Written On Trains

He X She - Aug 14, 2019

They bumped, after 10 years.

He said, "You don't look 26. You look as lovely as the day you rejected me."

She promptly gave him a nosebleed.

"What was that for?" he stammered.

"On that particular day you wanted a kiss. I gave you a 'no', but truth is you needed a punch," she explained as she rubbed her right fist.

He looked so surprised she almost took pity on him. She handed him a piece of wet tissue.

He accepted, because he didn't want to get his very white shirt dirty. "I was 16. I liked you. A kiss on the cheek. It was a harmless request," said the guy.

"Do you still think it was a harmless request?" she challenged.

"No," he admitted, no longer a teen controlled by hormones. Things could have easily gone wrong, they both realized as they exchanged stares as fiery as that noon, under an adenanthera pavonina tree at KLCC park.

"Thanks," he said, finally ending the unfriendly eye contact.

"For...?" she queried. As she crossed her arms the Whopper Jr burger inside her brown paper bag rustled in sync with her hungry stomach.

"For this," he pointed to his nose, still red but no longer bleeding.

"For punching you?" she asked, not sure what to make out of his words.

"Yeah. I deserved it. Not sure why I asked you to do it in the first place," he clarified, nursing his nose with the chilled bottled juice from Cold Storage.

"Oh come on. Be honest. You wanted an out. Right?"

Shaking his head, he berthed on the nearby bench. "What do you mean?" he checked.

She took two steps towards him. "You got the perfect excuse to ditch 'us' by asking me to do something you knew I wouldn't do," she accused.

His jaw clenched as he stood. "That's not true. In fact, that's unfair. I was just a kid who wanted his best friend to be his girlfriend," he said.

She almost laughed. "Yeah? Then how come after that, you never called?"

She went to the nearby bench and sat. Lunch hour was about 20 minutes to end, her stomach was discoing a protest. "And I had to find out you got engaged to a girl you went to college with from someone else. I thought we were supposed to be best friends," she said in between slow, agitated munchings.

He slowly slid next to her. "Now how come you didn't call? Wasn't that something a best friend would do? A girl just hurt my feelings, and I had no one to turn to," he remarked as a playback of that night flashed across his memory.

He had gone home sad and angry. He tried to sleep but the dark demanded his audience. It felt like the sun wouldn't come out the next morning. But the sun did return to the horizon, and unkindly, so did self-pity.

He told himself to never let his heart be crushed again.

"And what engagement?" he asked. He never proposed to anyone. He had been close to a couple more girls, but decided to focus on studies and later on, his career. Hence his very white shirt to go with his very important job title. He had successfully climbed the corporate ladder at this young age, yet he felt empty until he laid his eyes on her 15 minutes ago.

She couldn't eat the rest of her burger. She wiped her mouth and hands, then sipped her cola drink quietly.

"I'm sorry," she said a couple of minutes after.

"For not kissing me?" he tried to joke.

She swallowed, then smiled a tiny bit as she spied a look at his office access card. "No, Mr Senior General Manager. My lunch break is over. I gotta go."

They both stood up."I'm sorry," she said again. "For not calling. Have a good life."

She started to walk away, but he quickly stopped her.

"I should be the one who apologizing. I was mad at you. I shouldn't have asked you to..." his voice trailed.

"Apology accepted. Bye," she dismissed as she tried to walk around him.

"Wait. Please. I need your number," he trailed her while struggling to fish his phone.

"No. We're different people now. We're not even friends anymore," she replied, her pace accelerated.

"But I miss you. I've been trying to locate you since years ago, but no one knew where your family moved to. Please, your number," he tried blocking her.

She stopped walking. "You are engaged to be married. Your fiance should be your best buddy."

"I'm not engaged. I never got engaged to anyone," he said, showing his hands to her. No ring, he signalled.

But guys don't wear engagement rings, she quickly noted though her heart cracked a little as she remembered that he was a nice guy, and back then, he had never lied.

"Doesn't matter. Our friendship belongs in the past anyway," she reminded, more for herself than the man in front of her.

"You're right. We're all business from now on. Give me your number so that we can trade words as soon as we're done with this one. Deal?"

She refused. "What's the use? It will never be the same like years ago."

He agreed. "And it shouldn't be. We shouldn't be friends like last time. We could be everything else. Maybe we could fall in love?"

He wrote his number on her brown paper bag.

He couldn't resist signing, 'xoxo' before handing it back to her. He started to walk away.

"Hey I said no kisses!"

He turned a little and smiled. "Got a complaint? Call."

Wrote this while trying to finish a translation job.Figured the closest for 'pokok saga' is 'adenanthera pavonina tree'.Doesn't 'pavonina' sound romantic?

1:31 AM · Aug 14, 2019