AllFreeNovel
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I was drunk and she was drunk and it was obvious to everyone around us. They would have called us fools. Idiots. They would have said what we had couldn’t possibly be real. Be true. They would say this is what annulments are for: people who rush in when they have no business at all rushing in. People who can’t see past the alcohol. People who are just pretending for a night or two.
But they didn’t see Rachel looking down at them as she danced her burlesque dance on the table. They didn’t see me looking at her as I watched, transfixed, hypnotised, struck dumb by dumb, dumb love.
They didn’t know. They didn’t know like we knew.
The song ended and the manager told us the police were on their way. A few customers gave a few confused claps, but I just smiled and stared at Rachel. She swept into a low bow. Her face was there just above mine. Her lips sticky with maple syrup. Her cheeks bright. Her eyes catching the neon lights from outside.
“Well?” she asked. “What did you think?”
I was silent for a moment, the chaos of the restaurant and the busy strip outside disappearing for a moment as I stared into her eyes and she stared into mine. At first I think she meant the question simply. What did I think of her dance? But the longer our eyes remained locked on one another, it became more and more clear that the question was growing.
Her in her sweet little curtsey up on the table. Me at the edge of the booth with my heart leaping up toward her. The question hung between us. Her eyes searched mine and mine hers.
“Well,” I said at last because the question had become everything, a gap between us that I wanted to cross. “I think I love you.”
Rachel’s sharp inhale was the last thing that was in silence. I grabbed her round the waist and pulled her into my lap. She yelped gleefully and all the noise came crashing back in. The waitress’s bellowing. The manager’s angry threats. The customers all laughing or cheering or returning to their own drunken late-night antics. The cars out on the street, the pedestrians stumbling down the sidewalk, the music pounding from nightclubs. The rattle of the dishes as Rachel’s foot caught the side of one of the coffee cups and sent it crashing.
There was noise and life and Rachel in my arms, smiling up at me. Laughing wildly. Kicking her feet and draping her arms around my neck and pulling me into a kiss.
The coffee spilled and dripped off the table onto the floor, but I didn’t care.
Because I was in love. I was sure that I always would be. Then and forever.
