“Making eyes from across the room.” Sometimes you steal glances and sometimes your eyes linger and sometimes you stare at each other. But what does it mean? You can never be sure. And there are times you know it means something but for reasons you can’t explain you can’t make yourself do anything about it. “Go talk to her!” Your friends elbow you and point out she’s been watching you, but you won’t go talk to her. You see her in a summer dress pass by the front of the pool table all night and look at you and you remain silent. For a long time after you remember the dress.
But sometimes a passing glance is enough reason to cross the room and say hi. She says “I thought I recognized you,” and you try to not disrupt any fiction that allows her to get comfortable enough to keep talking to you. “Yeah, I thought you looked familiar, too.” Later, you are mostly undressed in her apartment as she goes to the bathroom or to the kitchen and you marvel that a glance and talking were enough to get both of you to that moment.
Sometimes it is more mysterious. You look at each other, talk to each other, and feel yourselves come to some invisible line of intimacy without ever really knowing what is happening. You sit and your legs touch beneath the table, and you let them stay there. You feel the warmth of her leg on yours. You feel the motion of the sea for a second. And then one of you moves and the moment passes, and you feel lost in your own thoughts and illusions.
“What did she do to get you off?/ Taking down her hair like ‘Oh my god’/Taking off your shirt I did that once . . . or twice.” Imagining and desire. Picturing what could happen, since we’ve all been there once or twice. That’s the other part of it when you don’t know what the making eyes from across the room will lead to. The imagining of what could come after the glances. Let me hold your hand. Let me smell your neck. Let me kiss your jaw. Let me touch your hip. Let me tell you a story in bed while our sides touch. Let me bring you a drink. Let me walk with you in the park. It’s all made up. It’s all in your head. But that’s enough. That’s what people don’t understand about being romantic: for love you need someone else, for romance you just need an idea.
