FEBRUARY THE 14TH

"Would you like anything sir?"
"No".
"Sir, are you alone? Can I sit with you?"
"No. You may not".
"Sir, I am willing to serve you sir".

The last one got to him and he finally raised his gaze to meet a smiling waitress all too eager to grab his attention. She saw an empty seat, a well groomed gentleman that oozed of gentle affluence, a box of chocolates and ice cream for two; what was she to do? It was Valentine's Day, the day to get a random gentleman to spend lavishly on you. Her mind probably weaved an imaginary near future where she would fill her roommates with mouth-opening tales of how a man without a girl on Valentine's showered her with gifts. She was eager to fill up the vacuum.

He, funnily,wanted her to sit and chat with him. So he could tell her how much he was hurting with a deep seething pain a bulldozer couldn't dig out of his heart. He wanted to explain to her how he was in love, or at least how he thought he was in love and how shocking rejection felt. He wanted to give her graphic gesticulations explaining how the denting burn in his chest reminded him of the glowing iron prods the slave masters used to mark their initials on captives. He wanted to ramble about many things.

"Please leave me alone. And bring me my balance. Thank you".

She walked away with a subdued hiss. He laughed dryly at how his temperament had flipped in a week. That was all he could muster nowadays. Straight answers, robotic replies, head shakes and nods. That's what heartbreak does to you. It plucks out your tongue and leaves you speechless.

FEBRUARY THE 6TH

"Oh God, she's beautiful", he said to himself with his thumb and index finger tapping and twisting over his screen, zooming her picture in and out. With attention to detail, he scanned her hair, her resting eyes, the way her shoes wore her feet, her darkened knees beneath the elegant dress. From head to toe, he could say she would make a befitting companion to soothe his soul with sweet words of friendship, romance and everything else in between. He was still in love with her.

He knew her and with a probing mind's eye he had studied her intensely. Day to day, with an obsession second to none, steadily at the peak of intensity, he had longed to spray scented rose petals on the earth that was graced to bear her delicate feet. She weakened his thought process, making comfort with her absence seem like a thirsting wilderness. Love was beautiful torture, more torture than beauty.

As he stared at his dialer, her number spread across the screen, his heart beat in anticipation for the leap he was about to make, the possibility of rejection all so real in his mind. But that was the way of the world wasn't it? A piggy bank of two sided coins, an endless storybook of even opposites. A tale of black and white.  Another of good and evil, maybe of hope and despair. His was just a line in the endless collection of short stories. Another cliché tale of two intertwined contrasts.

A tale of love and rejection.