The look

A brief snippet of fiction...

Her face betrayed her.

It was but a moment. A flicker. Soap bubbles.

But it was there.

He'd waited a hundred years to see it. Was it a hundred years? Or was it just two? Whatever. He'd longed to see it and here it was.

The cruel irony of it all is that the look came at the moment she was furthest from his grasp, more unattainable than she'd ever been before, the blinking green light to his Jay Gatsby stare.

But it was there.

She's a smooth operator, boy. Never flinches. Never shows her hand.

He'd often wondered what lies behind those eyes. Maybe he'd been close a few times. Maybe not. But she'd kept him from knowing. Maybe on purpose. Maybe not.

But here, now, in a moment that defines a life, her face betrayed her.

And after it was over he walked out into the sweltering heat of a too-early summer and thought about that look for a good long while.

"It's funny," he said to the dark. "I'll never love anybody as much as I love her.

"And, after all these years of trying, she knows it, too."

Right when he can't have her. If she was ever his to have.