blasphemy//late night thoughts

them//a short story

Her

He sat silently against a wall, his head bent down, eyes searching the words on the pages of a thick book. There was an air about him, an air of curiosity and mystery. Deep brown eyes were hidden behind a pair of heavy black glasses sitting on his nose. In his eyes, it looked like he held a secret, something he was dying to say but just couldn't. One of his hands drummed endlessly on his knee, making it look like he was waiting for something to happen. Every few minutes he would glance up and look around, eyes shifting around the room. His head tilted as he caught words from distant conversation and the overhead lights cast shadows on his face, making him look enigmatic and mysterious to passers-by.

    Maybe that's why he intrigued me so much. When I looked at him, I got this feeling of uncertainty. What was he waiting for? Who was he waiting for? Perhaps he wasn't waiting for anything or anyone. He could be thinking, thinking about anything or anyone.

The book he was reading was related to science, and his eyes scanned the pages slowly. His long fingers reached up to push his glasses to the top of his nose once every few minutes. There was a moment when he looked up and his eyes caught mine, just for one short moment. After that moment, I noticed that he started biting his lip, maybe from anxiety. I had to stop myself from staring after that. 

I flipped lazily through the pages of my book, not quite paying attention to the words on the pages. I was distracted by him. To stop this distraction, I reached into my backpack and pulled out a pair of headphones and turned on music. But that didn't help. I glanced up to see what he was doing, and he was looking right at me.

Him

Why was she looking at me? I had looked up just a moment ago and caught a girl's eye from across the room. She looked like she was intently studying me. So I decided to study her back.

She sat cross legged against a post in the middle of the library's back room, while I leaned against the wall. She had just pulled out a pair of headphones and I watched as her eyes lit up. I imagined music started playing. One hand was tangled in her hair, knotting it and unknotting it over and over again. The other hand rested on her knee, a finger holding her book open and the others moving along to the beat of her song, or so I envisioned.

Just like me, her green eyes hid behind glasses.  Her eyes lifted and flitted around the room every few moments. What or who was she looking for? She might not be looking for anyone or anything. Maybe she was anxious about something. Her foot also bounced along with her fingers. Every once and awhile, she would look up at nothing in particular and bite her lip, thinking about something intensely.

I wanted to look away from her now, I had been staring too long. But I couldn't. It's like once I had seen her, my eyes wouldn't move away. There was something mesmerizing in the way she did things. The way she played with her hair and flipped the pages in her book. It's like I was hypnotized.

That's when she looked back up and right at me. We held eye contact for a good five seconds before her cheeks started turning a brilliant and bright red. She looked back down at her book. A smile spread across my face and I pushed my glasses up my nose, as they had started sliding down. I was still looking at her when she glanced up again and gave a small smile.

Them

They read their books in silence, glancing at each other secretly. As they both got up to leave at nearly the exact same moment, their eyes met again. And then they walked away without a word.