Poker Night

We sat at the same table last week and although we never spoke then, we acknowledged that it had been nice playing together with a hand shake at the end. This week, we started at the same table but then he was moved to another and he was out before our tables merged again. He stood by to watch and I noticed he was cheering me on at times. He even came over to wish me luck and made me laugh with his enthusiasm for my sorry chip count. He stood off to the side, laughing, dancing to the music in a funny guy-who-has-no-idea-how-to-country-dance sort of way. He kept checking in to see how I was progressing (I wasn’t) and was as disheartened as I was when I was taken out in fifth place with my pair of jacks.

I went over to talk with another girl that had been playing at my table. She had been fun to play cards with and was engaged to the guy running the tables so I figured I’d surely have a chance to hang out with her again and I wanted to get to know her better.

The guy asked if I knew how to do the dances. I admitted I knew some of them. He wanted to learn and said he had been asking a couple women to teach him but they just looked at him like he was crazy. I didn’t offer, but then, he didn’t really ask me, either.

We stood and watched the final few players until a song came on that I knew and I went out to dance. When I came back he came to talk to me again and was dancing around in a funny but cute way. He was laid back, with a good sense of humor. Cute in a really great kind of a way, personable. A song came on where it tells you the dance steps throughout and I told him this was his song. The other woman wanted to go dance to it, too, and he begged me to come with them. It’s a song I loathe, but I went along. We had no idea what we were doing despite the instructions but we laughed and had a great time anyway.

With so few people left in the bar and it being well past midnight, the dj put on a slow song, one that just hits me in a certain way right now, and I knew it was my cue to leave. I made sure to tell the girl that I’d see her next week. I hadn’t caught her name but I’ll be sure to introduce myself next week.

I headed out to my car wondering how it might have all been so very different. If only he weren’t married.

(As I came home in this melancholy mood, I took Gabe out for a quick potty break before hitting the shower. I take him out just outside the door at times like these, lest he see the cat in the window and bark his head off in the still of the night. Instead, some neighbor cat was out on the prowl and Gabe spotted it under the street light and nearly ripped my hand of trying to get to it, barking up a storm the whole time. I drug him into the house and went back outside to clean up his mess. Nothing like reality to snap ya back into the present, is there?)