It started out simply enough - an honest desire to play gracious host; an empathic memory of one's own past, a wish to transform a potentially mind-numbingly boring elective into something worth remembering.
He had done it before with other women (mostly women, why that should be so he wasn't certain). It was a tried-and-tested formula of hospitality - the odd meeting here and there, the infrequent evening of fine dining, the offer of his gym... little things. It made for some enduring memories and some firm friendships.
Something was different this time. Something about the way he watched - couldn't help but watch - the corners of her eyes crinkle up when she laughed, yet with her eyes calmly holding his... and heard his own voice ringing out too frequently with laughter in reponse. Something about sometimes, when her eyes found his just... watching in silence, and her lips smiled with his in... ? knowing? silence.
Something about how he could not and would not assume, or even make conjectures about what she - or even he - was thinking.
It didn't bear thinking of. Things were too... complicated.
But when he found the word... missing... rising unbidden to mind after barely twenty-four hours absence, and then read it as it arrived, highlighted against the frigid green glow of his cellphone display...
...he realised that something was... amiss.
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