We're laying under the stars, watching a movie, snuggling under blankets as a fog rolls in, and he wants to lean over and whisper, "I love you," in my ear, but he doesn't.
He tells me this after he tells me he gets lost in my eyes, and I roll them in Sunday evening's darkness, but then say, quietly, that he should be careful; he could make a girl fall in love with talk like that.
"Will you let me know when that happens?"
He asks me this after we've spent all day riding vintage Stingrays to local wineries, after dancing on State Street to Sinatra, after dinner in the restaurant where, several years ago, my mother told me she's in love, and I burst into tears because I hardly even knew she was dating. I hadn't been able to go back to that restaurant since that night I sobbed alone at the table while the server curiously paced past every few minutes.
The inner me, the one who watches these things happen whilst perched atop a chaise lounge in a silk robe smoking a Dunhill through a rhinestone-encrusted holder, she's just rolling her eyes at all of it, the same way she rolled her eyes when the first thing he said to me was, "You're so beautiful," or when we slept under the stars on his balcony, or when we had a picnic in front of the mission.
She's pretty cynical, that inner me, but the me in reality who twirled my hair absent-mindedly in an off-character flirtatious response to his opening line, who has spent every night for a month at his apartment staring helplessly, silently, moonily, into green eyes, the me whose lips are all day perked up in a dopey grin, the me who daydreams so intently she almost runs her bike into every available obstacle, the one who sings "Dream a Little Dream of Me" while she bikes along the beach to get to work, smiling and greeting strangers with, "Guten morgen!", that one, she says,
"I think it already happened."