I’ve always been one to enjoy good meal (as my paunch is testimony), so had long gotten over the slight embarrassment I’d feel dining out alone. Still, I tended to avoid the restaurants in the small college town where I lived in walking distance to the campus, and instead usually drove to a few decent restaurants in neighboring towns. When Brooke walked up to my table to take my drink order after the hostess seated me, I did a double take.

“Professor Rollins! It’s great to see you. Where’s Mrs. Rollins?”, she said, accompanied by her beautiful, dimpled smile.

I laughed shyly. “Hi Brooke, it’s very nice to see you, too. There is no Mrs. Rollins, I’m afraid.”

“Really, that’s a shame. Why’s that?”

Perhaps she was wondering if I was gay. “I guess I just haven’t met the right one yet. Maybe I’m destined to be an old bachelor.”

“Nonsense. How old are you?”

“I’m 37.”

“You’re still a young man, professor.”

“Please call me Walter.”

“Okay, Walter. You’re my last table of the evening. If you wait at the bar after you finish eating, maybe you could buy me a drink when I get off, Walter.” Again, that smile.

“It would be my pleasure, Brooke.”

My heart palpitated with excitement. It was a struggle to even finish my meal, delicious as it was. I watched her move gracefully around the room, serving a few other tables. She looked a little harder in her face, around her eyes, but otherwise was unchanged from the beauty I remembered from my class. She looked fetching in her black and white waitress uniform, in this case a dress; it came down to her mid thigh with little black overalls and a waitress apron. She wore shreer black stockings and heels. It must’ve been hard on her feet running around in those heels all evening. Something was very wrong with this picture. She was serving me, but I should’ve been the one serving her. How I yearned to be able to remove her shoes and massage her aching, stockinged feet.

I thought to myself: “Don’t blow it, you idiot. Focus. You have a chance to perhaps make your fantasies a reality.”

We walked to a bar a couple of blocks away. I was careful to put on and remove her coat for her, hold open every door for her and pull out her barstool for her.

“Brooke, I hope you’ll forgive me for this question. But you’re so bright. Why are you working as a waitress?”

She laughed, “The economy’s not so great around here, as you may have noticed. Also, it’s not like there are a ton of jobs out there for english majors. I needed a job after I got divorced, and I had some prior experience waiting tables from back when I was in college.”

I learned later that evening that Brooke had been married for two years to a guy named Luke, a plumber. They had gotten divorced about a year earlier. There was, of course, no way I could’ve known at the time how central a role this individual would come to play in our lives – in my life.

I said, “I can’t imagine a plumber keeping up with you intellectually.”

Brooke laughed. “There was nothing even remotely intellectual about our relationship. He sort of swept me off my feet, but it was 100% physical. I figured out pretty quickly that that wasn’t enough for me. He was also an abusive bastard.”

“I hope that he never hit you.”

“Yeah, he did a couple of times. That’s why we’re no longer together. But what about you? How come you haven’t swept some woman off her feet by reciting poetry to her?”

Now it was my turn to laugh. “There’s not too many women today that are moved by medieval poetry, I’m sorry to say.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m different, but I was certainly moved by that poem you recited that one day in class, the one about the chivalrous knight addressing his lady.”

“Well, you definitely are very different from most women. I think you must mean the one by Bernard de Ventadorn.”

I then recited it to her, looking deeply into her eyes, as she sipped her martini. It was all I could do to stop myself from getting on bended knee before her on the filthy barroom floor as I spoke.

Noble Lady, nothing do I ask of thee But that thou shouldst take me for thy servant. I would serve as one serves a good lord, Whatever reward I might gain. Behold, I am at thy command: Sincere and humble, gay and courteous. Neither bear nor lion art thou, To kill me, as I here to thee surrender.   “Yes, that’s the one. I remember teasing you the day you read it in class by dangling my shoe. I was trying to distract you.”

“Wow, yes, I remember. You mean that was deliberate on your part.”

“Of course it was, silly.”

“Well, you certainly succeeded. You distracted me for years, in fact.”

She giggled, mischievously.

I decided to take a chance. This was the boldest thing I had ever done in my life, romantically (or perhaps otherwise).

“Brooke, you are intelligent and incredibly beautiful. You deserve to be treated like the noble lady being addressed in the poem. I could do that for you. I could be your humble knight, if you‘d only allow me.”

“Well, Walter, stranger things have happened, but let’s not go too fast here. It’s time for me to go home now, as I’ve got an early start tomorrow. Why don’t you take me out to dinner on Friday night? Maybe you could recite another poem for me.“ She flashed her beautiful smile at me again. I felt weak in the knees.

“Absolutely. I look forward to it.”

I didn’t want her to drive home after having had a couple of cocktails. I had only had a glass of wine at the bar, so I offered to drive her home and send an Uber to pick her up the following morning to take her back to her car.

When I dropped her off at her apartment, I opened up the door for her to let her out of the car, and walked her up the steps to her apartment building. After she thanked me, I decided to take my second big chance of the evening, kissing her hand as I bid her good night.

Technically, I then drove myself home. But it would be more accurate to say that I floated home.