She walks so lightly, tiptoeing for fear that he hears her and thinks her too loud, uncouth. At times she ventures a fleeting glance into his eyes but he doesn’t seem to notice. The wild spiral that has slowly drawn her closer to him might have unsettled him into a dazed sense of weariness. He is always in motion, a weathervane of life’s circumstances, spontaneous and volatile. She is a slab of dense mineral, opalescent but so still, not of his world. The others are watching, pondering, so full of questions as they slouch on pleather sofas, protective and already prejudiced matter-of-factly. She almost wishes to lose the battle before even fighting it because it could be more romantic and nostalgic. She could tell him of things he has never dared imagine that might bedazzle him but that would be against the rules. She also knows that he is giving himself time which he doesn’t know he does not have. She brushes a very soft hand against his cheek, a secret goodbye and walks away from him and his life toward this strange lanky shadow down the street, ...a mere boy, ...a muse ....perhaps just a dream...

It would be hard to tell when she first noticed that she liked him. After all, like is akin to an illness, with its secret incubation span, its first symptoms and then outright fever and ailments. It does seem strange that it might have occurred at that very peculiar moment when she wished it least and as she daydreamed of a distant and unattainable serenity.
It did however take quite some time for her to see and know it.
It was nothing in particular and yet, an infinity of minute details; The way he tilted his head to one side while listening to someone speak, the way he stood so straight and tall but so thin and graceful. He sometimes was quite outspoken and spontaneous yet most often seemed lost in morose thoughts of a too serious nature. And though he was tenaciously stilted, he was also fluid and vivacious.
She could not have said whether it was his voice or his face, his eyes or his fingers that so fascinated her or if it was perhaps the sum of it all.
She accepted her like of him quite naturally, as soon as she caught herself thinking of him.
In the early afternoon, sipping green tea with honey in her sunlit kitchen, a frozen vision of him would arise out of nowhere, materializing itself in midair between the windows and the plants like an uncanny hologram. She did not think much of it but rather simply enjoyed his ethereal presence in her life. Thinking of him was soothing and not at all disturbing, rather like thinking of eating an especially elaborate and nice dish: A little exotic and sweet and sour at once, and not so colorful but subtle and with a tremendously rich after taste. Maybe like dark chocolate and wild wood strawberries, the kind one discovers in the forests of France that are so fruity and almost raspberry like yet subdued in their intense flavor.
She would wash dishes and suddenly see his silhouette dancing in the clubs or standing a little askew while speaking on his cell phone as he was staring intently at a particular spot of the pavement as if scanning for an unforeseen chasm to open that he did not wish to miss.
The like had made a cozy nest inside her heart and she could nourish it with details and smiles he might have inadvertently provided as if it was an infant entity growing slowly. She wondered if it might have been all in her head, an affection created for her own enjoyment and secret loneliness.
And, as she did ponder, little by little, her heart grew cooler.
Doubt had also made its dark lair inside of her and it fed on forgetfulness and sorrows. Slowly, it became cooler and then cold and colder still as he forgot to smile at her or even notice her. The sun was no longer laying its liquid golden fingers on the plants’ leaves that she would notice and his silhouette and gestures seemed to have become less articulate than a marionette. And though it was early Spring, the kitchen appeared somehow darker and murkier with dense shadows building spider web-like nets of obscurity.
Her heart grew so cold that it froze. And when it was so frozen it had hardened to a Crystal solidity, it burst into a million tiny fragments and slivers that lodged themselves inside her chest and into her blood stream making her more beautiful perhaps but also akin to a marble statue, lifeless and icy.