Heart leaping, thumping, swirling, exploding into bits and hastily piecing itself back together. Jumping from her chest into her throat, threatening to dive out of her mouth like bile. Pounding louder and louder, a composer tapping its baton to the orchestra of chaos inside her.

He is thirty feet away.

Stomach twists like a rope. Pulling tighter and tighter until a thick, unyielding knot presses itself against her intestines. Invisible hands gripping the rope into a tight squeeze, wringing the air out of her lungs. Something brave tugging at the rope, pulling her closer and closer to him.

He is twenty steps away.

nineteen.

eighteen.

seventeen.

Butterflies dancing. Not just in her belly, but in her whole body. Fluttering through her veins and flapping to the tips of her fingers. Gliding through her pores, out of her body and into the hallway, and waltzing to a love ballad around her head.

He is ten breaths away.

Goosebumps- the good kind. Erupting on her skin for her to trace like a connect-the-dots. Nine. Scattering across her arm into a pattern, a secret code that confesses her love. Eight. Raising the hair on her arms like an electric force. Seven. Charging her whole body with a surge of nerves. Six.

He is five seconds away.

Hands, her own, fixing her hair. Fidgeting with her purse strap. Flexing her fingers so that they extend and straighten, weaving her hands together and then apart. Squeezing and folding them into tight fists.

He is exactly three white floor tiles away.

Alarms blaring in her mind, screaming instructions: just say hi, just say hi, just say hi. Eyes darting, looking anywhere but at him. Just say hi, just say hi, just say hi. The butterflies spinning around her head, whispering, just say hi, just say hi, just say hi.

He is one word away.

Mouth opening, then closing. Silence like the buzzing static of a car radio. The word unsaid and her chance gone, obliterated, dissipated in milliseconds. Heart slowing to a normal beat, ropes untangling themselves in her stomach, goosebumps melting back into her skin, hands relinquishing their hold, her long nails leaving indents in her palms. The alarms dying off, its echoes floating away into broken wisps of courage. And the butterflies returning to their home in her stomach, resting, until tomorrow’s awakening.