She wasn’t scared of spiders or dying. She wasn’t scared of being alone. Some people thought she was fearless. She was anything but. There was nothing more frightening to her than falling. She knew what was to come. People say you can’t predict the future and while that is true, you can more or less tell. Everywhere she went there was this pride that radiated. Beautiful. Mysterious. You either loved her or you hated her. She was terrified of people. She knew what they were capable of. So she did her best to never fall. Never fall for the possibility of unrecoverable pain. Falling when you’re young almost always guarantees heart break. And although she had never truly experienced it, she knew about it. She felt it through the books she read and the people she met. In a sense, it was safer to love from afar. So she did. She was in love with places she'd never see and people she'd never meet. A sad reality to the average, but it was a calming paradise to her.  One day she came across a boy. She didn’t approach him. She couldn’t. But there was something so wildly intriguing about him. It might’ve been the way he carried himself in the presence of others. So shy and awkward in the encounter of strangers. What it was about him. She would never know. She was terrified. She knew what he could do to her. Destroy her in every sense that seven letter word could describe. She had only been a few yards away from him and already she was falling apart. Those heart breaks she had lived through vicariously were painful enough she couldn’t imagine what it’d be like in real life. Her fragile persona too weak to handle the real world. At least that’s what was seen through her eyes. What she didn’t know was that one day he would notice her. Everything that she was, would be closely examined by his speckled brown eyes. He would see the way she picked at her nails and the way she bit her lip when she was concentrating. He would see the curls at the nape of her neck and the way her eyes would lighten up when certain topics were discussed. That burning passion he saw in her was like sweet ripening mangoes to the yearning fruit fly.  He wanted her. She wanted him. So every time they crossed each other’s paths there was an obvious exchange of glances, but nothing more. Months would go by and it seemed as though the universe was rigged. So many coincidental opportunities for them to speak the very words they had kept buried deep for so long. Little did they know that those glances shared, would later define everything. Time would pass and they would find themselves less than an arms- length away. A magnetic attraction making it near impossible to move the slightest. And finally, their sweaty palms pressed, their fingers laced and grasped tightly for the first time. And it was the most electric experience she had ever had. Like 50,000 volts shooting through her veins. Maybe it was the adrenaline or the loud thump of the music, but she swore she could feel his heartbeat through his hands. Transferring the temporary promise of forever. The one promise she had been so willing to keep had been broken by a cliché kiss and some subtle touches. There was release. All she could feel was relief as she felt her body decompress and her thoughts and fears were at last put to ease.