There's a whisper of I love you hanging precariously at the edge of her lips. As she gazes around the study quad, she longs to let those words fall out to every stranger that dares to catch her eyes. Her tongue dips out to meet it, licking away the remnants of what was there. Another pause, another stranger glances her way as they walk passed. Eyes barely ghost over her, barely notice her sitting there amongst a mountain of required texts across the way, and she has to bite her lip to keep from speaking it.

Her eyes look back down. She can't stand to be noticed any more. She's tired, weary and worn down to the bone. The words she sees in the pages of a book she's read before aren't coherent to her mind. They don't make sense. And yet, when she looks to her coffee, she can see the words I love you bubbling up in the foamy froth. It seduces her. Those words convince her and so, as daring as the people who had met her eyes in the study quad, she tips the lukewarm liquid back and drinks the dredges of her coffee. Bitter, and black. The taste is comforting. She finds loneliness in the bottom of her cup. Faintly, she decides, studying will have to wait.

It takes her a minute to secret the books away in a bag that's seen better days. She dangles a strap loosely across her shoulders as she stands, sweeping the strands of her hair out of the way of what would've been catastrophe, and takes a second to politely push her chair in. She grabs the empty cup to find a tear at the bottom and a mess on the table. A stain. She sighs a heavy hurricane of air, the wall in her head that keeps her from thinking is begging for release, and it crashes out of her mouth in a yawn. She moves to leave. The cup is thrown in a stray trash can on the way out.

Her steps are light and fluid, despite how she drags her feet as she walks. The air around her is static, the darkness that was late evening giving way to the start of a new day. The world around her is yet grey, the calm before the storm. She ponders this, that light will soon be stretching out its loathsome hands across the still sleeping campus, and wishes to find the comforts of her bed before that happens. The earliest of risers starts to sing, a little bird with brown and red on its wings, mourning the end of another night. Celebrating the beginning of a new day.

Two blocks through the labyrinth of a familiar world and she comes to her apartment building. People have begun to sneak from the corners and hideaways and safeties of their homes, now, as they tip toe down the early morning streets. They're dressed and ready to begin their day. Eyes alive and voices rushed and hearts beating out the steady rhythm of a flat tire somewhere in the city. She stands outside the building as they walk by, searching through her bag for her keys. There's a startling moment of realization. The doors before her will remain locked, her keys tucked snugly in her apartment where she wishes she could be. She won't be sleeping any time soon.

So she groans and rubs at the bags beneath her eyes, sticky with the need to sleep. Her nose catches the scent of caffeine (loneliness, she remembers), and wonders if she shouldn't get herself another cup to continue dragging on through this neverending day. She can't help looking up to find the source, and she sees eyes nearly as empty as her own staring back at her. They sparkle more with something like curiosity. Recognition. The woman takes a sip of her drink as she leans against the building, watching the stranded other.

"Bon matin," the woman says after she takes another swallow. "Long day?"

And there, at the strike of conversation dangling at the edge of her lips are the same words she's tried to forget. I love you, she doesn't say. She doesn't dare to say. Not like the woman who dares to see her standing lost before what should've been an escape, not like the woman who dares to start a conversation with a woman who's lost. Instead she gives the heavy sigh again and says, "You have no idea."

Somewhere in the white of the stranger's smile is a challenge. Try me.