"Do you even know what love is?"
The question was thrown at her out of nowhere. She was an innocent ten year old at that time, pestering her older sister to play with her. Her eighteen year old sister had been moping around in the room all day long. Later she found out from someone that the reason for her sister's tears was a guy. A guy whom she had been dating for the past whole year. A guy who had suddenly decided that he didn't love her anymore.
"Cam, why are you getting so upset about a boy? It's okay if he doesn't love you anymore. Feelings change. His did. But I still love you."
"Do you even know what love is?!" Her sister annoyed, looked at her.
She was momentarily stumped at the way her sister shouted at her. She didn't know what to do. She hesitantly walked towards her.
"Of course I do. It's what I feel for you. It's what Mom and Dad feel for us. Love is a feeling."
Her sister lifted her head to look at her. It was an intense look, which made her flinch. The bitterness in her eyes was replaced by pain. "Love is a feeling? See that is where you are wrong. You don't know anything about love."
She never thought about that conversation again. It was buried away deep in her mind with all her lost childhood memories. People fall in love all the time. Love is a feeling. She was not wrong. Her mind was made up. Until..
-
She turned eighteen. She didn't expect much from life. Her priorities were set straight. Her family came first, before everyone and everything else. She was content in the company of a few selective friends. She was reasonably normal. He, on the other, was chaos to her carefully knitted world.
He had got those kind of looks, which almost challenged her not to fall for him. His pitch black eyes were like a magnet, pulling her a little bit closer every second. His voice was a pure soothing melody, the kind of song you wanted to play on the radio over and over again. But that wasn't what drew her to him. She was drawn to him because of the empty, lifeless look in his eyes. Because of the forceful upward turn of his lips which was mistaken as a smile. Because of the worry lines on his forehead which lingered even during the brightest of his laughs. She was drawn to him because he was broken. And she was there.
The moment she realized she was falling for him, she panicked. She was made aware that this was the kind of love which would destroy her. But she acknowledged the warning and chose to ignore it. She knew that there would be no one to love her boring and messy personality but she chose to risk it. She knew she would crumble and collapse in an irreparable way but she chose to break herself.
And that very moment made her realize that her sister had been right all along. Love isn't and had never been about feelings. Love, just like everything else in the world, is a choice.
--
"You should stay."
She would never forget the first words she had spoken to him. She had been observing him from afar for a long time now. He was the kind of unsolved mystery which made boring college lectures suddenly fascinating. She knew by now that he didn't speak to anyone much. If she was an introvert, then he was a closed book. Unlike the others, he didn't even attempt to make friends and shooed away the people who did. He wasn't rude to them or anything. He just seemed to not care about befriending anyone. It was as if he was too drowned in his own life to care about mundane tasks like fitting in. And so, it was quite predictable that he was surprised at her words.
They had been standing at the bus stop for quite some time. Enough to comprehend that the bus would be delayed due to the heavy rains. He had started to walk out in the rains alone and she had taken this as an opportunity to talk to him.
