She looked at him, at his green eyes and that mouth that she would have done anything to turn into a smile.  She shook her head, smiled this little smile like she knew some crazy secret and whispered,

     “I would have loved you, you know.”

     She said it so quietly she wondered if he hadn’t heard, but she knew, she knew with all of her that she had, he had heard.

     He blinked.  Once.  His eyes, she realized, weren’t a candy apple green.  They were the woods in the summer.

     She smiled that smile and shook her head again.  She laughed a small laugh.  “I’m sorry.”  She turned away, wanting so badly for him to say, wait, I would have loved you too, there’s still time.  But she knew that he wouldn’t.  She knew there wasn’t any time.  She had wasted it all on watching him smile that day, when the sun came through the window in the empty room, turning his eyes into the most beautiful things she had ever seen, and he had laughed when she had left and her friend had taken a picture and showed her and she vowed she would make him laugh like that again.  She wasted it that day, the day she realized that she liked him, she had wasted it making a promise to herself she couldn’t keep.  And here she was, a month later.  There was no more time.  But she knew she wouldn’t take back that day for anything.  She knew he would never like her but she had something of him.  She had that memory of his eyes and they way the corners of his mouth turned up.  And that was enough, whatever it was worth, it was enough.

     She walked away.  The cold wind bit into her cheeks, but for the first time, it didn’t bite into her bones.  She didn’t look back.

     And he watched her go, her brown hair swinging down her back, and he wondered what she could have meant.  What he had just lost.