Two weeks of life so uneventful I occasionally checked my pulse just to confirm I was still alive. Not even work managed to irritate me, which for me is roughly the eighth wonder of the world.

Everything was so calm it felt suspicious. The air too smooth. The quiet before a storm.

Mornings I worked, afternoons I trained, I had coffee with friends, evenings I ground through extra projects. In between, I was organizing a birthday for my best friend Vivien. She got a plane ticket, Paris. She'd been nagging me for three years; I finally gave in.

She's the catalogue girl: perfect face, perfect body, perfect chaos inside her head, and a lot of brain. At least we have that in common. We support each other's every idiotic decision and even compete over who can make a bigger mess of their own life.

When I first met her, her hair was dyed blonde. By now it's back to her natural dark brown, but she'll always be my blonde friend, whoever I mention her to.

I was looking at the flights and nearly had a stroke. Then I found the solution - the return leg on a Boeing 737 MAX. Brilliant. The press coverage gave me an instinctive jolt of anxiety, because with aviation incidents the aircraft type always matters more when it's Boeing. I knew - statistics, overblown. My brain didn't care.

Compromise accepted. Back to the boring life.

I went to the gym. Walked in. Disinfectant mixed with sweat, weights landing with dull thuds, machines creaking. Music coming from every direction, fractured movements and tense faces flickering in the mirrors. Loud, even the silence.

I looked sideways.

There he is.

The tall, black-haired pilot. Not alone - with a loud group of people, the kind of circle where every laugh is a competition and everyone's enjoying it. He was standing in the middle, black short-sleeved t-shirt, dark trousers, worn but expensive white trainers. Hair unstyled, pushed back by hand.

I started cracking my knuckles without thinking. One. Another. Not from nerves. More from reflex.

He wasn't looking at me. Or I just don't want to admit that he was.

- Captain! - someone shouts, and the whole gym echoes.

The handsome stranger turned toward the voice immediately. Of course he's a captain. Why am I even surprised? It suited him in an irritating way. The commanding thing fits perfectly too.

Then someone else appears. Someone I really didn't want to see.

My ex.

I changed direction fast, ducked behind a stationary bike and started pedalling. My ex walked over and leaned in close.

- Buongiorno, signorina! - he grinned at me, as if our breakup had been nothing but an administrative error.

- Hey - I managed.

He talks. I'm calculating in my head at what angle I'd have to fall to at least break my neck and escape, when from the other side of me a voice cuts through. Deep. Calm. Cold.

- Hey.

I froze. El capitano. I was burning. All the way to the back of my neck.

I'm sitting between the two men. My ex leaned close, the other one just watched. Then the first one kissed me on the cheek, said goodbye and left. My eyes traced a wider arc than usual. I'm going to end up with a lazy eye from all this rotation.

I looked back. The captain's gaze had settled on me.

- Shame you didn't give me your number that day.

- Shame - I answer, trying not to smile.

- We can fix that now - he says, slowly rotating the watch on his left wrist, then pressing his phone into my hand.

When I took it, his finger touched mine. Too long to be accidental.

I type in my number.

That evening, when I got home, the screen lit up. A new message.

I burst out laughing.

A few minutes later, the reply came.

I smiled like an idiot, told him my name, and - on a sudden impulse - asked him to tell me something personal about himself.

I stared at the screen for three minutes. Put the phone down. Picked it back up. About ten times, just to be sure.

When something interesting happens in my life, I suddenly start playing the cool, controlled woman - which I am, just maybe I multiply it at moments like this.

Mark. The name is like him. Classic, self-assured, slightly infuriatingly perfect. And he knows exactly what he triggers in a woman. His entire existence is a constant provocation.

The next morning a new message is waiting. It came in before dawn. I was probably falling asleep right as he was waking up.

I stared at the screen for half a minute, then wrote back just this.

Ten minutes. Twenty. Then the phone moved.

I laughed, out loud, before I caught myself.

After that, half a day of nothing. I'd almost forgotten about it when that evening, in the shower, the phone beeped again. Mid-shampoo, I reach for it with a wet hand.

I wrote back an hour later. Golden rule.

I stop. Hair still wet, fingers trembling over the screen.

It's rare that I have nothing to say. There's usually always a line. A jab that winds everyone up. Right now there isn't one.

In the end I write only this.

That night I tossed and turned. It unsettled me how quickly he'd found the cracks - and that the same audacity both irritated and excited me at once.

I don't usually think this much about a man. I don't usually think about them at all. I watch, I analyse, I get bored, I move on. Mark doesn't fit any of those stages. It was like he was continuously hacking some internal security system of mine - I couldn't protect myself the way I normally do.

I opened the window. The city's yellow lights bleed into the sky. A plane passed overhead, moonlight catching the metal of its fuselage. I caught myself wondering whether he smiles that same self-assured smile when he's flying.

My hair was still damp from the shower, the pillow cold, but my brain wouldn't stop.

I tried to shut out the thought that someone had seen through the armour within minutes.

I opened Instagram, scrolled through a few perfect lives, and found Vivien's message.

She's the one who always pulls me back to the ground before I climb too high. I thought about how I genuinely love surrounding myself with people who are just as stubborn and headstrong as I am.

The next morning, on the way to work, my phone came alive again.

No question mark. He's not asking. He's stating.

No reply. Only hours later.

My eyes lit up. I reply in the afternoon.

No reply came.

I was hoping he'd drop it.