One Shot - A Story Of Her

"A story" she replied, training her eyes back on the paper.

He walked towards her desk and his fingers touched the papers that were written and arranged to a side. His gaze passed through them silently and his eyebrows snapped together in realization.

"She's doing that again" he told after a beat of silence.

Upon her questioning gaze, he answered "She is going to break this man's heart just like she did with the previous man, is she not?"

He remembered well the story. On a winter day, he stumbled on her study and found a story. He knew she writes, the glowing soft neon light late in the nights in her room told him enough. Yet it was a code they followed, not to bring up something which would put them in any sort of camaraderie they are not ready for.

Yet on that windy day, as he occupied her study, trying not to wait for her, trying not to feel her glaring absence, had he read it; the story she had been writing for many months then.

It was a high school romance he observed with surprise. A love unrequited of a boy who only knew how to give, and of an aloof girl who had not noticed him for two years until one day suddenly fate played a role introducing them to each other officially. It was the story of the brewing friendship between the guy and his beloved.

For some strange reason, he couldn't erase the picture his mind painted for the female protagonist of the story.

Aloof, detached, guarded, the girl seemed more familiar to him than he would have expected.

As he had turned pages, he had seen how the attraction grew between the couple, how the spark had turned palpable. Yet, as he neared the end he was surprised to know that the story didn't meet its predictable end. Rather, it ended with her gently turning down his proposal with her resistance.

He had read the remnants of the story as he witnessed the protagonists part their ways, with her leaving the city and going home, after the completion of her graduation, and the man that loved her witnessing her departure, yet hiding himself from the rest of the world.

As he read the new story now, he realized it is a sequel to her previous story and that they met again, after a separation of seven years, and that the guy that once loved her had transformed into an entirely new person... a grown man, a womanizer.

And the girl had met some other man, a man who would be described as a perfect gentleman if one would allow a woman to describe him.

However as he let his eyes trail down through the beautiful words that were put on the paper, he couldn't stop a sense of foreboding. He knew where it was going...the story of her with the new man. In many ways, it had been a repetition of her past... where she would lead on the man and let him develop his feelings for her, and at the end would not return his sentiments.

"She's doing that again" he had said hence and found her raise her eyes to meet his.

"What"" she asked not beating an eyelash ""Is she doing?"

"Letting the history repeat" he said in such a tone that it actually made her smile a little. A smile, he never saw her wear before.

"You seem to be on the same page of the protagonist then" she said with a barely there smile, as she got up and walked towards the window. "He seem to think the same thing about her you know"

"I can't blame him" he said as he walked up to her. "Not when she lets another man develop feelings for her knowing well that she's not going to return them. Isn't it unfair for the men"both of them?"

"Unfair" she let the words roll over her lips as she thought about it.

As he saw the woman before her, for the first time in several months, he wished - hoped to know how her brain works.

"What is she doing then, if not leading men on?" he asked not caring that he used the same words the protagonist used for her when he was turned down. "Her this attitude had hurt the first guy in her life has it not?" he asked, looking at her, whose gaze was still on the clouds outside the window, whose lips were slightly upturned.

"Wasn't her this attitude" her this aloofness had attracted both the men in the first place?" she asked turning her face slightly towards him, making her profile visible to him.

"Strange isn't it something she was loved for in the beginning had now the reason for curses to be hurled at her"

He rested his back against the wall, his gaze roving on her face, his eyes softened.

He saw her fingers idly roaming over the grill of the windows, wiping the dust off from there, and had a weird craving to capture that hand in his, and he did that after a beat, and felt a smile when her hand relaxed in his hold.

"What does she want?" he asked after a beat, for which she lowered her eyes.

"I don't know" she admitted truthfully "Neither does she"

He observed her still form, and lowered eyes that was fixed on their entwined hands and with a flash realized, he had asked the wrong question.

"What does she need?"

"Instability, confusion, overwhelming of emotions. Something that never happened to her guarded life, something that would bring her out of her shell. Something only the man in her life can do. Bringing her to her knees"

Both of them knew which man she was talking about. It was not the new man in her life, rather it was the previous one, who had loved her and bared his heart as a boy and who now as a man only gave her his indifference.

"Not to her knees..." he said slowly, as he let his thumb circle over the back of her palm "But to her heart. No man wants his woman on her knees." He said as their gaze met finally.

"Will he be able to do that?" he asked after a moment.

"Something tells me he will" she said meeting his gaze "If he can rain her with tenderness that makes it impossible to forget, he could also unleash the storm inside her"

This time he was the first one to avert his gaze from her face, even as a smile lingered over his lips.

"I am sure he will appreciate the confidence you've in him" he said offhandedly as he did something that surprised both of them. He bought her knuckles to his lips and pressed a chaste kiss on them.

*