She hides the trembling in her hands by wrapping them around the water glass, and she doesn't know that the cold of it, the wet ring it leaves on the table, is a whole religion I would return for.
He has ordered something he doesn't want because he was too nervous to read the menu properly. I watch him push it around the plate. If I could, I would lean into his ear and tell him it doesn't matter, none of it, not the wrong pasta or the joke that landed a beat too late or the long silence at minute twenty when they both reached for the bread at once and their fingers touched and jumped apart like they'd been caught.
That. The jumping apart. I want to hold their two hands still against the breadbasket and make them feel it, the astonishing furnace of another person's skin, the way a stranger's warmth is the most extravagant thing in the world once you no longer have any of your own.
She keeps checking whether she's talking too much. He keeps wondering if he should have worn the other shirt. From where I sit they are both already perfect, two frightened animals being brave in a loud bright room, and they are wasting so much of it worrying.
Say the awkward thing. Laugh with your whole ridiculous body. Walk her to the corner slowly, take the long way, let the night be cold so you have a reason to stand close.
You have your hands. You have tonight. Don't hurry, my darlings.
There is so much less of this than you think, and it is so much better than you know.