FIRST CATCH OF THE DAY

FIRST CATCH OF THE DAY

Kayla Warner

yourself, but just a little. When you get off the bus by your dorm, ask him if he wants to take a walk, get food. Real date-type things. But when he furrows his brow and says, “No,” you’ll feel stupid for being so naive. Naive for thinking that you could make this meetup at a bar into the beginning of an actual something, because you’re realizing that you should have known what is clearly so obvious to him.

So you take him inside your building, and make eye contact with the lady at the front desk as you sign him in. She knows what you’re doing and you know what you’re doing but you have to act like you’ve done it before, so it’s no big deal. Tell him he has to give his ID to her, and feel the need to apologize, for some reason, like you’re inconveniencing him too much. You will get into the elevator with him and another girl, who will be in her pajamas and a shower cap and carrying her laundry bag, and who you will also make eye contact with. She will also know what you’re doing and you will again have to act like you’ve done it before and it’s no big deal. The silence during your ascent will be excruciating, and you will try to get out of the elevator at the same time as him and accidentally hit your elbow on the wall.

Inside your room, you will turn on the ugly overhead light and realize that you only have one chair and so you will invite him to sit on the floor with you. You might accidentally sit too far away from him and you’ll feel unable to gracefully move to a more appropriate distance, but it won’t matter for too long, because during one of the conversational lulls, he will lean in and kiss you and it will feel foreign and wrong, and you will be aware that you probably aren’t doing it right, and your teeth will feel larger than they ever have before. You might think, Where the fuck did my teeth come from and why are they in the way? Then he will pull away and you will feel relieved. After the kiss, he will say, “Just putting that out there.” He will start to say something else, but then he will interrupt himself, and say, “Yeah, we’re just gonna keep doing that,” and kiss you again. You will think that he thinks he sounds smooth, right out of a TV show. He’s probably written that line in one of his scripts. But in the moment, it feels cheesy and you can practically see all of the girls he’s used it on before you. You keep kissing him, though, even though you don’t know if what you’re doing can be classed as kissing and you want to kill everyone who told you it would “Just come naturally.” You wonder what he’s thinking.

Things will progress, but you will be in your own head for most of it, and he will do what he wants. You might feel hollow. You thought hooking up would be electrifying, but you’ve never felt less like anything in your life. You might ask yourself, why am I still doing this? But you’re also kind of curious about what will happen, and you might still be a little hopeful that after all of this is over he will ask you out for real and you can do something actually enjoyable. But instead he will say, “Do you want to have sex?” And you will panic and say, “Maybe.” And he will smile in a way he thinks is charming and say, “I kind of need a yes or a no.” It will feel so fast to you. But you will realize it probably doesn’t feel fast to him. He’s done this before, probably. He assumes you’ve done this before, too. He assumes you knew what you were getting into, in the silent agreement you made before going inside, but you didn’t know, not fully. It’s too embarrassing to admit that you didn’t, and that, in answer to his question, you actually want to say no. And then you will say, “Yes.” For a multitude of reasons. Because you don’t want him to know how juvenile you feel. Because you don’t want to have wasted his time and you don’t want to hurt his feelings and you don’t want him to resent you. Because you don’t know when you’re going to get another chance and part of you wants it over with. And he took the bus all the way here, for you, after all. You will say yes even though you know that those aren’t good reasons. You will say yes because you’re fairly sure that he would stop if you said no, but you don’t want to find out if you’re wrong, and you’ve heard so many stories and they scare you. You will feel like you’re doing it all wrong, but then you will realize that it’s probably his fault, because although when he talks, he seems experienced, the fact is that he can’t seem to make you feel anything. But