I met her on a dating website.

It seems kind of silly, doesn't it? Flipping through pictures online, hoping you'll see someone who grabs your interest, and then you click on their profile and read more, only to find that they aren't what you think they might be.

Her main picture was just her head and shoulders leaning up against a blue wall, giving whoever was taking the picture a what the fuck do you want? look. Her nails were painted black, a little longer than mine, and her skin was pale. Her hair was brown, smoothed back in a casual way that looked like she'd just run a comb through once and left it like that.

Her description painted her as a goth, as a very sweet person, and in her own words, "a teddybear."

I liked her immediately.

I never thought she'd write me back, but a few weeks later a message showed up in my regular inbox.

Hi. I saw you on true and you caught my eye. I'm really shy so you'll have to excuse me. I just thought that maybe, if you're interested, we can talk and stuff. Well let me let you know a little about me before you make your decision...

And it kind of ballooned from there. We emailed back and forth for the better part of that day, and when she mentioned that she had to go home soon after working all day on a Saturday, she asked if it wouldn't be too forward to give me her phone number.

A little hesitantly, I said fine, and put it into my phone book. Her name was Julie, and she worked in a funeral home.

That night, I got up the nerve to text message her, and soon she asked if it would be okay to call me. We must have talked for at least an hour while I sat in IHOP past midnight and she dropped her friends off, and when we made plans to meet for dinner the next night, both of us were a little nervous, but they were set.

She had never dated anyone from the Internet before, let alone a dating website, and I'd only met two people, and they hadn't turned out perfectly, so neither of us really knew what to expect.

I'd been working a security job for a few months, and we scheduled to meet at 8:30 at a little Chinese place about an equal drive for the both of us. I was a little late; my job required me to lock up the pool area and the clubhouse on Sunday nights, and then I had to go home and change into something a little more presentable than a uniform that looked like it might be worn by a county cop.

I wound up wearing all black, none of it matching. Black steel-toed boots, black jeans, a black tank top that said MY HATRED IS DIVIDED EQUALLY AMONGST ALL OF YOU, and a black suit jacket that I had bought nearly a year before for a funeral. Somehow it managed to not look sloppy, like I'd thrown it together in five minutes with one hand while brushing my teeth with the other.

My hair I left down, loose and barely waving over my shoulders and down the back of the jacket. I had driven like a maniac to not be later than I already was, so when I peeled into the nearly empty parking lot and into a space, I had to brush it out one more time, so I didn't see Julie walking over from her spot on the curb next to the door until she was right next to me.

"Hi," she said, and my mouth went dry.

She was gorgeous. It was a promising beginning to the evening. Her hair was cut very short, very wavy, and very auburn. It crowned a face with plenty of smile lines around her eyes, and tonight a nervous smile hovered around the edges of her mouth.

Her cotton polo shirt was striped red and navy blue, and her blue jeans were loose--boy jeans, but they looked good on her. She was wearing black sneakers; good for walking around--dancing, if we chose--and just a good choice for a fun, casual first date.

"Hey," I said back. "Uhh, Julie?"

"Yeah." She looked nervous.

"I'm Amanda."

She cracked another nervous smile. "I guess you are. I wasn't really expecting you to show up."

I was surprised. "Sorry I'm late, but why?"

"No reason," she said a little reluctantly. "It's happened before."

"Oh," I said. "So uh, you wanna go inside?"

I locked my Honda and we walked the short distance from my car to the restaurant door. She held the door open for me, blushing, and I squeaked out a "Thank you," and walked in.

The waiters there kind of know me, so they just asked if it was just the two of us and took our drink orders after showing us to a table in the corner. The restaurant was empty but for a few scattered people here and there about the room, so we had room to talk; not a bad thing for a first date, but a little intimidating since there's all of that awkward silence to fill.

Julie opened up the conversation. "So work was interesting?"

"Yeah," I said, relieved that we had something I knew I could talk about. "I hate the hours, but other than that it's okay."

"Ah," she said. "Long day?"

"Eight to eight on Sundays," I told her. It wasn't boasting, just the truth. I'd been working fifty and sixty hour weeks that summer. It was going to change later that week because I was starting school the next day and needed to cut back to forty, but Sundays never changed.

"Jeez."

"I know. So... funeral home, really?"

She smiled sheepishly. "Yeah. I have kind of a morbid sense of humor, and the funeral home is just a job for now, and it's probably going to help with what I want to do when I get out of college, so I figured why not?"

She'd mentioned something about crime scene investigation on the phone. "You said you wanted to be in forensics, right?"

"Uh huh. I'm in school for it right now."

"Oh really? What classes?" I asked, wondering what classes any school taught for crime scene investigation. I'd always assumed that it was a school, like the police or fire academies.

"Tech Crimes, Fingerprinting One, aaand College Algebra."

"That sounds cool. What's Fingerprinting One like?"

"It's really just identifying different kinds of prints, learning how to work with partial prints or smudged ones, the different points of identification, stuff like that... oh, the different sections of fingerprint cards. This class is really just like the theory behind it. We don't get to use our fingerprinting kits until the second class."

"Fingerprinting Two?"

"You're quick," she said, winking.

I blushed. "I try."

The waiter came with our drinks then, so I was saved from making any idiotic conversation gaffes, and we ordered our entrées. General Tso's chicken for Julie, and chicken with broccoli for me.

