one

He stared at he when she wasn't looking. He watched the way her hair fell in her face, his fingers itching to push it back. He gazed at the angles of her face, imagining tracing them with his fingertips while she looked at him with those deep, sparkling eyes. He wished he had the confidence to gently lift her face and taste her lips.

She sat across from him, her eyelashes brushing her cheeks when she blinked. Her hands fiddled with a loose string on the carpet and she stared blankly at it as she spoke, her voice drowning in longing and loneliness. ‘Don't you ever just wish you were wanted?’ She asked rhetorically. ‘That someone out there actually wanted you to be there? That,like, they go out of their way to see you? That someone just doesn't even care if you talk or whatever, they just want your presence?’

He thought to himself that she wasn't unwanted. He organized his schedule around hers so he could see her and be with her. That just the sight of her made his pulse race. That her smile made him dizzy. That whenever she got close enough that he could smell the essence of her shampoo

‘Don't you ever just want someone to need you? To actually emotionally need you because  and body soap he had to make a conscious effort to breathe.you're like a home to them?’

I need you. He thought desperately and if she had looked up then she might have seen all she wanted in his eyes.

‘Do you ever just wish someone would ask you to stay?’

And then she did look at him, but he was gazing at the door thinking of all the times that very word had lain unsaid on his lips.

‘I know what you mean.’ He told her and she gave him a sad smile that made his heart stop.

She ripped the loose string out of the carpet and pushed herself to her feet.

‘Well, I better get going.’ She told him, ‘ I'll see you around?’

He scrambled to his feet and nodded, ‘Uh,yeah, sure.’

And she gave him another one of those smiles and his mind was so drunk with  the sight he reached out and held fast to her wrist.

She looked at him in surprise, and her eyes-- oh my God those eyes-- he forgot to breathe and then somehow he was kissing her and she tasted like oranges. He felt, somewhere in another mental dimension, that she was pressed up against him and that her arms were around his neck.

And when they finally broke apart, gasping for breath, all he could manage to whisper was one word.

‘Stay.’