It was the first time he looked at her, really looked at her. There had been many conversations, light and soft. Sometimes hard and durable. But when he looked at her while she was talking about something that hurt her, she knew. She knew he was more than just someone she talked to. He held her together when she was falling apart.

She scrambled for strength, her weakness had turned into helplessness, her hands held as if in prayer...

It was not until she was lying over tiles, pulling down the curtain like that infamous still in Psycho. But the close-up on her open eyes unlike Janet Leigh's would have revealed life.

Now she scrambled up again, onto her wet feet and back into the shower to wash the dried soap off of her.

the flutter of her lustrous fake, black eyelashes before she turned around, and the crunch of her pomegranate heels on the cobblestone walking away haunted him...his eyes were open because when he closed them, his thoughts were blacker than her eyelashes. those lashes were the only fake thing about her...she was the real thing...