After he left, we just sat there a little awkwardly, neither willing to break the silence until Julie said, "Having fun?"

She was grinning across the table at me, and I looked down and realized that the hand I'd clasped around my other wrist was slowly moving up and down my arm in a jacking-off motion. I'd never done that before--at least I couldn't remember doing that.

"Oh my god!" I blurted, pulling my hands apart and shoving them down into my lap where she couldn't see them anymore. I was blushing and hating it. "I'm so sorry, I didn't realize what I was--"

"It's okay," she said. "I think it's cute."

I apologized again, she grinned more, and we meandered into little conversations about school and our jobs for a while until the food came. Dinner was pretty quiet, both of us offering to the other to try what we were eating. I tried to focus on my broccoli and the crunchy noodles in the middle of the table.

After dinner, which she paid for over my objections, we left and kind of just stood in the parking lot.

"So uh, you play pool?" I asked, nodding my head across the street where the large sign for Side Pockets glowed above a semi-full parking lot.

Julie nodded. "I'm pretty good. You?"

"Passable," I said.

"Let's go," she said.

"Uhh, do you want to follow me?" I asked a little hesitantly.

"Do you just want to take one car?" she asked, looking more nervous than ever.

"Uhh, sure," I said, hoping I wasn't making a huge mistake. "Yours or mine?"

"Let's take mine." She pointed at a little blue Chevy parked right in front of the door.

A two-headed, stuffed cow sat in the middle of the dashboard. So she was either a fun-loving lesbian or a psycho who liked Ripley's.

I got in.

Guess which one I was betting?

---

She won two out of three games at pool. I'd wanted to impress her with my skills, but somehow I'd wound up killing myself in all three games. I'd bounced the ball right off the table once, scratched on the break on the first game (which we'd then played over but she'd still won), and scratched on the eight ball on the last game. And the second game was a close draw.

I'd failed to win her heart with pool; maybe something else would do.

We headed to the beach after that, driving out to park at a club she'd done karaoke at earlier in the day, then walked to the sand, meandering along the shore and talking about past failed relationships. Not always a great topic, I know, but somehow the conversation just went there.

Somehow we wandered closer to the water, until we were nearly right on top of it, and the conversation moved to other things, like high school and the weather. The wind wasn't bad, and the temperature was next to warm, so I'd left my jacket in the car to expose my arms and the new dragon tattoo I'd gotten only a few months before.

The waves were coming in a little faster now, and we'd walked enough distance so that we were near a more popular area of the seaside stores. Lights lit up the road running beside the beach, and we'd passed a few loud clubs on the other side of the road.

A huge wave splashed up over my ankle, filling my boot and wetting my leg and I shrieked, jumping back past a surprised-looking Julie.

"Let's go back up to the sidewalk," she suggested, smirking as I shook water off my boot, wincing at the feel of water sloshing around inside.

We trudged up through the sand to the road, running across and into a two-story open air shopping complex.

"Betcha I can get up the escalator faster than you," I said, heading for the moving stairways.

"Amanda, you do know that's the down escalator, right?" she said, glancing at me.

"I know," I said simply before getting a running start up the escalator.

I made it to the top in record time, only to see Julie waiting at the top of the Up escalator, smirking.

"Have fun?" she asked.

"More than you know." We started walking around the complex, wandering up and down stairwells and peering in empty windows for shoppers who had been long gone.

Some time later saw the hour growing late, and Julie suggested that it was probably time to head home.

Walking back to the car seemed to take less time than it should have, and within what had to only be twenty minutes we were pulling into the parking lot next to my Element, and I was nearly vibrating with tension.

"So uh, I guess this is good night," I said, hoping that my nervousness wasn't bleeding into my voice.

She pulled me into a hug, and I returned it wholeheartedly, hoping that I wasn't squeezing too tightly.

We both pulled away at the same time, and her face leaned toward mine. Her lips hesitated over my mouth, and our breathing was light, soft, barely there.

Our mouths pressed together, and her lips were silk, tongue a quick wetness.

I hadn't meant to let it get this far, but I couldn't stop. My arm moved up her back to cradle her shoulders, and her hands slid up to frame my face as we kissed deeply, softly.

Her lips slid back along my cheek to my hairline, and I hugged her firmly.

"I wanted to kiss you on the beach," she whispered in my ear. "That's why I was standing so close at the water, so you'd jump into my arms and I could try to kiss you."

I didn't say anything, only tightened my grip and thought about how this was the perfect beginning to a school year; new semester, new job, possibly even a new love?

Finally I had to get out of the car. She had work in the morning, and I had to get a decent amount of sleep before heading to school, so we got out of her car and she walked me to mine.

Her hair was nearly brown in the street light, and I was so entranced by her that I couldn't hear cars zooming by on the road.

"Can I see you again?" I asked, hoping it wasn't a plea.

She smiled gently. "You can count on it."

I opened my car door, and she reached for me, kissed me again. I melted in her arms, and when she let me go I had to lean against the open door.

She started backing away with one of my hands still held in hers, leaned down and kissed the back of it. "Good night," she whispered, lips quick and dry against my skin.

"Good night," I whispered back. I couldn't keep my lips from curving into a smile.

As we parted ways at the stop light, I couldn't help but stare after her blue Chevy, and I grinned like an idiot the entire way home.

What a night.