Just Another Night

It takes me a long time to dress. The lingerie is easy. The other stuff is harder. He keeps texting me to confirm times, tell me he's on time, tell me he can't wait to see me. I like walking out into the night not knowing how things will go. Where we will go to first, if he'll be in a good mood, where we'll end up, how we'll feel at the end of the night. I like that first part – when I get in his car, try to assess the mood, talk small talk, listen to what music he has chosen to play, watch him squirm as he gets over his nerves, tease him whenever I can, try to be playful.

The beer garden is quiet. Not a lot of people around and we drink some beers. He loves the beers – there's a good variety on tap and he likes that they're all foreign. The talk is stilted at first, but soon it's flowing and he's more at ease, he's starting to build, loosening up and letting go. He's dressed up for the night and it's kind of an unusual choice for him – kind of date-like, as if we're out on a first date. He looks clean and tidy and not sexy at all – and I find that just gorgeous.

We're bouncing stories off each other and I just love the way he gets so involved in my stories, validates my theories, tells me I'm clever and brave, laughs at my foibles in a gentle way, makes me want to tell him more – everything. The stories are new – what happened today, this week and some are old – what happened before we met, what happened months ago. If the stories are new, he knows all the characters and adds comments about how he thinks they would have reacted and if the stories are old, he wants to know all about the unknown characters.

We're talking about all the stuff we have in common, talking about work, talking about people and how they behave, talking about the wait staff and the other punters. He loves the way I get a kick out of his stories and he becomes more animated once he knows he's in safe territory. I want to know all about the characters in his stories, how he feels about them, why they reacted in a certain way, what that means to him.

He's telling me about an encounter he had with a guy. How when he was interstate for business he met a bloke at a bar and they held hands and talked. He said they didn't take it further and I believed that when he said it, though the truth might be different. He said he'd never think of telling that to anyone – but me, at that time. That made my head spin – the story itself and the fact that he could share it.

We break for a smoke and we're looking out on the highway, amazed at where we're at, amazed that we're there together. Happy to be there together. Happy that we're nowhere else. The crazy city that we live in is buzzing right before our eyes – so at odds with what we both believe in yet so intoxicating to us both.

We're both 'pretty happy' by the time we leave and we think about going to another bar but we don't want to so we get more supplies and head to our favourite park. It's right in the middle of things but really it's all ours and we're totally isolated. We're at the bottom of the tiny park, down a steep incline, looking out to the houses on the water, marveling at the quiet.

Him opening up has been a good thing and it makes us both relax. I'm feeling pretty free and my mood reflects this and I think this encourages him to keep talking truthfully. He's talking about his frustrations, his dreams, his unfulfilled dreams. I'm talking about how simple it is to chase your dreams. He's talking like it's an impossibility. We're touching like we're one – like we're both in complete unison. I think we both felt the bubble at the same time – the perfect state. A complete and utter feeling of total happiness.

I can't remember if it was later, or then, that he told me that it had been one of the best days of his life. He thought of all the bad days or moments we'd had when it ended. I thought of all the great moments and knew that there had been no bad days – there had been a few bad moments and some great frustration when we were apart, but it had all been part of one of the best times of our lives.