Rock me

"We shag," said Rocky, grinning and showing his teeth.  "Blissfully, nakedly, unashamedly on the table in front of everyone."
Tim blinked, his mouth opening involuntarily.  He stared at Rocky, the rest of the room suddenly just white noise and background blur.  The only thing he could see was Rocky's laughing eyes, his sudden, wolfish smile, and his blonde hair.
"What?" said Rocky.  "What did you think I'd say?"
"I... I don't know," said Tim.  The room started coming slowly back into focus and he blinked again.  "Not that."
"Too soon?"  Rocky's grin got wider.
"Yeah, too soon," said Tim.  His own voice sounded odd in his ears when he said that, and his legs seemed to be tingling.  He felt like he was doing something illegal, it reminded him suddenly of standing behind the hedge in the park across the road from his high school, smoking where the teachers might find him and his friends but couldn't do anything to stop them.
Rocky sat back and laughed.  "Too soon," he said.  "Didn't think you'd agree with me.  Want to go upstairs?"
Panic raced through Tim's mind again, and he realised his heart was pounding in his chest.  He forced himself to look round and up, and there was the stairs and the XBox room, and he realised what Rocky had actually meant.  "I don't know if they'll let us," he said, and forced a slightly shaky laugh.  "The bouncers are pretty choosy."
"Me too," said Rocky.  "Let's go.  You any good at any of these games?"
"Well, yeah actually," said Tim.  The room seemed to come back into focus properly all of a sudden and he felt back in territory he knew.  "What do you play?"
Thirty-five minutes later they were sitting, squashed together between four teenagers, on a couch, controllers in hands demolishing the COD map.  Tim glanced sideways for a moment at Rocky, who was staring intently at the screen as his soldier leapt into the water and submerged.  Then he was back, dodging enemy fire and selecting the Razorback to return it.  Another head-shot, and then he was running in another direction, hopefully flanking.  One of the guys on the end cursed and threw his controller down; it bounced on the floor and Tim thought he saw someone else shaking their head out of the corner of his eye.  More gunfire, Rocky's soldier emerging unexpectedly off to his left, and then everyone was setting their controllers down.
"Nice!" said Rocky, his wolfish grin appearing on his face as he looked at Tim.  For a moment his hand rested on Tim's knee and he felt that tingling again.  "You can play!"
"Told you so," said Tim.  He suddenly realised he wanted to talk to Rocky without having the kids around him listening.  "Beertime?"
"Beertime."
"I could go a beer," said the guy on the other side of Tim.  He half-turned his head; the kid looked to be fifteen.
"Have to buy your own then," he said.  "Sit downstairs again?" he said to Rocky.  Rocky nodded and then stood up, leading the way.  As Tim followed he thought he heard, not exactly whispered but not thought important, "Cute couple."
"You're cool," said Rocky as they waited for the pierced waitress to bring their drinks over.  "Wasn't sure when I saw you, just knew I'd rather it was you than the guy in the lumberjack shirt."  They both looked over; that man was slumped over the table now and snoring.  A bottle of Canadian beer was clutched in a fist that was hairy enough to be a paw and there was a thin, shiny trail of drool running down his chin.  "Yeah, definitely glad you're you and not him."
"Yeah, I'm kinda glad I'm not him either," said Tim.  The phone in his pocket chimed and vibrated.  He considered ignoring it, but Rocky was already looking at him curiously.
"It's ten-thirty.  You better be dead" was the text message.
"Girlfriend or wife?" asked Rocky.
"Neither."  Tim had no idea why that was the answer he gave but he knew he wasn't about to admit he wasn't single.
"Wedding ring?"
The beers arrived just then, and the barmaid also looked at his hand, making three of them all looking at a treacherous band of gold around his fourth finger.  She set the bottles down and smiled at Rocky then sneered at Tim.  She stalked off.
"I think she liked you," said Rocky, picking a bottle up.
"Before you pointed out the ring," said Tim.  "That's more of a memory than a ring.  Something that was, not something that is."
"You're still wearing it."
"Yeah.  What was, was important.  Still is, I think."
"Woman?"
Tim sipped his beer and smiled.  The conversation felt weird and he was pretty sure he was going to give answers he'd never have thought would be his.  "You keep asking that.  One way or another."
"And you keep avoiding the question."
There was a silence, they drank their beers, but their eyes were locked.
"I'm really enjoying this evening," said Tim.  "Really.  This isn't what I thought I was getting."
"Kiss me."
Without letting himself think about it, Tim set the bottle down, leaned across the table, and their lips met.

