Love Games

While working the late shift at the local bowling alley, I chanced upon a conversation between two amorous hazed individuals that were huddled comfortably close together on the padded bench beneath the soft amber glow of the overhead lights.  They drew my attention because of the way they looked at each other--as if the weight of the world was pinned directly between them, making them gravitate towards each other with irresistible force.  They were young, but not un-matured.  Perhaps it was the intensity with which they stared at each other, or the spiritedness with which they responded to each others sweet nothings--I don't know--but though they were old enough to know that swooning such as this couldn't exist, they embodied the fervor of young lovers' intimacy and innocence anyway.

 "What do you whisper to me at night?" I overhear her say.  As if suddenly too shy to look into her eyes, the man looks down and smiles, and  I could tell that he was enjoying the thought of those moments that she was inquiring about--those intimate moments between himself and his sleeping partner.  I could tell that he was contemplating whether he should confess or not.  Should he relinquish the privacy of those moments and expel those secret truths or keep them to himself a little while longer?  Then, determinedly, he said "I've got a penny. You call it.  If you win, I'll tell you."  He delighted in the craftiness of the suggestion.  She responded in kind, calling "tails" as the coin catapulted through the air and then collided noisily with the table.

The coin did indeed land tails-up, and while the woman was clearly delighted by the outcome, I couldn't help but notice what I assumed to be the immediate nervousness that attached itself to the man.  However, the way he looked at her did not lessen in affection.  It was as if he wanted, more than anything, to tell her now what he had so many times before whispered to her while she slept, but he was worried about how she might respond or react.  Regardless, he honored the coin-toss and said "I tell you how I feel about you."

"You tell me how you feel about me all the time," she says with a coy smile, "how is that any different?"  It is obvious by the hesitation in his demeanor what he is dying to say, and she must know what he is hinting at, but still she prods him to say it first.  It is so much like a game...

"What do you think I mean by that?" He asks as a way to focus the spotlight away from himself.  Immediately he woman responds as the man had earlier, by casting her eyes down and adopting a nervous twitch.  "That's not how this works, I asked you first" she said, and then, with a touch of softness, "you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, you can tell me when you're ready," she said as she stared at him with dialated, widely drawn eyes.  And just like that, it was if they had confessed their love without verbally doing so, and they continued to look at each other with such giddy infatuation that it being anything other than love was doubtful.  They were so entirely blind to everything outside of themselves that they couldn't even notice the lonely waitress observing them from the nearby serving station across the way.