Courtship

I wish I’d known you were coming over so I was prepared, but you’re here now and all I have is three swigs of gin from the bottle hiding in my freezer and those chamomile tea packets I stole from the AA meeting I crashed last Tuesday, the one I was coming out of when you asked me to jump your VW and I said yes even though I didn’t have a car then waited with you for Triple A to arrive, only to find out you didn’t have Triple A but the tow guy jumped you anyway because he figured you were coming out of that AA meeting, one that he’d been to, too, and didn’t want a fellow 12-stepper to get stranded. After, you drove me home and we laughed about the Triple A guy being in AA, accounting for fives As, which you said, “… sounds like some dork’s report card” and I laughed even though I got straight As and you’d just called me a dork when I was just thinking I wanted you to come up. Now you so want to ask why a woman you met outside an AA meeting has booze and I admit I only go to this particular AA meeting because there’s this woman there who makes delectable lemon squares and I always decline to share with the group because I’m not an alcoholic and am only there to get lemon squares and yoink as many teas, sugars, Equals, and stir sticks as I can before someone says calls bullshit. “How’d you know about the lemon bars?” you ask and I explain Emil, who used to frequent that meeting and loved them, too, prompting you to ask, “Where’s Emil now?” and I know what you’re getting at, thinking you shouldn’t be here if there’s still an Emil and I tell you Emil fell off the wagon and was a rotten-ass drunk, a drunk no lemon bars were worth, especially not when I knew his supplier. You can chug my gin, share my AA tea, and I’ll crack open the graham crackers and canned peas and pumpkin that came with the apartment. “Which is more gutsy?” I ask. “Crashing an AA meeting, sometimes while drunk, just to get free shit, or dropping by a woman’s apartment, hoping she wants you there as much I truly want you here right now?”