It was lunchtime and he was eating his usual loaf as he wandered the streets aimlessly, ensuring at all times to keep it from the dog that would appear each day like clockwork and hover alongside while looking up hopefully. Normally he would look about him to see what was happening on that particular day but keep always apart, as if in a bubble: watching and never taking part. On this particular day, however, having glanced across at a heated argument between a stall owner and his customer, he was stopped in his tracks by a smiling face looking straight up at him.
“Would you like to play?” its mouth said in a welcoming, cheery sort of way. A girl’s mouth- something he’d made a point of avoiding before now in the belief that all girls were as troublesome as his sisters. “Typical,” he thought, “Let your guard down for a moment…”
But let his guard down he did all the more as he took in the expression on this girl’s face. And also because she was pretty in a way he had never noticed before. That smile, though, on its own was such that he could not help but say, “Alright- looks fun. How do you play?”
And as the ball flew back and forth along with the exchange of words, something began to change in them both.
A chance meeting became the start of a friendship that would flourish into a love that would survive against the odds.
“Would you like to play?” its mouth said in a welcoming, cheery sort of way. A girl’s mouth- something he’d made a point of avoiding before now in the belief that all girls were as troublesome as his sisters. “Typical,” he thought, “Let your guard down for a moment…”
But let his guard down he did all the more as he took in the expression on this girl’s face. And also because she was pretty in a way he had never noticed before. That smile, though, on its own was such that he could not help but say, “Alright- looks fun. How do you play?”
And as the ball flew back and forth along with the exchange of words, something began to change in them both.
A chance meeting became the start of a friendship that would flourish into a love that would survive against the odds.
Note: I went to a taster session one work lunchtime for a creative writing course I then never got round to signing up for. We did an exercise where we were given postcards with pictures and tasked with coming up with a story for it. I had, or at least saw, one bearing the painting Invitation to the Game of Pelota by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Pérez) and wound up later writing this.
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