{ Inked Pages } (#Wattys2016)

Prose II: { Unrequited }

'Gorgeous' she thought he was.

With his hair perfectly long enough teasing his forehead, which would fly right back with a flip of his neck. His long slender fingers that runs perfectly through his hair to settle it. She keeps staring at his pale hands placed right in front of her stroking the pages of a notebook as he whispers the solution to a problem in her ears. Of course she could not focus. His breathing itself distracts her attention. Makes her heart run a 100 miles, stealing her attention from the rest of the world. She stares at the hands as if it's a beautiful monument, a sculpture ,a work of art with blue veins running like the strokes of the brush on a canvas. She is very eager to touch them, hold them, intertwine her petite fingers with his, longing to touch the breathtaking artwork but of course like any other museum, its prohibited.

His eyes, she thought, was either brown or black, she couldn't quite tell. They wouldn't lock eyes. Purposely, as it makes her red from head to toe. He manages to do that somehow, look at her while talking, keeping his gaze stern. She couldn't, she never could, was her weakness I guess. She always looked away. She couldn't look into his eyes for even a mere matter of seconds. She is forced to look down. I wouldn't call it shyness or awkwardness but intimidated that, if she looked, his deep brown eyes would swallow her up like a snake. As if she would fall into this never ending pit with no ground and she could never escape them. There was something about his eyes. So mysterious, as if his eyes are too valuable to be exposed. So many questions arise in her mind just by looking at them. So many questions she knows she could never ask. Curiosity causes her mind to burst into flames, incapable of extinguishing. But she keeps quiet aware that asking them would simply break off the little conversation that they manage to have.

This is the only thing that bugs her. Conversations with him have become so valuable that even a 'hi' makes her entire day. Entire week, maybe. It boggles her mind, makes her overthink the simplest of things, and makes her assume things too silly to be true. It drives her to lunacy but then at that moment, everything is perfect. No matter what he says, how he looks seems perfect even if the same thing would sound senseless from someone else's mouth.

That little conversation that they have, once in every blue moon is the only conversation they have. Rest of the days, he forgets she even exists. All she could do is look at him in disbelief. After a while, of complete ignorance and meaningless thoughts, she forces herself to snap out of it. Convincing her that it was just a fairytale, a mere act of kindness and nothing else.

But what if it isn't?

"That's how x equals y. Get it now? It's easy." He says in a hushed tone boring holes into me through his eyes.

I simply nod as if I understood everything when I clearly didn't. It's too complicated and beyond my grasp.

//a.v\\