A teenaged couple with their hands in each other’s back pockets, all gangly, uncontrollable limbs and skin shiny with the overlapping auras of grease and love, set their pizza box from next door on the counter as they choose just the right chocolate bars. He slides bony fingers under the tail of her shirt and they giggle while perusing the rainbow of candies and dehydrated meat as I stare at the tops of their heads.
With a Charleston Chew and a Baby Ruth on the glass and me ringing them up, the boy whispers something to the girl and she nods. Then he asks me, hesitant and shy, if I’d like some of their pizza. I must look hungry or lonely or like the kind of person whose life could be improved by free pizza, which I am.
He leaves me one of their paper plates and two steaming wedges of pepperoni and onion as they giggle off into the night with six more slices between them, pausing to measure themselves and share a kiss beneath the open door’s bells.