Intimidating

...you intimidate me, he says.

That's the second time this week that's happened, she says, looking puzzled.

Really? What did the other guy say? he asks with a smile.

*****
They're walking down the waterfront and then a little further along, past a memorial that has always been just a place to walk past, and past empty spaces that have never been anything more than space-fillers, shoulders lightly brushing each others', bumping hands from time to time. He's stunned to find himself struggling with words again, eloquence having fled him like a terrified puppy with its tail firmly between its hindlegs.

"You know how it is when you're fifteen, and you've met this amazing girl, and everything's really important and charged with significance, and everything's so hard to do and say... and then you get older, and it gets easier, and it's something you learn how to do, to pick up on signals and act on them, and you feel like you have nothing really left to lose, and so it's easy... ...What I'm trying to say is that... you make me feel fifteen again..." (!) (Ugh. What the hell, that's was so not what I was trying to say...)

A blank look. Errr... No?

Choke. Sputter. "No what I really mean is that I'm not in control when you're around." (Groan. Me stalker, me like porn! ...just kill me now, before I embarrass myself any further...)

*****
Several hours later, the play by play replay, in a different setting. Alcohol-fortified and by the light of the stars (and bar).

"Why I find you intimidating...

...... it's not that I can't read the signs, God knows I'm too old for that... and I'm most assuredly not gay... it's just...
..... I'm just not used to being at some restaurant with a girl watching her as she ... shines, and feeling this ridiculous urge in the absence of any signals, in full view of the public to want to...

... reach out"

he smiles a little, his eyes never leaving hers as his hand rises and lightly touches the curve of her face; she turns her head a little, into his palm and there's a trace of a smile on her lips. The she says oh! as he says : do you understand now, why you intimidate me?

And then the door opens and the men in black disembark, and the moment passes.