conclusion stolen under cover of night! authorities lack suspect in case of the century

Michael looked at his spoon. It was a simple spoon, curved, no carvings, with a bit of soup on it. Given the reasonably attractive woman across the table, there was no real reason to look at the spoon. But, he looked at it.
This woman, Eve, who was not the most beautiful woman in the world, who was not 'smoking,' 'foxy,' or a 'stone-cold she-devil,' had the edge of being truly beautiful, and whose beauty was endearing and made the viewer, Michael, immediately want to love her, and to walk barefoot on foreign beaches with her and scoop her up and throw her into the water, looked instead at her knife, held limply, as it poked at the rice on her plate. Nobody eats rice with a knife, but still it poked. She looked back at him, then back at the knife, fast, and smiled.
Michael. "So...how do you know Ronnie?" He looked up to make sure the message had made it across this terrifying table, then looked back down for a beat, then looked back up at her to receive the answer:
"We used to date, a couple of times."
"Oh."
"We're just friends now though."
"Oh." Michael threw in a smile, reassuring, to boot, but it was a little too later and he knew it.
"What, uh.....what was that like?"
She smiled. YES. Now we were getting somewhere. "Kiiind of weeird, actually. He's a nice guy, but, weird to date."
Michael laughed. Fuck. Time to reply time to reply....come on you have maybe a millisecond more until you're "Yeah, actually, he's weird as a friend too. You know he sleeps naked, even when other people are over. I slept on his couch once and when I woke up he was naked across from me and eating Raisin Bran."
She laughed. Like really laughed. YES. This was good. He laughed too.
The laughter died down and they both smiled, looked at each other, and then looked down. Her smile was her best feature. It was a smile that could not be faked. There were no counterfeits; her smiles would never be examined and found wanting.
Michael rolled a pea across the surface of his plate with his spoon, away from all the other peas: why? He resolved, briefly, to send it back again but hoped he wouldn't need to. Come on Mike, come on....we are losing our window! Everything he wanted to say was too forward. He had no idea how to get from 'How are you' to 'I love you.' He leaned forward again:
"So..."
Her eyes hovered between his face and the table. "So..." she said.
He smiled.