Date A Girl Who Keeps A Bottle Of Champagne In The Fridge

No, not the kind of bland little thing who’s had a single bottle of Korbel in her refrigerator since someone gave it to her on her 26th birthday.

I’m talking about a girl with sparkling blue eyes that flicker and gleam and rise and pop like the bubbles she loves so much. A girl who speaks in extremes, in sincerities, with apocalyptic ferocity. A girl who doesn’t carelessly twirl her hair and stare away coyly, but who fixes you with a steely gaze like a tractor beam. Date a girl who throws doors open and slams them closed. Her eyes will fly open wide when she realizes the noise she’s made and she’ll whisper “sorry!” fervently, quietly, as her cheeks flush bright pink. Date a girl who laughs so hard that she cries, then gleefully dries her eyes on her scarf without a moment’s thought to the mascara streaking across her cheek.

She’ll promise that she’ll never tell you a lie in response to a direct question, if you promise never to ask her a question to which you don’t want to know the answer. You’ll think this is a good deal.

Date a girl with a wide, face-cracking grin, who offers up that life-affirming smile hundreds of times a day. She doesn’t care that she’s prettier when she’s sad; although, if you ever catch her crying, she’ll jokingly offer this up as a silver lining. When she smiles the corners of her eyes crease like a pinwheel and you forget that she’s prettier when she’s sad, anyway. Instead you focus on her tongue and her teeth, both vibrant enough to attract attention. The right corner of her mouth stretches jauntily upwards and she bites her bottom lip casually, as though she doesn’t realize quite how perfect she looks.

Date a girl who’s brilliant and knows it. She’s getting a Ph.D. in a field you’ll never understand and when you ask her about it she grins and sparkles and glimmers with knowledge. Some part of her knows you don’t understand but still she does her darnedest to bring you into her gorgeous, genius world. Her whole face opens up with raw enthusiasm and you’ve never seen anything quite so beautiful.

Date a girl who can’t control her face, whose every thought flashes across her countenance like she has nothing to lose. She doesn’t, you know. No one that pretty and that smart and that sparkling could ever have anything to lose. She’ll laugh throatily when you tell her this, shrugging her shoulders and meeting your gaze. You don’t know how wrong you are yet.

Date her because she’s honest. She’s deadly loyal. She’s the most empathetic person you’ve ever met, but she despises the very idea of sympathy. Suck it up, she’ll say, glowering at you for for your ineffectiveness. She’ll toss that chin up and look down her crinkled nose in disgust. You’ll do anything to staunch the bleeding.

She wakes up in the morning, always before you, and cooks bacon and eggs in her underwear. You try to approach her, embrace her, kiss her neck like every leading man you’ve ever seen; she gently pushes you off. Stop, she says, the bacon is burning. You’ve heard about her dramatic fights with her exes and her famous fire-breathing temper and you’ll wonder why you’ve never seen this side of her. She would never speak about the past, of course; you did your research. You wanted to date a girl who keeps champagne in her fridge. Where was she? Was this it? She’ll never break her promises but she will break your heart and she’ll feel horrible about it. She won’t know why she has to but she’ll know she does, and you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Date her because she’ll ruin you. You’ll never be able to date someone brilliant or small or blonde or wide-eyed again. You’ll wake up at night thinking about how she shook snow off her head like a dog. She would bound in from the weather and stamp her feet and shake her head and flash that toothy smile, like the world’s most photogenic golden retriever. She’d still have snow in her hair, and her eyelashes, and she’d track inches of the stuff into your house. Why would you care? You were dating the girl who keeps champagne in the fridge.

Date her because she’s beautiful. Date her because she’s brilliant. Date her because she would never lie to you. Date her because she scares the bejesus out of you.