Disgustingly Happy

We met because his roommate was trying to hit on me at a conference. He was too tall for me, but you couldn't really tell when he was sitting. He had beautiful eyes which were one shade with contacts and another without. He hadn't the faintest idea about hardware, but in almost no time we wound up rearranging things to attend the same lectures. He had wild dreams about where computers could go in the next 40 years, a big interesting stack of books in his room, and we both liked beer.

"So, what's going on with you two?" his friend asked him.

He was also a pretty terrible liar.

We both knew the odds of seeing each other ever again were rather low, and in some senses it made the time we did have a lot more precious. Sometimes I was annoyed at him for always being nearby, but as soon as he did give me some space I found myself looking around, and that I missed him.

"So, how far do you want this to go?" he asked hesitantly.

I didn't really have a good answer for him.

He saw in me all the things I wished I was. He loved that I was both a professional at my career and a female, and that I could interact with him as either. He liked it when I smiled.

I dozed off sitting next to him on the last night of the conference several times, and each time I woke up he was still holding me, and looked down at me sadly. We had walked home from the bar through the main strip of Vegas more or less hand in hand. We laughed at the fake plaster everything in the hotels, watched the crowds stumble from bar to bar, and pitied the people swept up in the shopping, which dress was cute, and the tourist photo ops with their yard-long margaritas in hand.

"Pretty sure I don't even like this city normally."

We stopped and watched the fountain at the Bellagio from across the street play. Not a lot to see, but it was nice to be held. We found Optimus Prime and a stormtrooper street performer, and tried to convince them to fight.

"Pretty sure I'm never going to forget this."

We considered elaborate schemes to joyride the boats at The Venetian, and watched another street performer paint. We laughed at the astroturf park, and admired how many ways Las Vegas had figured out how to twist an escalator. We found a rippled plastic wall of a fountain, and stood there grinning, pressing our hands in the thin coat of water which ran over top of it, reaching up and letting the water run down our arms and onto our clothes. We did a million stupid, meaningless things, but mostly we did them together.

And we were disgustingly happy.