Charmaine

“Why doesn't he say something to her?
But I knew why. Because there's the creeping fear that these moments don't actually exist outside your own head. No eyes meet across a crowded room, no two people thing precisely the same thing, and if only one person actually has that moment, is it even really a moment at all?
We know this, so we say nothing. We avert our eyes, or pretend to be looking for change, we hope the other person will take the initiative, because we don't want to risk losing this feeling of excitement and possibilities and lust. It's too perfect. That little second of hope is worth something, possibly for ever, as we lie on out deathbeds, surrounded by our children, and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren, and we can't help but quickly give on last selfish, dying thought to what could have happened if we'd actually said hello to that girl in the Uggs selling CDs outside Nando's seventy-four years earlier.”
― Danny Wallace, Charlotte Street