Seven Euros, please

She tries to wrap gratitude
around the dumb little things…
for driving her around,
for buying her dinner,
the way his hand finds her hip
like it’s been renting the place for years.

She’s Indian,
in glittery saris that make streetlights
look like they’re working overtime,
and she keeps pausing in doorways
as if politeness might spill out
and stain the carpet.

“Thank you,” she says, awkward,
for the time,
for the laughing,
for the heat that turned the bedroom
into a small, honest furnace.

He’s Italian and Jewish,
funny in that tired-city way…
like every joke has a cigarette burn in it,
like the punchline slept on a couch
and still showed up.

She says, “Thank you for last night,”
and her eyes don’t know where to park,
so they circle him
like pigeons looking for a clean ledge.

He sees it…
the little panic in her face,
the way gratitude can turn into shame
if you stare at it too long.

So he steps in
like a bartender saving a regular
from saying something tragic.
He puts on the voice.
The fake seriousness.
The straight face that can’t hold.

“Seven Euros, please.”

Just that.
A cliff.
A shrug dressed up as a sentence.
A door left open on purpose.

She laughs because it’s ridiculous,
because her gratitude is a careful, folded napkin
and he keeps turning it into confetti.

Later…
in the kitchen with the flickering bulb,
in the morning breath and the sink full of yesterday…
she tries again.

“Thank you for reading to me.”
“Thank you for the coffee.”
“Thank you for… I just—”

Her “thank you” comes out dressed wrong,
like a nice blouse at a bar fight,
like she’s trying to tip the universe
so it won’t take him back.

He leans on the counter
like the world owes him rent,
like love is a tab you keep paying anyway,
and he counts invisible coins into his palm
with a grin that’s half-saint, half-liar.

“Seven Euros, please.”

It lands between them
soft as a thrown sock,
heavy as a real confession he won’t make.

She thanks him for holding her
when the night got loud
inside her chest.
For the silence afterward.
For not asking questions
he couldn’t afford.

“That’ll be seven Euros, please.”

And the thing is,
it works.

That dumb little bark of his
is a kind of mercy...
a way of saying, “don’t turn this into a ceremony,”
a way of saying, “stay,”
a way of saying, “I’m here”
without polishing it.

Because love, when it’s real,
doesn’t always show up clean.
Sometimes it’s two people
in a bad apartment with good bodies,
doing their best
with the bruised language they were given.

She keeps trying to thank him
like she can balance the books.

He keeps answering like a man
who knows the math is useless…
like the only payment he’ll accept
is her laugh,
her breath,
her staying.

“Seven Euros, please.”

And between her careful gratitude
and his made-up bill,
they build something solid…
not pretty,
not holy,
just stubborn as morning,
just true as sweat on sheets,
just two hearts
refusing to be elegant
about wanting each other.

And she laughs again…
and love,
that grimy beautiful thing,
keeps breathing.