Son: Shakespeare

Where did we go wrong?

As she peered slyly over the edge of her book in which she was reading The Taming of the Shrew, she had seen his brief moment of sadness.

Their conversation had been perfunctory. He had barely sat down before he started, "It's not you, it's me." It was a disgustingly typical line, and she quietly hated him for playing it off as a real conversation starter.

Less than two minutes later, he was up and out the door of the coffeehouse, laughing and joking and catcalling with his buddies on their way down the street.

With him, though, she had learned to watch for the private moments where he thought no one was looking. She had caught it, a brief downward glance at his shoes where he had unexpectedly communicated his loneliness. The look was not meant for anyone, especially not for her.

It had all been very romantic, the kind of love story they make teenage romantic comedies out of. She hated men, and he loved a lot of women. He was on half a dozen sports teams; she read poetry. Yet, through a blinding and absurd series of events, they had met, flirted, and had a romantic prom night kiss. Perhaps, for that night, even fallen in love.

It was the set-up for a beautiful thing.

Except it hadn't been. In fact, the apex of their relationship was the peak and everything else was just a slow tumble down.

The glow fades, the novelty dies, and then you have to settle into a the strange and bizarre world known as dating. They settled into the great Now what.

They were from different worlds, and their attempts at being together had failed gloriously. She brought books to his games, while he snored loudly in the lobby of her art galleries. They had tried to have sex, but it turned into glorified, naked cuddling that left them both with the hangover of failure the next morning.

They hadn't spoken to each other for a week after that attempt.

She was attracted to him, in some way, but it seeemed they couldn't adjust enough or correctly to fit into each other's lives.

Which left her here, at the coffeehouse, single again, and watching him steal a quick glance at his shoes and expressing more than he would ever say.

She tried to cry, even a little, shed a little tear for the discarded relationship. But it was the now open feelings that she had observed that touched her more. She flipped another page in her Collected Works of William Shakespeare, having somehow forgotten to read the last couple lines -- common, she was convinced of most people attempting to read the Bard. No one understood 90% of what he wrote these days, anyways.

Rather, she pondered her own situation and wondered where the two of them had gone wrong, and was found wanting for an answer.