Fault line

Tulkojums latviski: šeit.

We had been colleagues for years, working together on the same project for the last several months. And there was not a single thing unusual or different about her or anything else that day, or that moment when I turned to ask a question and the world stuttered, jumped and settled with finality in a new and unsettling pattern, like a driving student’s first successful manual gear shift. The change was as sudden as it felt gradual, settling on me sluggishly but no less painfully, like the world’s slowest gut punch from the world’s strongest man made entirely out of heavy pillows and wet balls of yarn.

I was instantly, excrutiatingly and irrevocably in love with her.

To this day I can’t name a single other thing that had ever fazed me so violently and utterly. I think being in an open plan office floor with over 50 other employees was the only thing that, by the tiniest margin, kept me from making an utter fool of myself right then and there. Which, all things considered, was probably for the best. Her husband is infamous for his lack of a sense of humor.