It has been nearly ten months since I’ve last seen that sky blue raincoat draped along her shoulders. The way it caressed her heart-shaped necklace got to me the very first time I met her in that elevator.

I remember returning on a rainy day from an embarrassing trip to the gym in which men with endless muscular bulges on every nook and cranny of their bodies harassed me and my awkward physicality, calling me names like four-eyes and pencil-neck. The first shade of her blue gave me hope among the notoriously heartless oasis of gray that seemed to have surrounded me.

Still, she seemed distracted, unaware of the shift in perspective that her bit of clothing had given me. She was too busy answering a slight cell phone vibration coming from her back pocket, giving no more than a voice-cracked “I’m gone” to the masculine voice on the other line. Suddenly, as I reached over gently to press the button for my floor, she gave out an indescribable whimper and a lone tear that soon found its way across her pendant…