Writing at Starbucks

I was not unaware of your faults. But that didn’t stop me from loving you. It was soon over, and still I couldn’t take the blindfold off. My eyes which saw you more intensely because you were the object of my emotion - my love, cringed and welled up at the same time when it saw you holding another's hand to your lips. I was the object of Your emotion too, you had said, so what the heck was this? “You like playing games, don’t you?” I lashed out scathingly. “Not with you,” you said, as I thought, inwardly screaming, “Do you even realize how wrong that sentence is?” You shouldn’t be playing games, at all! Then I remember the little things, how you picked up a pichuti (the muck stuck at the inner canthus of the eyes when you get up from sleep) stuck to my eyes and threw it away, with a tenderness in your gesture. I remember you not being able to stay without holding my hands and the electricity when you did hitting me hard. I remember you stealing your phone away from your mother to message me, just for a bit, even when you weren’t allowed access to your phone (and as is said – you were grounded) and me anticipating your messages with a beating heart, a wish come true. I remember you, your words, your actions so well that when I made myself forget you, I couldn’t remember anything all that well. You have to remember, to forget. You need to experience, to hone your skills to such a level that it becomes muscle-memory. Such was my thought when you disappeared. I was aware of you, yes, the next time we were in the same room, but I had forgotten all about you. I realized, not unsurprisingly, that you did not acknowledge our love, that which once blossomed and withered under an autumnal spell, away from all eyes, treating it to be merely childish fantasy – not too grown up to be deemed as serious as it was, whilst I, at least acknowledged you as a heartbreak. And you cannot experience heartbreak, unless you experience love. You can’t move forward, till you let go of the past. To let go of the past, you need to have a past… so seeing that you claimed to never had to move on, did you really never love me, could it be that I was so wrong? I know you reciprocated my love, but I could’ve shouted that out to an indifferent world, a voice among the bustling busy city noise and got the exact reaction I did now – the indifference of a stranger. Those three words – “I love you”, “I need you”, now belonged to someone else. Except I was now the “someone else”, and the other lady in question with whom you were in love with, the “someone”, if you know what I mean. “I can’t love you when I am already in love with someone,” you wrote to me once and it kept breaking my heart, but back then I was torn. Later, you found reciprocation from the lady in question while I had long faded away, from your mind and from your heart.

Remember the time you asked me to marry you?

***

Ten years later.

I am sipping at my coffee writing a novel at Starbucks.

And I am writing about him.

Well not him.

Because I plan to give my hero and heroine a happy ending.

I am a sucker for all of this. A happy fairy tale ending.

My hero doesn’t forget, and never in just a month. (One summer vacation goes away and you can barely remember me till I remind you of my personality? Ugh. Seriously? Do you have the attention span of a baby?)

But yes, through misunderstandings, miscommunication, and a full journey through time, two hearts are joined as one, in the story.

I am immersed in the computer, typing. It was a scene where the heroine feels threatened by a more lively character than she, even though she knows her hero wouldn’t be swayed. When I put in the famous line (the line my ex-sweetheart had told me once), “I would love you even if you were dumb,” I am sure some will cringe and some will go “Aww”. I know I had been both. Because he literally meant “dumb”, as in unable to speak. Because it couldn’t be true, right?

I am writing, when suddenly someone comes and taps me once the shoulder.

“I hear you’re writing about me,” he says, with a smile.

I smile back.

“Where did you hear this from?”

“I hear you come to Starbucks everyday just for this.”

I laugh loudly.

I roll my eyes, and I realise I have my energy on the rise. It was nice to see him. I had long since forgiven him. Enough to write something good about him without my mouth tasting bitter.

“I put in just some of good parts about you. They’ll have a story, unlike either of us.”

“When do I get to read it?” he said.

“Not soon, that much I can say,” I nodded.

I stop typing a while and look at him properly, gesturing him to sit down.

I gingerly ask, “What happened between you and her?”

“Me and who?” he asks.

“You know, the lady you said you love,” I say.

“We got married.”

“Oh. Congratulations.”

“And divorced,” he said after a pause.

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“I haven’t stopped loving her, though,” he said darkly.

“Maybe someday you’ll get to make your own story,” I said.

“So tell me about you…did you get married?” he said.

***

I invite him to lunch.

I see the letter he is reading when he comes to eat…from his ex wife.

She had found someone else. She complained he was never the right fit for her and that he ought to forget her. The letter was short and crisp.

“Travel. Maybe go rediscover yourself, search for something that gives your life meaning.” I say.

“I am sorry,” he says darkly.

“For what?” I ask.

“For putting you through All of that.”

I roll my eyes. “It is forgotten, forgiven.”

“Do you want to go to the beach with me sometime? As a friend?” he asks.

I shrug.

“Let’s see,” I say solemnly and smile.

He answers me with a small smile.