Emotional Dominoes

He looked at her.
She looked back.
He always appreciated that about her, even though it made him slightly suspicious.

She made some toast.
He watched her butter the toast.
She enjoyed her snack, but felt oddly self-conscious.

He was running in the grassy field.
She rode her bike along side of him.
It was times like this when he almost forgot his manners.

She moved her pawn.
He furrowed his brow and, after a moment, moved his own pawn.
She suppressed the furrowing of her own brow in an attempt to be an individual.

He was raised on a healthy dose of respect and root vegetables that were roasted with garlic and herbs and served with a beautiful beurre blanc. The respect was not served at all. As a young boy he would look out his window up at the stars in awe and chuckle to himself. "Stars" he would say shaking his head. He wanted to meet a woman like his mother, which is odd because she was an intimidating ox of a woman who rationed out hugs much the same as she rationed out turns on her antique yo-yo. He longed to make a difference in the world, mostly as an homage to his favourite mathematical operation, subtraction. 

She peels potatoes to the beat of her own drummer.

He sits mesmerized by the rhythmic peeling.

She contemplates ordering in and dressing the potatoes up instead as the main characters for her puppet theatre version of Beauty and The Beast.  

He looks off into the distance.
She sits next to him reading a very worn novel.
He is jealous of something beyond his current level of awareness.

She enjoys the hot water of the bath.
He hopes there will be some hot water leftover for him.
She momentarily has mixed feelings about wanting all the hot water for herself but quickly returns to playing with her rubber ducks.

He sat down next to her.
She contemplated running away, yet stayed.
He was so glad that he had decided against wearing his big, fake, furry eye brows.

She spent many hours of her youth picking flowers - surprisingly not for bouquets or as presents, but instead mostly for therapeutic reasons. She used to be described as her own worst enemy, a title that made her proud. Her misunderstanding of the term enemy dated back to her preschool years. Her father warned her of men who would take advantage of her kindness or her love of cement, which oddly he did all the time. She longed to shelve books, not for a living or as a volunteer, but mostly just to clean the place up as it was always this side of messy. 

She watched the game on the edge of her seat.
He preferred to use his whole seat, thank you very much.
Afterwards she turned and smiled at his naivete.

He appreciates her performance at the theatre.
She is partially glad that he came, although she did have to deliberate for a while over the choice of the word 'glad'.
He wants to tell everyone his secret, but now isn't the time although it would be a good place.

After a moment of thought, she gives him a standing ovation.
Though there is some second-guessing, he decides to revel in it.
She can tolerate many things and revelry is surprisingly one of them, though second-guessing is a major pet peeve.

He opens his present.
She opens hers.
He always looks forward to their Wednesday evening ritual of opening things.

They held hands wherever they went less out of affection and more to avoid falling or having random passersby attempt to dance with them. While they were in love, it was not a fairy tale romance as they were constantly guarding against being too cliched in their love - instead their love was hyper-realistic- if you were to paint a picture of it, you'd swear it was a photograph. They wanted to grow old together, as it seemed like a fairly manageable task, or at least much more readily achievable than growing mold together (although they had reached some success recently and were thinking of creating their own brand of gourmet blue cheeses). They were each other's best friend, make-up artist and harshest critic and they loved finishing each other's crude jokes and apples.

He placed his hand gently upon her wrist.
She enjoyed having a slightly warmer wrist.
He wished that they could stay like this forever, but it was just too awkward and inconvenient.

She often dealt in hypotheticals.

He had zero idea what was going on most of the time.
Usually she just couldn't get enough of his confusion, and although she occasionally felt regret, that feeling was fleeting.

She wants to whisk him away.

He loves being whisked places.
She has a strange desire to use a spatula or at least a handheld mixer as well, just for variety's sake.

He laughs at her seriousness.
She sighs at his laughter.
He loves playing emotional dominoes.