My Best Kisses: Episode 3 — Foreign Sensation

Did you make my kiss list? xx

It’s the third smooch instalment and the most epic yet. The kind of kiss you’ll think I made up for my next script.

Foreign Sensation

It was the tail end of a work trip in Los Angeles and I was taking myself for a solo dinner in Santa Monica. Dressed for the night that could be, I stepped out of the car in a long, pale blue dress and heels, and crossed the street to the reception desk. Seeing couples ahead of me being turned away I nearly scampered straight back to the Uber, but, as I was alone, the hosts ushered me up the elevator to try my luck for a bar stool.

The restaurant was a jungle alive with laughter, cocktail shakers and beach glam. I wove through the tables and peered over the balcony to tropical trees and ocean waves, but I had a seat to snag. I scanned the bar. No vacancy, so I sauntered around the restaurant again before striking a waiting pose, sticking out from the seated couples like a palm from the rocks. And with no perch for my purse or friend for my eyeline, I questioned how long I was prepared to wai— Oh there’s one. A solitary spare seat hiding at the end of the bar, next to the only other solo guest in the entire restaurant.

“That looks good,” the diner said in the direction of my lobster linguini.

“Yes, it is!” I replied into my white wine, and twirled another mouthful.

“What did you have?” I asked, several bites later, still barely turning my head to my fellow bar passenger.

“The ribeye,” answered the faceless suit. “It was great. Now I think I’ll have to order some dessert.”

Silence again, apart from the background soundscape. But every now and then we would politely toss questions back and forth, like small fish breaching the ocean surface.

“Are you here for work?”

“What do you do?”

“Is that an accent?”

He was from the Midwest, in town for a conference too. I switched to red wine and we angled ourselves ever so slightly towards each other, but both of us seemed equally content to watch the bartender assemble pastel cocktails and attractive women drink them in the sinking sun.

“There are so many beautiful people at this restaurant,” I observed, not meaning to bait.

“Yourself included,” he responded, and I wasn’t sure which of us was hooked.

He ordered another whisky, and as the natural light dimmed, the conversation quickened.

“Have you travelled much?” “What kind of music do you like?” “Do you have siblings?”

And the questions deepened.

“Did you always want to?” “What would you do differently now?” “What’s your love language?”

We tenderly trawled for our best prepared anecdotes, but drew out raw life reflections from each other in the bycatch as well. Two contrasting lives from different edges of the planet, slowly aligning at the elbows. I felt like I could ask him anything.

In the last of the sunset, I eventually asked his name. He laughed, realising how long we’d been getting to know each other without introductions. We shook hands and I took in his big American features.

“Freya… that’s a Norwegian name, right?” he inquired.

Any other name

“Yes, it’s a viking goddess actually.”

“Well, you are quite the goddess yourself.”

The directness of American flirting is quite the adjustment for an Australian, but if there was a time and place to embrace it, it was surely by Friday night candlelight in LA.

“You probably can’t tell with me hunched over this little stool, but I’m actually six foot eight.”

“Oh wow, me too.” I couldn’t let him off without some sarcasm.

As the swells of customers receded and the sediment conclusions of our drinks swirled, we turned philosophical, speaking about the occasional cinematic quality of life, punctuated by serendipity. Under waning lanterns I marvelled at how the seating chart gods had placed us together and we’d found more than small talk by the sea — a genuine connection.

The waves crashed under the black sky.

“Well, I think you should let me take you to a blues bar,” he declared, throwing back a final sip.

“Okay!” I laughed approvingly.

He paid for my wine and helped me work out the tip — I wouldn’t let him pay for my meal — and we unfolded from our perches. Gosh, he really was 6’ 8”. I put on my taupe trench to shield from LA’s June Gloom and wondered if other diners had watched us from the beginning, slowly animating towards each other and now leaving together.

“That’s a very London coat,” he said as we walked down the stairs.

Our shoulders brushed (well my shoulder, his elbow) while strolling down streets of neon lights and nautical moderne buildings, which I stopped to photograph. Eventually, we arrived at a door seeping bluegrass and red light and he bought us tickets and gins, and sitting parallel and taciturn again I could feel the alcohol ascend.

The band finished their set and he swivelled to tell me a new story, but I stayed laconic. With my softened senses, I slowly scanned his jaw and hands and withdrew into a daydream of kissing him. I wondered if the fantasy would pierce reality.

A glass clinked and I blinked myself back into the room. He was looking down and sharing something especially vulnerable. I reactively grabbed his forearm in comfort but retracted it just as quickly, the electricity feeling too much, and he stared at me intently.

“You can touch me if you want,” he finally asserted.

I considered my next move under his tight gaze, heat building, conceding to reach out my hand again. We gathered closer to watch our fingers intertwine, then looked up to find ourselves face-to-face, properly, for the first time all evening. Like the moon revealing its full view and strongest pull, the flood current washed in. Our eye contact held all the way, until his broad mouth moored, pressing a warm blur into me. I shifted my hand to his neck to hold on. We retreated in respect to the bar’s patrons, but with our faces still close he whispered, “This is crazy, but I just want you to know that… here in this moment… I love you.”

Lighting 5/5

Performance 5/5

Script 5/5

Should I write more kissy scenes??