An unfinished story about loving a girl

She was steaming like an air hostess, brown hair all fluttering in the propeller wind and the little men in yellow jackets running backwards and forwards and backwards again as if to keep her happy. But I could see she was not happy. She didn’t need anyone. She had herself, and she didn’t need to open her mouth to let out the anger and the fury because everything she had was locked up inside. The girl was very beautiful. Her eyes were blue and green all at the same time without meaning to be, and her hair crawled down her spine and curled around her shoulders like a python. Her cheeks were warm and brown and a few freckles rested quietly on her chin, a few around her nose. She flared her nostrils restlessly as though she were waiting in the terminal, plastic cup in hand just resting there, all silently against her hip. Her scarf was of cheap satin, pale blue, almost indigo, and had become tangled in her mass of dark hair, her other hand held a grey rucksack, the strap delicately slung between thumb and forefinger. She was not preparing for lift off. She was not even at the airport with me. I had seen her through the window of the car and fallen in love with her. She was waiting for a bus, not a man in a business suit with a black shoulder bag and freshly polished shoes, and her eyes screamed at me through the window of my taxi, as though the entirety of her soul was trying to break free. We had stopped at a set of traffic lights; there were road works up ahead and small men in hard hats ran circles around the plastic bus shelter and prodded the pavement with metal sticks as though an earthquake was about to rip apart the surface of the Earth. And perhaps it was. She stood in a flood of private agony, her perfect face battling the morning breeze and legs all thin and jerky and a mile long at least. Her black coat swung out behind her in the wind like a magicians cloak and she dropped her bag by her feet to pull it back around her and seal herself inside its comforting embrace. I can’t remember exactly, but I think she was wearing thin grey slip-on shoes, and as she knelt to pick up her bag my eyes followed every movement, from pavement, up past shoes and ankles, with traffic darting between my eyes and hers, and her knees, and perfect thighs. Her shorts were denim, frayed at the bottom with a purple bruise shyly revealing itself at the hem. She slung the grey rucksack over her shoulder; it dangled there lifelessly for a second but was buffeted back by the wind. She struggled with the straps as they entwined themselves around her hand whilst wriggling to pull down her shorts to cover the fast approaching darkened flesh cloud. I could feel her struggling deep down inside me somewhere, I don’t know how or why. I wanted to get out of the taxi and pull the bag from her, throw the cup to the floor and hold her in my arms as though we were the last two people standing on a desolate wasteland at the end of the world. God, I could have kissed her. The fire in her eyes burned holes through my skin and I grew hot inside the cab, trying to remove a cardigan from around my shoulders without losing eye contact. Was it me she needed at that moment? Why such fear, such fury when all around her were the daily obstacles of life which, over time, we have all grown used to and can ignore.