text: "Hello, I'm... no, that's... not..." Em sighs sharply. She is a tall, well-dressed woman in her early 20s. She's quite attractive, though she wouldn't say so, and she's supposed to be going out with someone any minute now, but she can't quite decide how how to introduce herself. "Hi, my name's - no, it's not a fucking interview, relax." Em takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and tells herself to... "Calm down. He likes you, that's why he's coming. He's more scared of you than you are of - oh don't fucking say that, that's tragic." The doorbell rings. Em panics and says "FUCK! ^No, ^fuck. ^I'll ^be ^right - I'LL BE RIGHT THERE." She gags a little bit, angry at herself for being stupid. She regains her composure, strides over and opens the front door of her flat. It goes okay, they go to a pub with a garden on the first floor. It's a beautiful day, but the drinks are quite expensive, (which Em remarks on). Clark says not to worry and that he'll get it. She wants to say no and that it's bullshit and that they should go somewhere else, but she quite likes him and the beer garden and she doesn't want to make it awkward, so she accepts. Clark hates his name. He hopes she'll come up with a good nickname, but he introduced himself as Clark because he thinks only assholes give themselves nicknames. They talk about the weather initially, which is agonising, but then they start talking about climate change, which leads to making fun of republicans, and from then, they got on like a house on fire. Turns out they both waste a lot of time on their sofas and both had a huge crush on Rachel Stevens when they were kids. So after a couple of hours of talking and laughing and lots of drinking, it's starting to get dark and cold, so Em says "Hey, so... I, uh... I don't know if you... do you... want to go back to yours? I mean it is getting pretty late, so-" "Yeah, that sounds good. Do you want to pick up anything on the way back? Some wine, or...? Clark thinks he's being subtle. Em knows that he's asking her if they should stop and get condoms. Em grins and brushes her hair behind her left ear. "Definitely." They get back and there's not a lot of preamble, they both want to have sex with each other, and they're both pretty much equally drunk, so the whole moral issue was just about moot. It's not very good sex, but it serves its purpose, so to speak. Em falls asleep on Clark's chest, looking like something from one of those godawful teen romance - I'm getting off-topic. The point is, they had a really good first date, no one has work the next day, so she can eat his food and wear his clothes and be all adorable, it's obvious that I'm Clark, isn't it? Shit. Okay, I'm trying to sort of keep some distance, because I feel like a story with a narrator is more respectable than a first-person type thing - it doesn't matter. I mean it went really well, and in the morning, we had sex again, and it was a bit better. But what was weird was the conversation we had afterwards. So... I do some electronics, not very difficult electronics, but quite specialised. Basically I design and build electrical and electronic circuits for people with some cash to spare and a project that requires... something that they can't find, so I'll make it for them, very boring. Basically, she asked me what I did for a living (because I didn't go into much detail on our date, I thought we would lose some momentum, like this story is now) so I just said I'm an electronic engineer. Only now, we have all day, and we're not trying to impress each other so much, so when I ask *her* what *she* does, she says "That depends, can you keep a secret?" I'm going to be perfectly honest, that response made me a little bit hard, and I immediately said "Ye-well-of-of course, I mean yeah." And I'm still not convinced the next 5 seconds actually happened, but she picks up my jacket from my bedpost, pulls a blunt and a lighter out of the inside pocket (which I didn't fucking put there, by the way) lights it, takes a looOONG drag and, her voice audibly straining, says "I'm a drug dealer".