Enough for Gary

“Thanks,” Gary told the waitress who had brought the refill of coffee to their table. She, of course, eyes him with an expression of distaste, the same look he had seen his entire life. When you were as unattractive as Gary, it was exactly the treatment you could expect from women.

At least she had looked at him that time. Her previous two visits to the table her eyes had been locked on Tim. Well, locked on Tim’s cleavage. He was kinda putting himself out there, wearing that white blouse tied over his tits rather than buttoned. It was a wonder any man, no less a loser like Gary, got any attention at all from the wait staff.

“I saw your dad’s channel,” Gary said quietly, “I mean, not to watch, just to, you know, see what it was about.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “It’s more Tabby’s thing than anything,” he said in his girlish voice, “She owes me some money to get my car fixed. She thinks this is the fastest way to make it, but I think it would happen a lot faster if she’d just get a part-time job.”

“I don’t know,” Gary said, “some guys are into niche stuff like that. Maybe she’ll find a way into that market and make some real money.”

Tim seemed disinterested in the conversation, so Gary dropped it. He liked Tim, respected him. If he didn’t want to talk about something, Gary wouldn’t be the person to **** the subject.

“So your life,” Tim suddenly snapped his attention at Gary again after gazing around the room silently for a while, “you’re just alone? Like no women like you?”

“I mean, I thought Nancy might have been into me, but honestly I think she was just trying to get closer to you through me,” Gary confessed. He wasn’t bitter, he knew who he was, what he was about. It had been difficult when she traded up for Gary’s best friend, but he understood. Someone like Nancy deserved someone like Tim. And Tim, well, he deserved whatever he wanted.

“But what if someone did want you?” Tim asked, “And you liked them back? What would that be like?”

Gary stared at his companion across the table, thinking through the query. He wasn’t like his friend. As Tim took a sip of his coffee, leaving a lipstick stain on the mug, Gary imagined what Tim was describing. How would it feel to trust that someone held a mutual attraction to him? Would he feel safe? Would he feel wanted?

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, “I’ve never really had something like that. I’m not, you know, attractive like you.”

Tim seemed disinterested again, staring across the restaurant at a woman sitting alone at a table, looking forlorn. She was a larger woman, probably in her mid-thirties, wearing an ill-fitting pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt with Minnie Mouse on it. Her hair was unkempt, and on her face a pair of coke-bottle glasses rested atop her nose.

Gary recognized the look on the woman’s face. It was a mixture of loneliness, hopelessness, and the acceptance that what she had was as good as it would ever get. He knew it because he often held the same expression.

“Maybe you just haven’t met the right woman yet,” Tim said in a sing-song voice.

Gary barely heard his friend. Instead he was staring across the restaurant at the woman Tim had been looking at a moment earlier. Was that the same woman or had she been swapped out with a model? He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She was so…

Beautiful!

Her large, succulent frame. Her causal, fun-loving clothing style, her relaxed, wind blown hair; Gary was sure he had never desired someone as badly as he desired her. Even her glasses, the thick lenses that obscured her eyes, perfectly framed her chubby face. Sure, she was older than Gary by what must have been more than a decade, but that didn’t matter at all. He wanted her.

And then it happened. She looked at him. But not in the way that Gary had been looked at his whole life. No, the woman of his dreams looked at him and wanted him. It was an expression he’d seen countless times directed at Tim, but not once directed at Gary. But this look, this one time, this one woman, was all his.

“I need to…” Gary didn’t know what to say exactly, so filled he was with possibility, “Tim, could you excuse me for a few minutes?”

“Oh, of course,” Tim giggled, “if you have something that needs to be done, be my guest.”

Dismissed from the table, Gary stood up and practically floated across the room. Before he knew it he was sitting in the empty chair across from the goddess.

“Is this seat…” he began.

“No,” she answered.

“I’m Gary.”

“Irma.”

“Do you want to…”

“Let’s go.”

And they did. All thoughts of paying their bills, all thoughts of saying goodbye, all were gone. Their desire carried them away, their lust fuelled their hunger. Gary had found something he had never let himself hope for. Irma was a stranger, someone who he didn’t know if he would love, but it didn’t matter. In Irma, he was wanted. And that was enough.