work for a while.

As they were leaving the café, Lisa glanced across the gallery foyer and felt her heart skip a beat as she saw the girl shaking hands with a middle-aged man in a scruffy suit, then following him across the foyer towards them. It was definitely the girl: same blue dress, same cute shoes, same fair hair and nice figure. Her client was saying something but she wasn't listening, and as the man and the girl came near, Lisa hesitated. The girl glanced over, blinked once, then smiled as she was led past Lisa towards a door opposite the café entrance. Lisa felt herself blush, and wondered at the sudden way her insides had tightened, almost in nervous excitement. Taking a deep breath, she gathered her wits and resumed the conversation with her client as they left the gallery and returned to her office.

*

Some time into the afternoon, Lisa decided she wasn't going to be able to concentrate much in the office. The second, chance sighting of the girl had thrown her off-kilter. She could cope with being fancied by a cute stranger on the train, but seeing her again so soon after she'd only just come to terms with such a new experience was a bit much for her. She told her boss that she was going to work from home for the rest of the afternoon and gathered the paperwork on a couple of her more current projects, stuffing it into her laptop bag and hurrying out of the office before she could change her mind.

She thought for a second about going back to the gallery, just for another chance glimpse of the girl, but told herself not to be so bloody ridiculous. It was the girl who was stopping her from concentrating, and she did genuinely need to get some work done. She wandered back to the train station, taking her time because she knew there wasn't actually a train in her direction for another twenty-five minutes at least.

When she got to the station, about ten minutes before the train was due, she discovered the train had been delayed by ten minutes. She made to head for the waiting room, but her heart missed a beat for the second time that day as she saw the girl in the blue dress was waiting for the same train, a little further along. Lisa swore internally, and wondered why her body was reacting as if seeing the girl again was a good thing.