"We've been dating for six months now."
"Six months? Really. Wow. That's like...half a year."
"Crazy, right?"
"We've been waiting for our food for forty-five minutes. It feels like a pretty significant fraction of our time together, but that could be my rumbly tumbly talking."
Abigail nodded. "I can hear it from here."
"Really?" Shawn leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Can you make out what it's saying? Is it rude? If so, I apologize."
"It's saying you must have already known it was our six month anniversary, or we would've been eating by now, probably at a restaurant with less classy ambience and more memorabilia on the walls."
"That or a living room with more pizza boxes and less space between our chairs."
"This is fine, thanks. I appreciate the sacrifice on your part. I was just thinking...."
"Thinking?" Shawn mock-winced. "Serves me right for taking you to one of these fancy restaurants where you don't have to yell to make yourself heard."
"Isn't it horrible? It's like having a real girlfriend or something."
"It's exactly like that," said Shawn, reaching across the table to take Abigail's hands.
"Which brings me to my point. It's been six months. I think it's time to talk..."
"I've told you, you can't move in with me, it's barely legal for one person to be living there as it is."
"...exes," finished Abigail insistently.
"Axes? Does that include hatchets? Or perhaps tomahawks?"
She quirked an eyebrow. "Spill, Spencer."
"It's your game, you go first."
"Fair." She leaned in. "1999 to 2000. Brandon McMillan. Dated for most of senior year and broke up when he came to pick me up from a student teacher posting and I could see in his eyes that he really hated kids."
"How do you know I don't hate kids?"
"You are a kid. If anything, you'd hate them because of the competition."
"Don't be ridiculous. Put me and a kid in the same room and I'd win any competition. Hands down. Any kid. Let's do it."
She grinned. "2003. Max Jacobsen. We dated for five months and broke up because he moved to Duluth."
"From Santa Barbara? He clearly had skewed priorities. Leaving all this sun and sand..."
"...and me, but then if someone's going to leave you for Minnesota I guess it's best to get that over with as soon as possible. 2005...."
Shawn held up his hands. "Wait a minute. You're expecting me to believe you had dry spells of several years? Looking like that? I don't think so."
"We're only covering the serious ones here."
"Ah," said Shawn. "My list will be very, very short. Shorter than the list of times someone has mistaken me for Tommy Lee Jones."
"Someone mistook you for Tommy Lee Jones?"
"Once. From a distance." He paused. "I have mentioned you're my first serious girlfriend, right?"
"Looking like that?" countered Abigail.
"Beating them off with a stick so fast I didn't have time for second dates."
"2005," continued Abigail. "Kyle Masters. Great smile, horrible bowler."
"And that was a deal-breaker?"
"No, the deal-breaker was his roving hands. Roving to other women." She laughed. "Who'd make a relationship decision based on bowling skills?"
Shawn shrugged, and he stared fixedly at the centerpiece.
"That's pretty much it for me," she said. "Other than you, nobody else got into my head like those three. And since you were never serious about anybody before me, I guess the game is over." She waved a hand in front of Shawn's face. "Earth to Shawn. You still there?"
His gaze returned from somewhere inside his own head, and he nodded.
"Sure," he said. "Still here. No serious girlfriends before you. Game over."
"So that's behind us," said Abigail.
"Yes, it is," said Shawn. He raised a wine glass. "Let the seventh month begin."
It was Abigail who broke the silence after the toast.
"Why don't we go bowling sometime?"
"My lumbago."
"Do you even know what that is, besides a really quick excuse for not bowling?"
"Not really. Please let's just not."
"Okay, we won't." She grinned. "It's not like bowling is a deal-breaker for me, either."
The food arrived just in time to keep her from seeing the flicker in Shawn's eyes.