Hope

chapter 7-Her

She was transfixed.

His image still plastered in her mind.

Can a person be this handsome?

His eyes printed on her heart.

This humble?

It wasn't the norm which she was accustomed to.

What was the world she came from. And what is the world that belonged to him?

Her world didn't show her this side. Did this side exist in her world?

"In my world,  love means you are for you, I am for me and such huge expectations from each other." A robotic voice rasped out of her vocal cords.

Her eyes found him with his back towards her. He was fumbling around with utensils and that small area seemed like a kitchenette of some sort.

Does he cook on his own?

Well he seemed to live alone.

Does that mean he has nobody? No friends?

Why is he not turning back to look at her?
This last thought troubled her.

He obliged her thoughts which she was now partially accustomed to and faced her occupying his previous position in front of the fire.

His eyes studied hers and she was reminded of them once again that were so close to her moments ago.

She lowered her gaze finding her fumbling fingers all too interesting all of a sudden.

"Tell me what you think is love." Persistence of his solid voice failed to disguise the softness behind.

What did she think of love?

She looked up at him and scrunched her nose up.

She was trying to solve this equation through him.

" To me, love is you are for me, I am for you with no expectations from each other." She was surprised how her jumbled thoughts got arranged on their own  and squeezed themselves in a single sentence.

But this was how she saw it all.

According to her love is friendship. The one that only lucky ones get to experience.

Something she always looked for in others.

Something she searched in their eyes for her.

Something she could never get.

"Its a kind of friendship." She added as an afterthought.

He looked back at the crackling fire.

The one that was still as intense as moments ago.

When he was thinking something the same way.

He seems to look at it whenever absorbed in thoughts.

She thought he wasn't going to answer her.

"Once you truly find love from within, you won't feel the need for friendship."
She almost missed what he said, too absorbed in trying to analyze him.

But then his words stumbled inside her mind slowly but striking every right chord in the process.

Won't feel the need for friendship? Is that even possible?

Once you truly find love?

So does that mean friendship isn't love enough?

"What is love to you?" She asked.

He smiled.

He smiled!

The shyness didn't go unnoticed from her eyes that suddenly brightened his face particularly his ocean eyes and for the first time she felt hope to see some light in the depth of its ocean that was too distant to see through.

"Love is-" his words slurred out of his smile stricken stretched lips and seemed too sweet to actually belong to someone acknowledging her. His dancing eyes regarded her sideways. Amusement filled but a mischievous action in itself.

"I am for you, you are for whoever you choose and no expectations whatsoever."

After a moment his forehead seemed to smile at the ground as he looked downward. Few strands of his hair followed the action, following footsteps of their master, feeling the fragility of the moment, almost in a sad gesture.

"A loved one can cross lovers heart without fear of risking his own heart in the process." He went on. And she kept listening.

A surge of warmth seeped through her eyes, which was stolen from his eyes, all the way to the tip of her toe. His eyelashes then travelled back up almost in protest.

"The real danger for him is from within. He may fall victim of love too that will arise from within. A most desired dungeon. Without falling in which, you can't rise above."

She raised her knees and hugged then to her chest wrapping her arms around them and rested her forehead on them.

She closed her eyes and let his words sink in.

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