Rocky

The Roadhouse was on two floors; the ground floor was wooden walls covered in rock-band memorabilia, wooden floors covered in sawdust (you just avoided the bits where it was clumping early in the evening, and tried to avoid it altogether later on) and a collection of tables and chairs that the owner was said to hand-craft.  Upstairs, and the single flight of sheet-metal stairs attached to a steel balustrade was guarded by two bouncers with smiles that weren't pleased to see anyone, there were leather sofas, plouffes, a quieter bar staffed by more gentle barfolk and three dozen Playstations and XBoxes.  The music upstairs was harder and more driving, to go with the games people played, and the music downstairs came from a jukebox that looked like it might be an original from the 1950s.
Tim walked in and looked around.  Two of the tables were occupied, though one of them had a couple of girls in enough clothing to look indecent and little else.  They were both also so close to being underage that he looked away again almost reflexively.  The other table had a guy in a lumberjack's check shirt nursing a beer; he looked like a regular and looked like he planned to spend the evening there.  Tim took a table by the side of the stairs.  He nodded at the bouncers, who looked straight through him and made him feel at home.
He thought about going upstairs for a few minutes; he spent plenty of evenings in the living playing Call Of Duty with his microwave meals for one going cold on the floor beside him while the occasional noise from upstairs reminded him that his wife was home and was sure he could handle himself even amongst the college kids who spent pretty much the whole day up there, but then he decided that Rocky probably wasn't going to be looking upstairs for their date.
The waitress sashayed over, her shirt tied up to show off a pierced bellybutton and when she took his order her tongue flipped briefly over her lips revealing another piercing.  Tim wondered if he looked like the kind of guy to her who tipped better if he thought she was flirting.  She was back with his beer in a minute and a half, and dropped a packet of pork scratchings down on the table that he hadn't asked for.
"On the house," she said breathily, and he added another five to the tip to cover the cost.  He didn't think she'd even been subtle.
Half an hour later he had a chicken pie in gravy on a plate in front of him, his fork held poised in one hand while he waited it to cool down from mouth-scalding to a more managable temperature.  The two girls had gotten up and latched on to a couple of bearded biker types that were leaning against the bar, and Tim was wondering what they were hoping to be getting into.  The barmaid with the piercings was pulling the dark-blue covers off the pool tables on the other side of the bar, and a couple of guys, one in a suit and the other in grey flannel joggers, were tossing a coin to see who'd break.  Suit won, but his break was appalling, and flannel joggers sank four on his first turn at the table.  Tim took a tentative bite of his pie, and chewed it fast, trying to avoid it touching his tongue or the inside of his mouth, and swallowed.  Still too hot.
By the time it reached 8:30 he was on his third beer and feeling very slightly buzzed.  There'd been a text message twenty minutes earlier that just read "Are you dead?" and seemed kind of hopeful when he'd read it.  "Home by ten" he'd replied, and the phone had been silent since.
He pulled it out again to check it, though it was set to both ring and vibrate if there were any messages; sure enough it was quiet, waiting for something to happen.  He put it away in his trouser pocket, and suddenly realised that there was someone at his table.
"Uh?" he said.  Across from him was a young man, short blonde hair, unnecessary sunglasses, snub nose and chewing gum.  He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, a plain blue colour that might have been office wear in a casual environment.  The shirt was open to the third button, but the chest was smooth and unmarred.
"Hi," said the guy.  He stuck a hand out and Tim looked at it.  "Shake?"
"Uh.  Yeah," said Tim.  He put his hand out and they shook, Tim wondering if he looked as much like a performing dog as he felt.  "Uh.  Do I know you?"
"Not yet," said the man.  He smiled, and Tim noticed that one of his canines was slightly crooked.  Somehow that was endearing, as though being perfect would have been too much.  "I guess it kind of depends on if you want to."
"I'm sort of waiting for someone," said Tim.  It was the truth, he could hear in the back of his mind, even if it was a slightly distorted truth, and even if he had no intention of talking to the person he was waiting for.
"Yes," said the man.  He pulled a napkin from a dispenser on the table, took the chewing gum out of his mouth and wrapped it up.  Tim sat back in his chair, oddly apprehensive about what this could me.  "For Rocky, right?"
"Uh," said Tim.  He mentally shook himself, he had to stop sounding stupid.  "I mean, why do you say that?"
The man laughed.  "I'm Rocky," he said.  "I placed the ad, I got your response.  You're waiting for me."
"...maybe."  Tim's voice was small, but there was a tingle of excitement down in the pit of his stomach.  "I don't get why you think I answered your ad though."
"Well, you just admitted it for one thing," said Rocky.  "But mostly because I know almost everyone in here most evenings, so it was you or that guy over there."  He pointed, and Tim glanced past and saw the lumberjack-shirted guy.  "I was hoping it was you."
"So what do we do now?" asked Tim.

