He only said what he felt when he couldn’t control the current of jumbled words that cascaded past his lips, when his mind was too hazy to form any coherent thoughts. He would chance sideways glances at her, touch her every now and then, fleetingly, as though he was afraid, so she wouldn’t notice. When his pupils were only tiny pinpricks of light, like two stars against the night sky, and all they saw was her. And he knew that when he’d walk into her again, when the sun was up instead of the moon, he would retreat into his shell, into the walls he had built, the empty fortress for his lonely self. Because he could never repeat the things he whispered into her ear during nights out, and he hoped she wouldn’t remember. But she did. And she couldn’t look at him either, not when they met with clear heads - not because she was scared or hadn’t listened or had been simply too drunk to understand, no. She thought he didn’t care enough to acknowledge her. To greet her. To ask her how she was. To hold her like he had before, when his words had been slurred and his warmth had seeped into her skin. And this way they kept missing each other, meeting dead ends wherever they went.