Jordan loved only two women in his lifetime. The first was his mother, god rest her soul.

The second was a painter with a distant expression - their love was a summer squall, unexpected and passionately short-lived. They met on the subway; he dropped his newspaper and forgot it underfoot when she first appeared, thinking cobalt and olive and blind to the crowd that pressed against her. He was smitten before she even noticed him, and sometimes he wondered if she ever really did.
A week together and she moved from her studio into his apartment; a week longer and even he could hardly tell the difference between the two places. His belongings remained, but buried beneath a canvas avalanche. He would watch her paint and wish he absorbed her so. He would press his face in her paint-streaked hair and wish he had anything in common with her.
He liked to pair socks, she wore none. He straightened onto the shelf the books she piled on every surface and swept up the crumbs she scattered. They lay side by side and dreamt tangents, he of statistics while she of flying. He breakfasted on toast and orange juice, she on leftovers and fairytales.
Their relationship ended suddenly, and without fuss - he had known from the beginning that it couldn't really last, and she, in the frenzy of colour, scarcely noticed returning to her old studio.
He would say later that they were simply not compatible - it was a matter of numbers, and theirs did not add up. She - when she descended from the fog of inspiration long enough to remember him - would think that their love had burned itself out in its passion. Their friends would shake their heads sadly at the indulgent waste of time; god would shrug.