A Couple In Love At Starbucks

They're sitting three feet from me.
No more. No less.
He on the edge of the brown leather (is it faux?) chair
and she on the edge of the matching ottoman
pulled so they are knee-to-knee. Facing each other.

She holds his left hand in both of hers.
She pets it as if it were covered in mink fur.
The thumb of her right hand moves back and forth
back and forth
across the surface of his fingers.
She is reading his hand-braille.

His right hand holds a paper travel coffee cup.
He bobs it up and down and swirls it around in little circles-
little punctuation marks to his stories.
His stories make her laugh.
When something he says strikes her as particularly amusing,
she throws her head forward
almost into his lap.
I'm sure he wishes she would.

I cannot make out what they are saying
what he is saying
what she is laughing at.
I only know what I see:
A man and a woman
facing each other, knee-to-knee,
long moments of silence make both of them giggle.
Their eyes never leaving the gaze of the other.

Valentine's Day is in two days.
I wonder if he'll tell her "It's not like I'm in love with you or anything"
on their way to dinner at a fancy restaurant.
I wonder if he'll sit in the other room, silently angry about who knows what,
while she sits alone at the kitchen table
looking at the cupcakes and roses she bought herself earlier that day.
I wonder if he'll pull a greeting card out of his pocket
and mumble "Here. I got this for you" and toss it in her lap as he's driving
and she's sitting next to him.
I wonder if she'll open it and see that he didn't write anything in it.
Not even his name.
I wonder if she wonders what she's doing with him.

But his hands felt so soft.