Afire Love

twenty six

Chapter twenty six: Who Says I Like Bad Boys?

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"Until tonight I only dreamed about you,

I can't believe I ever breathed without you,

Baby you make me feel alive and brand new,

Bring it one more time."

~Heartbeat Song, Kelly Clarkson.

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WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I had always dreamt about Cinderella. I used to think how it would be if I were in her place, how it would feel like to have a stepmother and two devilish creatures for stepsisters.

I had dreamt and imagined myself in her situation. My mother used to read the book to me every night before I could fall asleep, and I had kept asking her to read it to me everyday no matter how many times she'd done that for me. It had felt like the words she read had developed an incoherent effect on me, and just like that, those words had become so familiar to me. I could recite them over and over again, and every time I did so, they used to linger on my tongue, coming off as words with hope and desire.

That was exactly what the fairy tales were all about, isn't it? They were about hope and desire and a desperation for happiness.

And so I had asked my mom to read me more of those, and oh, she had. She had read Snow White and Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid and every other fairy tale, and she had repeatedly been assuring me that although fairy tales weren't real (I had protested a great deal that they were), happy endings were real nonetheless.

I remember how excited I had felt when the Prince Charming finally found that Cinderella was the owner of the glass slipper all along. I had jumped and squealed with happiness when mom finally finished the story, which of course ended in the same way any other would - And so they lived happily ever after.

But that wasn't why I hadn't believed in love. I hadn't believed in it because I thought something so divine as love only existed in books and movies and fairy tales. I hadn't believed in love because what I had with Joel was nowhere close to it, and the only person I'd ever thought I loved - my mother - had left me alone when I was merely seventeen.

Mom had been right, though.

Every single person on this planet would have felt a tiny or a humongous crush on someone else. My Biology text book taught me that. It's obvious, you see. If you're a teenager, your hormones are pumped at a faster rate, adrenaline rushes into your blood quite frequently, and you'll unconsciously get attracted to the opposite sex. It's natural.

Well, that hardly ever meant that true love doesn't exist. Or that only crushes are real.

True love is everywhere - in the delicate shed of autumn leaves; in the crisp air of sweater weather; in the breathtaking scenery of a snow-capped mountain; in the high-pitched wail of a new born baby; in the heart of a mother; in the eyes of the love of your life; in your pounding heartbeat and quivering lips and uneven breaths and broken promises.