ASAP Rocky

The free newspaper had been left on Tim's desk so when he got in he picked it up intending to put it in the bin.  Wesley never threw anything in the bin, and Tim frequently had to put newspapers, empty paper cups, used tissues (sometimes wet and slimy) and crumb-scattered plastic doughnut-trays in the bin, all the while cursing under his breath.  He'd raised the issue with Maria, their joint manager, a few times, but though she'd said she'd do something about it nothing ever happened.  He'd considered leaving things on the desk for Wesley to have to clear up, but invariably he looked at the mess and his fingertips would itch and the skin on the back of his neck would crawl, and he'd have to clean up before he could leave it.
He glanced at the front-page as he walked to the bin, wondering what Wesley found in it that made it worth bringing it into the office.  At the bin he paused, leafing through it, looking at pages that seemed to be two-thirds photographs and one-third easy words.  The Greek crisis warranted maybe two and a half column inches, which was a quarter that allocated to a description of seeing a boy-band in a fast-food restaurant at the weekend.  Even the sport section seemed abbreviated, and he looked at a report of a football match three times before concluding that they really had forgotten to write down what the final score was.
Just before he threw it away his eye was caught by what looked like a block of small ads, the kind where people offered battered cars or used baby-buggies for sale.  He scanned them: they all seemed to be singles looking for dates.  The one at the bottom of the left-hand column was as terse as they came: ASAP Rocky.
He dropped the paper in the bin, sat back down at his desk, and sighed when he realised that Wesley had been eating something sticky and half the keys on the keyboard had little sticky ovals on them.
Two hours later he pulled the free newspaper out of the bin, smoothed it down until the creasing didn't bother him too much and opened it to the list of lonely heart ads again.  Reading them more carefully he realised that they were more of a missed connections type thing: people thanking others for picking up their overpacked suitcases on the underground and helping them navigate the stairs and corridors, or admitting to having stared at some poor soul until they got off the train in embarassment and now seeking meet them and make things worse.  He re-read the bottom left corner again; nothing more than ASAP Rocky and an identifier, something to allow you to specify that you were responding to the ad.  He sighed and put the newspaper back in the bin.
Twenty minutes later it was back on his desk again, and his stomach was trembling with the feeling of butterflies.  He found scissors in the desk-drawer, the one he locked and took the key home with him to stop Wesley from being able to get in there, and cut the advert out.  Then he put the newspaper back in the bin, for the last time, with a sense of relief.
Seven minutes before it was time to go home he logged onto the free newspapers website and entered the identifier for the advert.  The screen provided him with a comment box and a submission button and asked for an email address so that replies could reach him.  His hand moved the mouse to the close-window button, but he still couldn't quite make himself do it.  The butterflies were back, and his knees were feeling shaky even though he was sitting down.  It was all ridiculous, and childish, and.... Well it was, but it was a kind of fun too.
Where, and when? he typed into the box.  He put his Hotmail email address in there, one he'd not used in ten years, and clicked Submit.
Then he stuffed his fist in his mouth, appalled and amazed at what he'd just done, and tried not to giggle around it.
"Are you all right?"  Maria was stood in the doorway, her coat on, clearly about to leave.
"Yeah," said Tim, removing his fist from his mouth first.  "Heartburn."
"Right," said Maria, already turned away from him and opening the door.

*

He picked up a copy of the free newspaper on his way into work the next morning, telling himself that nothing would be in there, that his little joke wouldn't even make it on to the pages.  And he was right, there were twenty-eight desperate declarations that a fleeting glance of a stranger had been enough to stimulate love at first sight, but no sign of his reply or anything else that might have been a reply.

When he remembered to check his Hotmail account at lunchtime though, things were different.  There was a reply from the missed connections service.  The Roadhouse, 8:30pm Rocky

His breath caught in his chest and for a moment he thought he'd forgotten how to breath.  Then he coughed, spitting on the screen, and despite the coughs racking him he had to get up and get a tissue and wipe it all clean again.

"Are you alright?" asked Maria, sounding concerned, but she'd walked back into her office before he could answer.

He knew the Roadhouse, it was a pub above a club about fifteen minutes away from the office.  He'd gone there when he was a student, before he'd met Clara who'd become his wife and was now a distant present in the house who left the occasional note and kept her bedroom door locked.  It wouldn't be hard to go there, they served food so he could get there after work and have something to eat, something to drink, maybe watch the match on the television.  Someone would be playing tonight, and then he could watch and see who came in for Rocky.

He paused, and then checked the email.  Actually, it might be a Rocky that would be coming in.  Rocky was a boxer's name.  He felt a frisson down his back; was he about to get himself beaten up for a silly joke?

He leant back in the chair, and then leant forward again and found the scrap of newspaper in the lockable drawer.  No, even there it wasn't clear if Rocky had placed the ad or if the ad was for Rocky. But did it matter?  Rocky, or whoever it was, couldn't know that Tim had replied, or that Tim was in there watching.  And what if Rocky turned out to be a woman, stunningly beautiful and in need of a guy like Tim?

He laughed at himself for a moment, but the idea lingered.  Twenty minutes later he'd made up his mind: he was going to the Roadhouse.