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The Hail Mary

"Do you believe in love at first sight?"

"Not when looking at you, no."

Oh well at least my dinner is warmer than the reaction I've just been handed he thought to himself. To say that didn't go as well as planned may be an understatement. Then he remembered the expression about having your arse handed to you on a plate and suddenly his meal felt less appetising than it did just ten seconds before he opened his mouth without thinking through fully what he was about to say. Try picturing an old man on a small rickety rowing boat desperately trying to make it ashore as waves crash all around him and that will go some way to letting you feel his current predicament. His primary school teacher Mrs Winterborne had always told him remember to think before you speak, but boys will be boys and let good advice go in one ear and straight out the other uncontested. If you want to know who in class touched the wet paint, rarely would you start with the girl's hands upon an inspection to find the culprit unless it was in a single sex all girls school. 

"I'm sorry I didn't mean it in terms of me and you specifically," he says, desperately heaving his oars against the current. He'd been better off just shooting himself in the foot in the literal sense, not the metaphorical one. It would be quicker and ultimately far less painful. 

"Oh, interesting, so you're saying no one could fall in love with me at first sight and especially not you. Good to know. Thank you for sharing that with me. Did your father teach you how to make a woman feel so special or more likely did you both skip that class?"

He wanted to bang his fist on the table and shout GOD DAMN IT. WILL YOU PLAY NICELY? But acutely aware he was holding 2 5 off suit, he folded the hand before the flop was even shown on the table. Taking care to place his knife and fork down gently on his plate he then places his hands palms down on the table, smiles at her and says "Look…" only the pause between his first word and what would have been his second was too long a gap.

"No… you look," but she didn't say anything more. Was she testing him? Was she still toying with him? Maybe both? Maybe neither? Maybe more…

He lifts his hands off the table and brings the tips of all ten digits together into a steeple. It's meant to be a power move. Catching her eyes watching his hands he feels them concertina so palm was now touching palm, the fingers tightened and his head lowered forward ever so slightly. All it needed now was for her to say aloud let us pray and it was Goodnight Vienna. He quickly moves his hands out of sight under the table and places them on his lap. His mouth opens and closes like a Goldfish and had they both been in water you'd have seen a bubble float to the surface of the bowl. 

"Is this going as well as you'd hoped?" She asks him nonchalantly. He pictured her in his mind as a monochrome vignette from a 1950s Hollywood movie. The woman sat alone at the bar, long cigarette holder in hand waiting for the right man to come along and offer her a light whilst she smokes them all instead one by one, none of them clearing the first hurdle before falling flat on their faces. Taking his hands back out of hiding he rubs the index and middle finger of his right hand against the side of his temple to try to alleviate the pressure building inside his head. When that doesn't work he rubs the four fingers of his right hand against the back of his neck. He stops short of cradling the back of his own head as the ultimate in self soothing. He puts his lips together, moves the top one back into his mouth so the edge of the lip is against his bottom row of front teeth and he scrapes the lip as he releases the tension so it goes back in place. Well he knows what Miss Winterborne would offer him up as advice now but what would Aaron Rodgers do 6 points down with 3 seconds on the clock in the 4th quarter? Aaron would throw the hail Mary with nothing left to lose. Fuck it he thinks and pulls his arm back and let's fly. "If you were a bike I'd ride you into next week," and with that he stands watching the football fly towards the end zone wondering if it'll be the winning points or cost him the game. 

How we got here;

https://foreverworkinprogress.blogspot.com/2024/10/you-look-nice.html

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