It was the first thing that threw her off about him.
She realized that everyone had their own idiosyncrasies, their own particular oddities. She tried hard to be non-judgmental. She was a pretty girl though, and she had dated a lot.
Sometimes all it took was finding out that Chris saw nothing wrong in wearing white socks with sports sandals, that part of Mike’s library contained Star Wars novels and that Steve really enjoyed watching reruns of Saved By The Bell.
She hated feeling shallow but when she found out that Stefan had a Celine Dion CD in his collection, she couldn’t help but picture him feeling sorry for himself, slipping the CD in, cranking the volume, sitting on the couch with a single tear running down his face while the French girl warbled in the background.
It jarred her the way that a record scratches, it made her uncomfortable in the same way that she hated shows involving practical jokes. It started her off in picking out the worst details about a potential partner, and forced her to end a relationship before it really began.
That’s how she felt about Justin’s future in her life. Her new relationship was in complete jeopardy because she caught sight of an innocent painting of a jester hanging in a corner of his living room.
She wasn’t going to sleep with him when her brought her over to his house. She had already decided that. But she had known at dinner that she would sometime in the very near future. He was charming. Responsible. Witty. He seemed trustworthy.
But like a needle hitting a wrong groove, her sudden change in feelings was startling. They vanished as she pictured herself walking through the rest of his apartment. If he had grinning jesters in his living room, would he have glossy framed photos of kittens in his bedroom, or worse, a figurine collection of X-men on a shelf in his bedroom?
As she was thinking of an excuse to leave, she tried hard not to picture listening to a story that went with the jester’s presence. She didn’t want to hear about an artistic little sister or a sentimental ex-girlfriend. She didn’t want anything from him now. In her own shallow but final way, she just wanted out of there. Out of his living room, out of his apartment and out of his life. Period.
Maybe the next one would be different.