“Yes way.” She fired back. “It’s only a part-time thing on the side. My boss gives me pictures and I write sweet or funny or passionate limericks for the occasion of your choice.” She didn’t tell him that she was also dating that boss.
“Prove it!” He looked around, then leaned sideways and snagged a postcard from the rack beside them. It showed a night-time garden with a candle surrounded by glowing fireflies and an outrageously orange sunset in the background. “There, give me a stanza about sunsets or,” he looked again, “sunrise, perhaps.”
His eyes held hers for a second and again she felt that need to laugh with him.
She took the card and looked at it for a minute, letting the words come.
“Don’t give me sunrise,
Nor golden fireflies.
It’s enough that you look at me
Because the sun rises in your eyes.”
When she finished, she looked up and found him quite still and silent, his face showing no expression.
She blushed. “Okay, it’s the best I could do on a moment’s notice, but given time I could do something decent, believe me.”
He cleared his throat slightly. “Oh, I believe you.” Then he smiled and his face was transformed. He had nice eyes, wide, brown. No not quite brown, more like warm amber, or clear honey. And they had this stillness like a pool of liquid gold. But his best feature was his smile. It shone with affection, happiness, and a little mischief, and made his eyes gleam.
He cleared his throat again, startling her.Bloody hell.How long had she been staring?
To cover her awkwardness, she looked away, but when she looked back, he was still watching her.
The waitress came with a fresh pot of tea and took the old one away. They were large pots, but then the two of them had been dawdling over this lunch for a long time. She reached for another mini sausage roll, and he poured more tea for them both, then took the last bacon sandwich.
A moment later he suddenly stopped chewing. “Bloody hell.”
She looked up at him.
“I forgot.”
“What?”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
She laughed, almost snarfing a mouthful of tea. “No way!”
“Yes way. Vegetarian and fish only.”
“How can you forget?” She’d watched him wolf down several meat sandwiches to say nothing of the sausage rolls.
“Well, it’s a new thing. I started being a vegetarian a month ago.”
“Sorry,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Why are you sorry?”
“Distracting you with my bad poetry.”
“Don’t say that about yourself. Your poetry is good.” He said softly, his warm honey eyes on her. “I’m just an idiot.” he put the bacon sandwich back on the platter.
“Don’t say that about yourself.” She smirked at him.
He examined the half-eaten strip of streaky bacon, a little warm fat soaking into the bread around it. “Fuck it,” he said at last, shoving the rest into his mouth.
It made them both laugh.
