In The Park

We are walking around the off lead part of the park in Brunswick on our way home. There is a gorgeous dark-haired, olive skinned 18 year old, 19 year old, 20 year old, something like that, guy shooting hoops on his own. He has on an olive green t-shirt and black shorts the colour palette of which suits his dark complexion perfectly. I stop and watch him while I wait for Bruno to catch up. He makes a shot and then his basketball runs off across the grass and he has to retrieve it, while I stand and watch him. As the gorgeous guy runs back, he smiles at me. 

I smile at him.

 “I can run fast,” he says. Broad smile across his face.

Oh, I see, I think.

He runs behind a nearby park bench and says, “I have got it from here once.”

“Good for you,” I say.

“That’s just once in my life,” he says. “Just once.” He laughs. He throws the ball at the hoop again, and it goes through. “Ohhhhh,” he says with the biggest smile.

“Wow!” I say.

I walk over and grab Bruno and handsome basketball guy’s basketball rolls to me. I kick it to him, as I pick up after Bruno.

“The ball likes you,” he says.

“Because it came right over to me?”

“Yes.” He smiles broadly. “Don’t know why,” he says. He laughs. If the situation was different, I may have thought he was flirting. But, he was just innocence personified. Handsome innocenence.

“I guess it’s better to be liked, than not liked,” I say. I cringe just a little at what I had just said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Yes,” he says. “It is.”

I walk up to Sam. “He sure is gorgeous, even if he is a bit special,” I say.

“Good bye,” he calls after me.

I turn around. “Good bye,” I say.

“Thank you,” he says. He grabs his ball and he runs up the big hill in the park at speed. And he's gone.

I presume he was thanking me for getting the ball through the hoop at a distance for the second time in his life, although I don’t really know what I had to do with it.