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Continued from last week, too...

It was incredibly wet.
This was the first thought that ran through his mind.
Other thoughts ran as well, if you believe that involuntary reflexes and processes and the organic chemicals utilised in making those involuntary things happen (even under the clouds of a rather large amount of warring foreign chemicals that had been introduced into the body some time earlier in the evening) require thought and such as well. If you don't, his mind was mostly blank past the thought about the wetness.
Ah, and he could still feel the imprint of her hand where she'd pushed, despite the cold of the water. That just popped into his head, joining the other thought about the wetness, making it two thoughts, not counting involuntary things that may or may not be classified as official thoughts.
His original thought about the wetness slowly began to coagulate around the events which may or may not have led to the increased wetness to which he now found himself devoting a not insignificant percentage of his thoughts.
Perhaps, he thought, he might have remembered the chivalrous gesture of pulling her chair out for herself quite a good deal earlier in the meal, somewhere around the beginning. He then thought that calling it a meal might perhaps be a bit generous, as neither of them ate anything, really, after the realisation, with the nachos, that eating in front of one another was going to be terribly, and might be more aptly termed a sitting, or drinks, as they did tend to do quite a lot of that due to it's less threatening manner of consumption and then the subsequent chemical balancing of caffeine v. alcohol. Or perhaps been slightly more virile in the attempt to first get the bill, then pay it. Having failed, himself, to get the bill brought over (she wound up having to go up and get a likely looking piece of paper based on the awkward half hour spent waiting for a waiter or waitress to pass by their table, the bulk of whom seemed to be studiously avoiding both the vicinity and gaze of the couple at the table littered with the vast majority of the restaurant's glasses and two dishes left largely untouched) and trying to apply normal bill-paying algorithms and traditions to a serviette (which was what she'd grabbed, for want of a delivered bill) proved to much for himself to handle, which is when he stood up, decisively, he thought (at the time, not now, though now, if he were asked to think about it, he'd likely add the thought that he did it decisively enough to the other thoughts now milling around the central one regarding the surprisingly high level of moisture), attempted, to her surprise, he gathered, from her reaction (which was to grasp the chair with both hands and give a fearful look back at him), to pull her chair out for herself.
And so they found themselves walking, as if by silent arrangement, out of the restaurant and down the street. On approaching the pier, still by silent arrangement, he wondered if she realised he was still walking alongside herself, and if she didn't if this didn't count as stalking, which he'd been studiously trying to avoid in his relations with her. As he fretted about whether or not he should call her attention to himself, and perhaps ask her if he was stalking her, or if she considered him to be presently involved in stalking herself, they headed across a major roadway in what he might be called upon to qualify as a lovely evening, had he not been afraid of speaking.
As they passed out on to the pier under the canopy of stars, in the lovely evening, nearly side by side, in an ideal world, holding hands (though this wasn't an ideal world, and he contented himself with holding his own hand, wringing it occasionally while absorbed in deep internal debates about his current occupation (of the evening, not his general work life, he was reasonably certain he was still employed with the company he was when he woke that morning). And in the starlight, the moon lurking just below the water's edge, she began to turn and he straightened up and stopped wringing his hands together and she had a lovely profile and tousled hair in the wind off the water and she lifted one arm in his direction and she smiled, or so he thought she smiled, and the night seemed softer suddenly and she moved faster than he thought possible, all of which left him off-balance, which is why when she pushed his arm, he toppled right over into the water. Somewhere in there he must have done something wrong...

His next thought was not reflexive, but would have been, eventually, had he not thought of it first, and was regarding the fact that he wasn't able to breath terribly well under the water.

disclaimer:
A very merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of our faithful (and even the not so) readers from Sane Magazine, Supertart, and the people at q.i. productions.

May you find yourself a magnet, of sorts, this fine holiday season.