Her Simplest Gesture

He knows it will happen.
No, he isn't sure when it will, or where it will, or why it will.
He can't even say he's certain how it will happen.
But with quiet certainty, he proclaims, "it will happen".

He doesn't love her, not really, not yet.
He does love the way she winks before walking backwards from him before she turns and races away,
daring him to chase her.
He does love the way her lips curve seductively whenever she half-smiles, a contrast to the mega-watt beauty of her full grin.
He does love how she fiddles with his hair while they sit on the couch, as she goes on and on about anything,
nothing,
everything.
She waxes philosophical, and he sits entranced with the slender beauty of her fingers, how every point she makes is accompanied by an extravagant hand gesture.

When she's nervous, she has a habit of crossing and uncrossing her legs.
For some reason, he loves that, too.
She only gets nervous in serious situations, only dresses up and makes herself up for such occasions.
At those times, he wishes he was the lipstick on her lips as she nervously licks them.
Her hair doesn't like to be kept up, and she continues pushing it behind her ear, not seeming to notice that it keeps falling forward, and the only way to really solve the problem would be to pin it.

They dance, and he falls in love with the way her hips move.
There's something about music that fills her blood with passion, and he sees it, and savors it.
He craves it.
This is his secret addiction.
He loves how she sometimes ignores the music of the club, how when she's feeling really feisty, she dances to the music in her head.
And the beat is all wrong, every movement she makes off track, but it is beautiful.
"Goddamn beautiful", he mutters, only shaking his head when she looks at him with quizzical eyes.

Is that all it takes?

What do you fall in love with?

He wonders,
can you truly fall in love with a person?
No, he thinks. No.
First you fall for the idea of the person,
or maybe even more simply,
you fall for the way they speak a certain word,
or how they blush to the tips of their ears,
or the way their small hands can hide such intense strength.
Maybe the way they smile
or kiss
or sing.
This is what you fall in love with.

Maybe that's how it started.
Love with a smile
with an action
with a thought.
But then you find now you love the person, too.
For all their flaws, and imperfections, something about them calls to you.

He's not sure how it happened,
or when,
or where,
or why.
But it happens.
In a single gesture, he is suddenly in love.