Of all the hearts in the world

She walks into mine. She hit me like a truck. I always knew she was beautiful. I always knew she had the heart of a saint. I never could have guessed that I'd so cherish the brush of her lips against my shoulder. She hugs me around my waist, the pads of her fingers in the little dips in my spine. "I missed you," she says, even though I saw her only yesterday. She blinks and her eyelashes paint little tracks of wet mascara across my neck. Her voice is soft. She says she can't sing, but I want to hear her anyway. She asks me to sing instead. I purposefully pick "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse so that she won't realize that all I want to do is wrap her in a plaintive melody that expresses how intoxicated I really am. Sometimes she places her hand in mine. It always surprises me how well her fingers and mine fit. Her head tilts to her right until it comes to lie in the crook of my shoulder. It's so easy to pretend that this is real. So easy to imagine tilting my chin toward hers and brushing my lips against the corner of her mouth. So easy to hope that she wants the same thing. And then, as quickly as my heart began to beat, she drops my hand, throws her head back and laughs, and tells me stories of her weekend romantic escapades. And I discover how well matched are reality and jealousy.