Can a look really make you fall in love with someone you don't know?

How can I describe what happened to me without mentioning the word love?

I stood in that hall, and this feeling came over me. It wasn't just sexual attraction (a marginal feeling I perceived vaguely, as one perceives the noise of an event), but a heavy, unsettling sense of pity. I don't mean that I felt superior to him. For most of the time we were together, I had seen Ciaran as a better person than me in every way, both fundamental and superficial. What I mean by pity is that, as soon as I looked at him, my heart softened deeply at his condition: as a human being. At that moment, the ordinary feelings of affection and longing, which I normally feel for any human being, were so profound that I lost my breath.

Even today, after everything that happened between us, I can still feel how much he affected me back then.

Ciaran wasn't the first handsome man I'd slept with, nor the first man to capture my every emotion, but he was the first man I'd worshipped. His body was a place of prayer for me, a place where I could forget my living body and be with him alone. His body was a thing of supreme beauty and the height of pleasure.

Do you think I don't realize that I'm describing his body with words like thing and place? Do you think I don't understand what it means for a woman to talk about a man's body this way? What do I know about a man's body, and does any man's body deserve or need more than a minute to be sung about? What must it feel like to be a beautiful person with the ability to be invisible whenever you want? To be a beautiful man?