He reminded her of someone she'd once cared about deeply—someone she'd lost. Maybe this was just her trying to rewrite that story. A second chance, disguised as a stranger. It embarrassed her, how desperate she felt. How often she lingered by the entrance, how many hopeful glances she cast toward the horizon, as if he might suddenly appear.
She tried to reason with herself, journaling to make sense of it all. She told herself it wasn't love. Not even infatuation. Just obsession, wrapped in imagination. A coping mechanism. A fantasy stitched together from scraps of real moments: the calm way he moved, the stillness in his eyes, the quietness that mirrored her own. He was a natural airhead, always half-asleep or lost in thought.
Oddly, that made him even more magnetic.
She found herself building stories around him, assigning traits he hadn't confirmed, inventing pasts and futures for a boy she hadn't even spoken to. He gave off "little spoiled prince" energy, and she lived for it.
Drove in with a driver, disappeared without a trace. Maybe that's why he wasn't here today—his driver wasn't around. A stupid thought, but it comforted her.
And yet, deep down, she knew: this had to stop.
She couldn't keep pouring so much of herself into a ghost. But still, part of her waited. Part of her hoped. Because no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise, there was something about him that made her believe. Not in love, exactly.
But in the possibility of it.