A Simple Romance (working title): a short short story

Author's note: I just workshopped this in class, and cut out all the parts that didn't really work, but never quite completed the revision. So good luck fillin' in the blanks! :) I think I'm going to expand it. Lemme know what you think, loves. (Especially if you have better title ideas.)

A Simple Romance.

When he first saw her, waltzing through a field of tablecloths, he crossed his hands in his lap, right over left. Everyone has something to keep hidden, but she didn’t. She couldn’t have secrets with a smile like that, her eyes lit as if waiting to blow out birthday candles, even when carrying hot plates of filet minon and fettuccini alfredo. It was something about her peculiar combination of qualities, the attractiveness of her hard edges, the electricity surging through her softest spots. He tipped her well and often.

He sat and watched and waited until she had time to kill. He said his expertise was chemistry, teaching at the university. She told him that when she spoke with strangers on speakerphone, she liked to pretend they were trapped inside the plastic curves of the machine. He asked for her number and then called to leave a message, respectfully requesting that she release him from his tiny cage.

She liked him after that.

He bought tickets to the theatre, said he wanted to sit with her. She asked, as in a date?, and he answered with flowers at her doorstep. He didn’t fold his hands at dinner. He spoke with them, drawing a new language in the space around him, creating universes with his fingers as they outlined strings of possibilities, illustrating the chance meeting of two atoms. She touched her bottom lip as she smiled at him, laughing in gentle bursts of molecules, thousands at a time.

Standing on her stoop, she closed her eyes and he paused only half an inch from her face, so his breath now breezed into her through her parted lips. When the gentleman left, she smirked to herself behind the closed door. He reached into his pocket, slid a white gold ring back onto his finger, and hailed a cab home.