SHEEPISH

I smile as I catch myself looking after her, as she walks by oblivious to my attention.

Look deeply into her eyes, as she comes closer to me. As she passes by I can’t help but soak in her long lashes, and after that how her hair curls behind her ears. She crosses me completely, and I find myself lost in the bouncing curls that follow her bobbing head in rhythm with her crisp steps.

She stops at a table two tables away from me, asks the couple seated what they’d like to have this evening, notes it down with a small flourish on a small notepad, and starts walking back to the café, passing right by me again, and my eyes subtly doing the same thing all over again. I briefly try imagining what her handwriting would be like.

And I smile at myself, and I sigh. I had never thought that I’d come and sit at a small table outside an unknown café on the pavement of a street in a remote village of a Greek island day after day after day only to see a waitress pass me by, yet here I was. I had never thought that I’d want to talk to a woman who could only converse in one language, on that I didn’t speak, and yet here I was.

And I smile at myself and I sigh. I finish my coffee, and think of ordering another. But that would be silly – one simply does not have three cups before dinner. But as I notice her pass me by again, I have this burning urge to attract her attention, even if it meant doing something incredibly silly and childish. But I stop myself, and just in time. I suppose the best course of action was to call for the bill, and do just that. As she bends forward to place a sandwich and salad for the couple two tables away from me, I raise my arm to catch her eye.

She looks at me, and smiles as if to say ‘I’ll just be over’, and in that moment, caught between a sudden instinct to flash a James Bond smile and an equally strong impulse to avoid smiling a sheepish smile, I give her a smile laced with the most potent sheepishness.

It makes her giggle though. She smiles back at me once more, and this time, when I return in kind, it is a better kind. I pay the bill and left, which was less dramatic a process than I had imagined. Even so, I leave knowing I’ll be back tomorrow. And who knows, the sheepish one might just trump the James Bond.