She looked at me from across the counter, and for a brief moment, I couldn't decided if I wanted to be with her, or simply be her. Brown eyes set in a slender, soft face; lips, a slight shade of pink, upturned in a dainty smile as she handed me my beverage. I could feel my throat going dry as I accepted it, the warm steam rising up between us, adding to the heat of our gaze as it held, held, stretching for a century. Or perhaps just a few seconds. It was impossible to tell.

I held the cup close to my chest as I sat at a table, whatever table I could find that would let me look at her. And I looked, incessantly, immodestly, gawking at her as she tended to the customers, each of them unaware of the sheer, divine beauty they were privy to. And as I stared, I sipped the spiced drink, and imagined that this was what she would taste like, her skin, her lips. Sugar and spice, vanilla, ginger, cardamom. I stared, and I stared, and I hoped that she would look my way, if only for a moment. A flicker of a gaze, an idle glance--

I fell asleep that night to the thought of her, one hand clamped between my sweat-slick thighs, fingers struggling to thumb off the vibrator before oblivion took me. She was in my thoughts, and she was in my dreams when finally I made it across that distanceless void that gaps wakefulness and sleep; her flawless skin the color of cinnamon, the dimples in her cheeks growing deeper as she saw me, my pure, naked self drifting towards her through an ocean of yearning and lust. She had a flower in her hair, a white and yellow thing, as frail as I felt when I reached out to touch her, to stroke the infinite expanse of her breasts, made even more beautiful by the madness of dreams.

Only to awake, breathless, in the middle of the night, my loins burning with the thought of her, a sugary scent on my nostrils as I fell back against the sheets, panting, writhing, trying in vain to forget the girl. The girl. Always the girl.

It was another week before I saw her. Would she recognize me, I wondered? Would she recall the pale eyes, the plain hair, the red lips asking demurely for cup of her chai tea? And would she understand what that meant? The implicit meaning behind my words, the quiet, throbbing pain that had haunted my every waking moment for seven, long days? Would she see me? Really see?

Please, beautiful chai girl. See me.