Snippet: Love & Saturday Night

The twilight had abandoned them, but they still had each other. In a strip of Europe lost somewhere in America, they meandered through cobblestone streets, past colorful shops and tall black lamp posts and small gothic business buildings with their flourishing troughs and arches; and they imagined that they were in some English village somewhere, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. But they weren’t. Their imaginations could never withstand the hollering or the trumpeting of horns in the distance — unwelcome anchors to reality that they were, and ubiquitous to beautiful spring nights.

However, none of these small things mattered — they were just glad to be with each other.

Above, the purple steins of dawn had dispersed, pooled into the inky well of midnight blue dotted with stars. They were walking on moonlight, her heels clicking in tandem to his steps.

Click, clop, click, clop.

He was a quiet man, a school teacher with a habit of walking with his hands in his pockets. She was a quiet woman, a waitress with secret ambitions for literary success. They had met only a few hours earlier, at a lounge off Fifth. Strangers yet not, neither speaking yet both comfortable with the setting silence. For nothing needed to be said. Their actions were loud enough.

He watched her tuck her hair behind her ear, then turn and smile at him. He glanced, embarrassed, to his shoes. He didn’t want her to see him blush.

Here, there were only two. But they were approaching the rest of the world, or at least the street that contained them. A main road, upon which cars zipped and pedestrians stampeded like wild horses. As they merged into the traffic, he felt a sense of loneliness somehow, a strange juxtaposition to being around so many people. He preferred the quiet alleyways that they’d left, for there he had felt more connected to her somehow, and not so apart…

He emerged from his thoughts to find himself utterly alone. She was gone, vanished, perhaps lost somewhere in the sway of the crowd. He searched for her for some time, but she was nowhere to be found. Sudden regret, sharp and ugly - regret for not having asked her number, regret for having left that lounge, regret for not having stayed on those cobblestone roads, regret, regret, regret…

A warmth enclosed his hand, drew it from his pocket. He glanced down to find a smaller, paler hand enclosing his. His gaze rose to meet her eyes, warm and brown and bright and kind. She reached up, tucked her hair behind a ear.

She smiled, and he blushed.