A LOT OF LOVE

Just a little story of two strangers...

A LOT OF LOVE

David had spent as long as he could remember actually worshipping Annie whenever she chanced to be walking past his front window, and in order to achieve total happiness he spent far too long looking out of it.

To most men, he thought, Annie would be not the sort to be called pretty, but to him she was the most beautiful woman on the planet, and had been since he had first noticed her way back in his teens. But he had never as much as spoken to her, never waved from the other side of his window, but he knew that he loved her

Now he was well into his twenties and if you were to ask him if he had a woman in his life he usually say no, and then maybe mutter he did have a sort of girlfriend. A pity, then, that Annie didn’t know. He wanted to tell her, of course he did, but he was scared because she might say no, and that would break his heart.

Then one day disaster struck.

It was he bus’s fault, really. There he was, about to step off because he was in town where he wanted to be, and he looked to make sure his feet were doing the right thing and reaching the pavement, and quite accidentally he felt someone who was climbing onto the bus nudge past him. And when he looked his heart missed at least one beat because it was Annie. Oh, how he loved that woman, even at close quarters like this. Because she was just about past him when she turned and smiled (that smile!) and said,

“Sorry.”

“Oh, nothing,” was his automatic reply because, well, it really had been nothing and anyway he wasn’t the sort to complain about a trivial happenstance like nothing.

“Do you know me?” she asked. Yes, the most beautiful woman in the entire world asked him if he knew her!

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, lost for more that that four words.

Then she did the wickedest thing she could do. She smiled at him, and what a smile!

It was pearly teeth! It was slightly crinkled lips. It was bright eyes. It was everything a smile should be, and more. It was Annie’s smile! And yes, he did know her and yet he didn’t. He knew the Annie walking past his window on her way down the street but no, he had never exchanged a word or a thought with her, didn’t even know the sound of her voice till just now.

“Get a move on!” called the bus driver at the two of them, both half way between the pavement and the bottom step of the bus.

“Sorry!” they both exclaimed in unison, and in one move they both ended up on the pavement. He had completed his step down and she had reversed her step up! And she was looking straight into his face and he was gazing into hers.

“Coffee,” she said.

“Pardon?” he asked.

“Sorry. Shall we, do you want, maybe we should…”

She sounded as uncertain of herself as he felt. This wonderful woman, this perfect specimen of the opposite gender, had suggested going for a coffee somewhere!

“I’m Annie,” she added. “And aren’t you David, though people call you Dave?”

“Yes… er, yes,” he stumbled through the admission.

"Then coffee?” she smiled. Again” That smile, those teeth, those lips, the ones that desperately needed to be kissed… and that was an original thought.

He had kissed her, of course, a thousand times in his head and in his imagination, but not in the flesh.

“Coffee…” he stammered, then nodded, “yes, of course, with you…”

This time her smile lit up all of her face, and her eyes glowed at him, really glowed, twin beacons beckoning distressed Davids to a safe refuge with her.

“I know you,” she confided in him, “come on round the next corner, there’s a cafe and they sell the most lovely coffee. Or tea, if you prefer it…”

“Or tea?” His mind was tripping over every word she said, so there was one thing he had to make absolutely clear or things would end up in the gutter whilst at the moment they were on the pavement.

“Can I say?” he asked, “I mean do you mind?”

“Only if I want to hear it…” Her eyes were twinkling and teasing him now. They said she did want to hear it, of course she did, she’d wanted to talk to him and hear his words since she’d been a child and he’d been at the school next door, the boys’ school, and she’d been at the girls. So close and yet so far away. But that had been years ago, years of remembering the way he walked, how he was always on his own whilst most of the boys walked in groups on their way home.

“Then I’ll try to. It is Annie, isn’t it?” Here he was wasting words when the last thing he should be doing is wasting anything.

“Well?” she smiled.

“I think…” he paused, and then, “no, I am quite certain, absolutely one hundred per cent certain that… that … that…”

“Well?” she repeated.

And he took all of his courage into his own hands and said it. “I love you,” he choked.

“Do you know me?” she asked using that teasing voice of hers, the one he had never heard before and yet knew with the sort of intimacy that he could never have explained to anyone had he been asked. But he knew it.

“I believe I do.” His more controlled self was returning, “because you’re the woman I want to marry,” he said with huge confidence. Because that’s exactly what he had decided a thousand times when she pad walked past his house and he had seen her through his window.

“Is that a proposal?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, but it is.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“Because you might think I don’t know you…”

“You’re the man who looks at me out of his window when I walk past his house more often than I need to, and do you know why?”

He shook his head. “No, sorry,” he said.

She smiled after treating him to a little giggle. “Because I rather like the look of you and when I see you something inside me… sort of crinkles up,” she confessed, “so I look again…”

“You do?”

“And yes,” she said, certainty on his face and in those wonderful eyes, “and yes, I was waiting for this moment. Yes, I will marry you.”

They arrived at the coffee ship and Anita, the woman behind the counter could tell one thing quite clearly.

“Do you mind me asking...when’s the day?”” she asked.

“The day?” asked David, glancing at Annie.

“Soon,” she said, “as soon as humanly possible. Please will you… say you will... I need a bridesmaid…”

© Peter Rogerson, 27.11.24