Revisiting Her

-Introduction-

Navarinos Square, Thessaloniki 2019

I see her sitting with a couple of friends on the opposite bench from ours. She is stunningly beautiful without making an effort. Her hair is black, she is slim but seems to have more curves than you would expect a person of her size to have. I see a tattoo on the outer side of her arm, a piercing on her lower lip and she is wearing a plain, maco, yellow dress, which reaches a bit lower than her knees, revealing a pair of leisure shoes. It is like she came from the seventies and adopted some modern pieces of clothing and accessories.

As I stare at her completely spaced out, I catch her turning her attention towards us, looking at me straight in the eyes for a couple of seconds. Her eyes seem to be slightly closing to focus a bit better and after this brief moment, she leans toward a friend of hers, standing on her right, to whisper in her ear.

I do not know her name, she seems about our age...I think to myself. And I definitely caught her attention for better or for worse... shit I hope I did not look like an idiot.

My friends read my body language.

"...Nooooooice!" Said Markus after looking their way and smoothly turning back to us, having a sip from the beer bottle in his hand.

So, who is sitting on the bench next to me is not impressed and grins in indifference. His type was different. He was into the goth/geeky-looking type.

"Well there are four of them, no guys in the group and they are totally checking us out."

"Can't tell I have my back turned..."

"They just came out of the store we got our beers from, walked right past us and instead of sitting on the empty bench next to us they pick the one right across..."

A brief silence follows along with a couple of puffs from the joint we lit 2 minutes ago and it passes to my hand.

"Yeap-True-Good point-Woo sniped!" We phrase altogether and laugh.

"The one in the middle is cute..." I admit and I have a puff.

"Sooo, this stands for dibs ?"

I turn to Markus and while mastering the best indifferent tone I possibly can, I go:

"Hell yeah, it's dibs...not that the others are ugly or anything, I would gladly divert should we approach them and discover she is interested in somebody else between us and one of the others is attracted to me."I am so enlightened when I am high. I could never put this phrase together with such ease while sober.

"So let's wave or something..." suggested Alex. "If we sit idly, they are not just gonna drag their asses onto our dicks or anything." He always spoke his mind.

"I've got a better idea..." figured Markus as I handed the joint over to him. "Keep an eye on them and tell me when either one of them or all, are looking our way."

We change the topic and before even five minutes go by, I give him the signal. He pivots where he stands, looks straight at them and while they freeze with awkwardness for what seems to be less than a blink of an eye, he makes a cheers gesture and shows them the joint in a way that says: "Want some of this?"

They laugh for a few seconds."Come with me, I need help."

"Dude, I really don't know what to say..."

"No worries, I'll do the talking... just follow my lead and try to keep up."

Markus is the one we call "the player" in our group. He is a tall guy with the popular opinion saying that he is way above average looking. Pale, blonde hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, very talkative...sometimes I had trouble understanding what pushed him to hang out with the rest of us. He could be chilling with the "cool kids". But Markus is all about fellowship. He would get his hands dirty for any of us regardless of the consequences. His attitude, his style, the way this dude carries himself, I'm gonna simply say that he has a way of getting people to take his side and even trust him. Now that is a skill I am extremely bad at and one of the reasons why he counts more partners they any of the rest of us combined. Ok let's do this, stay cool, you can't lose with Markus.