H.E. and I were waiting for our sushi dinners when I noticed a dark blonde guy sitting at another table across the aisle, staring at me with thoughtful dark eyes. I tried not to be conspicuous, so I quickly slid my gaze away, but after that first meeting of the eyes, I simply couldn’t stop thinking about it. Was he still staring at me?

I stole another look and found that the answer was yes.

That second glance told me a wealth of things, details I hadn’t noticed before—like that he was heartbreakingly cute and had gorgeous eyes with a dreamy look about them, as though I were a sugar plum dancing in his head and he wasn’t quite aware that the sugar plum was looking back at him for real. He paid no attention to the woman he was with, and she barely even noticed he was there. She was busy talking with someone else, and there he sat, just gazing at me. I filed all of that away in my head and tried to maintain a conversation with H.E., but I’d never been so distracted in my entire life.

God, he was cute.

I knew he was still staring at me, and when I glanced at him a third time, I lingered a little longer. I couldn’t believe his eyes, those great big limpid pools of darkness. You could totally get lost in them. I decided that, yes, he looked as though he was wondering what it would be like to talk with me. His thoughts were so apparent. I wonder what she’s like…

Before I knew it, dinner was ready, and so began the ritual pouring of the soy sauce over the wasabi, the snapping of the chopsticks and the squeezing of the lemons. I tried extra special hard to eat with dainty bites, but because I knew he was staring at me, I couldn’t open my mouth without being painfully aware that he was watching how I ate, and I kept thinking, why the hell is my rainbow roll so huge today? Oh, God, please don’t let me dribble soy sauce down my chin!

Finally, I couldn’t take it any more. When I slid my gaze towards him, I kept it there. I tipped my head a little and allowed a smile to come over me as I looked directly in his eyes.

He blinked once or twice and sat up straighter, as though taken aback, as though realizing that the woman at whom he’d been gazing was gazing back at him… and smiling!

One end of his mouth tipped up a bit, but he looked too shy to do much more. So I lifted my hand and gave him a tiny encouraging wave, just a small movement of my fingers really.

But H.E. didn’t miss it. He’d seen the guy, and he knew I was smiling at him. As I turned my attention back to dinner, he muttered, “I can always count on some guy making eyes at you any time I take you to a restaurant.”

I had just put a roll in my mouth, so all I could do was mumble a wide-eyed protest and hold up four fingers.

“Oh, excuse me,” H.E. said in a mocking tone, “it was four guys?”

I swallowed the roll hard and gaped at him. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to hit him. “No!” I held up my four fingers again. “The guy’s only four years old!”

And a very cute four-year-old he was, too. He couldn’t stop staring at me.

H.E. simply huffed and mumbled something about me choosing a younger man over him. But of course. A younger man. How typical.

As if.

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