"You want me to call you Sassanach don't you?", he inquires. I look up from my laptop in confusion. Is this stranger talking to me? What in the Rory hell is going on? Don't Sassanach me, jackass. How to answer this? How to answer this? In my late teens, early twenties I would have said, "No, do you want me to call you Sassanach?" Now in my plus 37 age (Patrice Bergeron North) I would say, "No. Not at all". A statement that included a grimacing talk to me again and I'll stab you look. Do I have anything pointy in my immediate vicinity? Oh, God I'm going to die here.
I lean in and ask, "Do you usually call women you don't know, Sassanach?"
"Only the beautiful ones."
Ha! I am going to stab this guy. Please let him be a guy who calls the Bruins the Boo-ins.
He notices my displeasure. "I'm sorry. Girls like you have been called beautiful their whole life and it means nothing to you. So, I'll just say you look smart and cunning", he proceeds. "My hands are dirty too. What are you afraid of? You're trembling. You like me because I'm a scoundrel. There aren't enough scoundrels in your life."
Oh, great. My one moment to flex my Space Cowboy trivia and I have to use it on this guy. I play along, "I happen to like nice men and darling I've had my share of scoundrels".
"Darling", he says and looks at me in bewilderment. "I knew you were American when you came in here. I've always wanted an American girl to call me darling. Not to mention drop the nice men line on me. I knew you would know what I was talking about".
"No one says darling here?"
"It's said but you say it with a drawl. Are you from the South?"
Alright. Too many questions, stranger. "Look asshole, I'm close to punching you fucking leave me alone".
"Oh, you're from the North.", he asks without missing a beat. I guess I'm not at all intimidating.
"No, I'm just hot tempered", I mutter feeling ashamed of my outburst.
"I like hot tempered". He reads my shirt, "What's a Red Sox?"
I take a deep breath, lean to the back of my chair, and begin to take notice of the man in front of me. My eyes pan from his boots to the top of his recently shampooed hair. I scan him as if I were a Terminator, analyze him like Sherlock Holmes. I change my sitting position again and lean my arm on the back of the chair grasping it as I exhale.
"It's a baseball team".
"Fuck the Yankees".
I smile and giggle. He smiles and moves his chair closer to mine.
That's how I met him. A girl on her laptop and a boy who mustered up the courage to talk to a girl in a Red Sox shirt. In preparation he looked up what a Red Sox was. Something did die there that day. My independence, my loneliness, and the ghosts of broken hearts past. He promises that he never used the scoundrel line before. And I believe him.
Years later I ask him, "What would you have done if I punched you, when we first met?"
"Aye, I hope I would have bled profusely and that you would have felt sorry for me. A poor Scottish boy beaten up by an American thug."
The thug comment makes me laugh. "As if I could punch you."
"I would have pretended that it hurt and hope that you would send me nudes".
