Excerpt: Red

He does not like airports. They are stuffy and tense. People are rushing. He has never rushed in his life, and he does not like to be around those that are. It makes him uncomfortable. When he is uncomfortable, he is grumpy. So when he sees her in front of the doors, pulling a suitcase and holding a jacket in her arms like a mother holds a child, unsure of what to do with the heat and the building and the very air around her, he is not caught up with her. He does not notice the way her thick black hair curls at its tips like the arch of a woman’s back, or the way her eyelashes tickle the freckles on her cheeks like a nip on the neck. He does not notice her sugar cube nose or her licorice fingers or her cotton candy eyes. He does not notice the way these things superimpose themselves onto her and create a strange creature – not a woman, not a child, but something decidedly in between. A woman in the sway of her hips, but a child in the dance of her step. But he does not notice that. Not the first time he sees her.