The question

He sees her without her make-up on. She is lying next to him on her bed, props herself up with her elbow and rests her head on her hand, facing him. Her damp hair falls across her face. He touches her hair and tucks the tendrils behind her ear. Then he looks at her through his glasses.

"You're beautiful," he says.

She laughs. She tries in her late-twenty-something mind to write it off as corny, cheesy, silly, stupid, and - oh yeah - just plain false but she can't. Like a girl, she laughs. Laughs and looks down.

Can a man really think she's actually beautiful? No make-up, hair a mess, just her, raw and plain and naked. How does one respond to that? "Thank you"? "Oh please, stop"? Or perhaps the self-deprecating "Are you blind? I'm hideous, what the hell are you talking about"?

But she doesn't argue or agree or thank him or even acknowledge the comment. She just laughs and look down. When she looks at him again, she sees he is still looking at her.

"You know, I can't fall for you."

Fall for her? Did she just hear that right? Fall for her? As in ... fall for her?

"What do you mean?" she asks. She wants to hear him say it, but she knows he wouldn't. He couldn't.

"I can't get attached."

She blinks and says, "I know."

He leaves her bed that night and goes home. "Fall for you," what does "fall for you" really mean? she asks herself, thinking maybe there are different meanings for "fall for" but hoping it is the one she is thinking of. Maybe in some circles, "fall for" means "getting attached," as he implied.

Allowing her neurosis to get the best of her -- and just to be extra sure -- she goes to dictionary.com and looks it up.

fall for

1. To feel love for; be in love with.
2. To be deceived or swindled by: fell for the con artist's scheme and lost $200,000.

She knows it couldn't have been definition #2 as she hadn't been involved in any con artist's scheme she was aware of. It had to be #1. It had to be ... hadn't it? Could he be falling for her, in the dictionary.com-definition-#1 sense? Or had he meant something else?

She wonders.