"Would you still love me if I'm different, when I come back from Paris?" Her peridot-green eyes search his brown ones.
"Of course." He smiles and jokes, "Would you still love me if I was a worm?"
"Of course," she mimics, laughing. But there is a trace of hesitation, as if she wants to ask her question again, as if she would get a different answer the next time.
Then he wraps his arm around her and points out a dancing flock of birds, and the thread is lost in the joyful fabric of their conversation.
They call every other day during those six months– her from the dorm room of the study abroad program's university, him from his apartment. They place fingers on screens as if sheer force of will could turn miles into millimeters. Their forceful wills do succeed in burying the growing emotional distance under promises to themselves that everything will return to how it was in just three months, then a week, then a day.
She is supposed to show up at his apartment at nine in the morning, the day after she lands. She does.
He is supposed to greet her with love and laughter, and make up for lost time. He doesn't.
This is because he has, unfortunately, metamorphosed into a worm.
When there is only silence after she has knocked three times, she digs out the emergency key from the flowerpot and lets herself in. She calls his name.
He inches toward her shoe, screaming in his head that it is him, praying to any deity out there that she will recognize him. I love you, he thinks, willing the vibrations to telepathically reach her.
She glances downwards, looking at first puzzled, then disgusted.
