Encounter

She looked out into the road. Deep and wide potholes were pouring out in rain. It dashed heavily after a long time. Every face beamed in relief and tranquility with the coolness that brewed into air. But it felt incomplete to her. She went out in search of some shelter when people were peering out in the rain. There an old coffee shop stood, just like her, alone, faded and lost. She chuckled grimly over the fair resemblance and shielding her head with the file in hand, a failing endeavor to escape from getting drench, she dashed towards the coffee shop. 

Tiny bells over door rang as she entered in. A few tables were occupied in the hall. A small sitting on the left corner to counter peered to her. It was spared from the sparse crowd. She sat there with a sigh, wiping her forehead with the seam of her pale white shirt. The menu had very few options. She went through and decided to stay with espresso as nothing can beat wonder of the dark-bitter syrup after the long strenuous hours at office. Still her table was unattended. She cursed under breath for the poor hospitality of the place. She winced, her finger tapping on her lips she looked out for some waiter that would take order. 

As she kept exploring the scenario, her peripheral vision exploded with him. His eyes were already on her, from a long time, perhaps since she came in.  She looked back, out of inhibition but the pair of eyes didn’t budge. They kept disrobing the mask of decency and gentry that she pulls up every time she steps out. A pathetic compulsion! She thinks of it but it was even difficult to categorize as impossible. She can’t bare herself before all neither she ever dared to do so. 

A thick layer of dark fog that she has to curtain as she is also unaware of many things of her past. A hunted past that only flashed in glimpse during nightmares. A past that is long unanswerable by everyone she went into. She is now so fed up that she has stopped seeking for any access into it. But he.. a stranger whom brain fails to perceive as total stranger. Who is he? And why it feels as if he is a threat to the barrier that she holds up around her? Her hand throbbed with another unanswered question. As the time she kept looking at him while his black pea like eyes bore sank deep into her, challenging to reach where she hid her soul. Their abrupt rendezvous was interrupt with paroxysm of innocent laughter. Some kids crossed the space between them, forming a train, holding back to back like chain. She flinched in her seat, blushing embarrassedly and paid for the coffee that wasn’t yet ordered while he surprisingly kept his gaze steady on her. She cringed now and nervously paying double the amount and left hurriedly out of the door. 

He sat there, looking out expectantly for her reappearance, for her to gain some audacity and intrigue about her relation with him or at least his cue towards her. A secret that he has been forbidden with and she is hidden from, that destroyed everything that once used to be their present. He waited there again with a hope fated of premature death that she will come for her past or probably their past, a past that worth cherish beyond centuries.