Consolation

She looked up from her plate and offered a radiant smile, he daintily reciprocated. He was ogling again and she was blushing. He loved how her skin glowed, how the candlelight bounced off her earrings and her shinny russet eyes.

He didn’t know how he felt about her. Truth is he was very picky. Either they were too dumb, narrow-minded, gullible, morally insensitive, materialistic, without hobbies, couldn’t think to save their lives or something else; there was always that one thing he didn’t expect that turned him off – it was the quirky, pesky little things. Not with her though, enough time had passed for him to be certain.

She was a welcome distraction, annoying just enough and not too demanding. She was a distraction from his aloneness, the searing silence of his apartment and hollowness in his heart. Her presence made the pain of his existence enough to bare, just enough to get on and be. Perhaps that is what life is, he thought, to be distracted and cloistered from the empitness of life and the harsh indigestible truth of how fundamentally alone we are.

And so he thought it would be best to ask, “Will you marry me?”

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