At the Beach

The man in the thong was really getting into it now: his bare feet stomped a mad beat on the sand, the feathers in his hair swirled and still he sawed madly on his violin.

"He doesn't even have a hat." Dylan remarked.
"It would fall off." replied Tori without looking away.
"No, for money. If he's busking he should have a hat out or something for people to put money in. At least a towel. Not that he'd get much. That always annoys me, when people think they can do any stupid shit and get people to give them money."
"Huh?"
"If he wants to make money he should do something that people understand, something sensible."
"I don't think he wants to." Dylan thought Tori was going to add something more but she just lapsed back into silence.

Dylan was getting uncomfortable. When he'd suggested coming to the beach he'd had a typical date in mind: surf, sand, ice-creams, Tori squealing in the surf and him having an excuse to show off his pecs. Of course Tori wasn't really a squealing kind of girl and more often than not their dates didn't go as he planned. Watching nonsensical performance art instead of swimming for instance. He a growing feeling that there was a joke somewhere here and it was on him.

"Come on Tor," he tried again, "let's go get an ice-cream."
"In a bit," she squeezed Dylan's hand in an absent minded display of affection, "Oh hey, look at that!"
The dancing man hadn't done anything interesting that Dylan could see, if anything the performance was growing more erratic; feet and hair and violin all wildly out of time.

It wasn't he didn't like Tori. He really liked Tori. The problem was she liked him and Dylan didn't know why. He knew he was good looking (he worked at it), he was sporty, he had money, everything the girls near the bay loved. As far as he could tell though Tori didn't care about that; Tori loved thunderstorms, fast-food ice-cream cones, karate movies and, apparently, crazy violinists wearing nothing but thongs and feathers. Dylan had lived his short life being sensible and as far as he could tell Tori didn't like anything sensible at all. It just didn't make sense that someone like her would want to be with someone like him.

The show finally wound down, Tori led the applause.

"Icecreams?" She asked, grabbing her towel.
"Sure," Dylan shrugged, "Hey! He's passing a bowl around. You were wrong, he does want to make money."
"What? I didn't say that."
"You did, you said you he didn't want to make money."
"No. I said I he didn't want to be sensible, I can see where you'd be confused though, you're always sensible. Don't look that way cutie," she added with a grin, "I wouldn't have you any other way." and somehow Dylan knew she meant it.
He smiled despite himself. Maybe not everything had to make sense.