dailyeatings

Throughout dinner I watched as the two swapped stories about their romantic interests and misadventures in love. He flip-flopped between humor and sincerity, complaining about the myriad flaws of women, then becoming suddenly candid about his inability to work up enough courage to ask his current interest out. Her rapid-fire jokes about the persistent but unfit suitors she unwittingly recruited and all the various shortcomings of the Loser Ex contrasted sharply with the pause-inducing, gaze-averting admissions she would slip into conversation about the pervasive influence her former lover still passively exerted. Both shared and made light of their foibles, ridiculed potential matches suggested by their friends and played the defeatist with their current interests, self-image and romantic prospects in general. I saw them laugh together, smile in time, turn gravely serious at all the right points and generally become so similar and complementary in response and character that my continuous, satisfied smile prompted them to ask me what was so funny. “Why don’t you date each other?” I asked. “You guys could be the plot to a Meg Ryan movie: girl and guy complain about love, try to help each other find dates and get their love-lives back on track with disastrous results, until at the absolute bottom they discover amid tears and arguing that they were looking at their soulmate all along. Perfect rom-com plotline,” I said, prompting them to look at me, each other and then me again with such comically overwrought looks of revulsion that there could no longer be any doubt that these two were indeed perfect for each other.