There isn’t any one thing about him that makes him so fetching, but it’s almost universally agreed upon that he is. It might be the way his hair sticks up a bit in the front, even when it’s wet, so you know that he doesn’t style it that way. It might be how warm his laugh is, or how warm you feel when you hear it. It might be the way that he looks cute in his glasses, and beautiful without them. It might be how completely not photogenic he is, because isn’t it great that someone who looks so delectable in real life can look so silly on camera? It might be how blue his eyes are, or the way he only owns five t-shirts and they all have outer space on them, or his freckles. Whatever it is that he has, it builds and it builds and the more you have of him the more you want.
He’s prone to walking around with this serious look on his face, so that if you were to interrupt his thoughts, you’d think that he didn’t even see you. The only time you can tell what he’s feeling is when he smiles at you, and he’s got the kind of smile that makes you want to see it all the time. His whole face opens up, his eyes crinkle at the edges and light up like a slot machine, and you just want to pull the lever again and again and again, anything so he’ll look at you like that one more time. He has this expressive voice, deep, with a certain boyish lilt to it, but he rarely emotes otherwise- No frowning, no yelling, definitely no crying. Only that smile, his to-die-for-smile, and silence.
He talks about music. He likes dance music, he likes electronic, but he doesn’t like the sort of people who like dance music and electronic. According to him, however, his tastes are constantly evolving, and he searches for something else, something better, regularly. He has these gigantic headphones, green and black, perfect for shutting other people out. I used to try to walk with him to classes, but I couldn’t get past the headphones, the chorus of “What? Say that again?”, and now I walk by myself, either slightly faster or slightly slower than he does. He talks about television, but mostly that he doesn’t have time for it, and even if he did, his family doesn’t have cable. He talks about movies. He likes movies about the Mafia, he likes documentaries about crime, and he likes comedies directed by Judd Apatow.
He seems to do a lot of driving, often without a destination in mind. He drives this navy Jeep that his brother used to roll around in, and he presents it like it’s a Mercedes. He punctured the window trying to scrape frost off of it.He has plans to fix it with a roll of duct tape, for lack of a more aesthetically pleasing solution. When he drives he’s a fiend, a pirate, a bat out of H*ll. He disregards stop signs and barely hesitates at crosswalks, whizzes through neighborhoods and laughs at the looks of fear he attracts from any hapless pedestrians nearby. He never wears his seat belt, like he figures he’s immortal, and when I ask him why he won’t put it on he just smiles at me, and of course I can’t argue with that smile. I simply sigh and buckle up.
He’s impossible to read, so that anything he tells you is a gift, something rare and precious that you want to hold onto and take with you to bed and play around with in your dreams. Mundane pieces of information stick in the back of your mind, and you keep trying to put it together so you can see the complete picture, so you can see what he’s really like, but you’re always missing some piece of the puzzle. You keep listening, thinking that maybe this time he’ll open up to you, this time you’ll find out what he’s all about, but every time he manages to slip through your fingers. Trying to understand him is like trying to hold smoke.
Thank God he doesn’t understand the affect he has on the people around him, remains completely oblivious of the unreciprocated affections and the sidelong glances. He is deaf to the giggles that accompany his every joke, regardless of its level of humor, blind to the batted lashes. It’s impossible not to fall a little in love with someone like that. Because if you can make someone so singular care about you in even the smallest way, doesn’t that make you something special?