"So tell me something about yourself," she said, a hot cup of tea warming her hands. She had a thin, golden ring around her thumb and another one on her middle finger, a little blue stone on top.
"well..." I began, not really sure what to say, "I'm a real nice guy, charming, attractive, " I lifted up a finger as I listed them off, "and... I've got a tattoo, that gives me like a bazillion bonus points."
She began to giggle, I loved that giggle. How she'd lean her head forward and strands of hair would fall in front of her face, how she'd tuck them away later.
"no Ben, " she dragged on, "something interesting, like... your favourite colour?"
I raised my eyebrows and smirked at her, "you think that my favourite colour is interesting?"
"Yeah, you can tell a lot by a person's favourite colour."
"Okay fine, then guess."
She opened her mouth as if ready to say something but closed it again, submerging into deep thought, jaw moving as her mind processed. "red." she finally said.
Red was never my favourite colour. I never really thought about it, to be honest, looking at something red always made my eyes hurt and body too alarmed, it was so unnecessarily bright and in your face as if trying too hard to be noticed, casting shadows on the other unnoticed beauties. Yet I couldn't tell her that my favourite colour was her hair in the sunlight, how it glimmered and changed as she moved, the shade of her eyes when the sun landed on them, the tint of her nose when she came inside from the cold.
"sure," I said.
And as I saw her face light up, a whole new world was uncovered, an endless spectrum of reds, never jarring or selfish but beautiful in an urgent subtlety.
YOU ARE READING
Allegra
Short StoryShe was art. Not an abstract painting or a heavily worded book. She was wonders hidden in a masterpiece. Wonders others weren't bothered to look for, to appreciate. A beautiful arpeggio mastered by your left hand, the harmony produced by two notes...
