Lines
Two lives run in parallel.
She walks into his life in a way neither one of them foresaw. They exchange greetings over text messages, and introduce themselves. They share a friend, and that makes it easier for him, whose social skills are barely better than a half-cooked potato. The lives intersect.
She asks questions — wonderful questions — which he likes answering. The kind of questions that start a smile in his heart, which broadens his lips. Questions that are indicative of a lasting friendship that nurtures itself in the practice of everyday routine, and thrives by its mere existence.
They live in time zones four hours apart, but the difference seems powerless, innocuous. Her liking for conversations with him keeps her awake long past the time she is usually asleep by. He plans his work in such a way that he can finish it up after she’s asleep.
One night, she narrates how she’s usually of the diffident kind, but morphs into the embodiment of confidence while dancing. He understands nothing about dance, and fails to grasp jargon, but he loves the mercurial personality shift. They have a long conversation about it, well past the moon is asleep, shrouded in a thick blanket of stratus clouds. The night is dark, but the passion in her story illuminates it beautifully enough for him to want to stay awake.
He tells her how he learned to play football, and how he likes to play it. She understands nothing of the game, but she listens in delight. Perhaps she noticed that he reflects some of the passion he just witnessed. She likes his narration just as much as he likes hers. They start flirting with no intentions, now and then. It gives them both a lot of laughs, how embarrassingly pathetic they both are at it.
She confides in him. She confesses something to him — a condition — that nobody else who has known her is privy to. As uncanny coincidence would have it, he had the same condition. They realize now that their friendship is going to accelerate. They fasten their seat belts, they’re ready for the ride. Their lives intertwine.
He tells her he writes. He tells her he thinks he’s dreadful at it. She tells him she writes, too. She doesn’t write very well either, she says. They happen to write in different languages, but they share their writings with each other. They read each other’s words and fall in love with them. They realize that a second pair of eyes sometimes makes all the difference. Their lives are entangled.
Time has them living in the same time zone now. Better yet, they live in the same city. “We’ve conquered the fiend that is distance,” they think, and now it’s time to enjoy the proximity.
They meet each other, and they take a liking almost immediately. They have a few laughs, by the end of which they recognize it: pristine, untainted friendship. It sneaks up on them, but it announces itself unequivocally. They relish in its trance, dancing to the changing seasons. “How wonderful it is to find a friend who likes you for just what you are, after you’re already a mediocre adult,” they both think, oblivious to the echos of each other’s thoughts.
If only life had a “happily ever after.”
People come in between everything, even fortuitous friendships. People who, they both were convinced, wanted nothing less than their happiness, in whichever form it may arrive: heroes. They see him getting close to her, understanding her, making her happy, but they choose to be myopic about it all. It is the flirting they notice. They dislike it; it turns them green.
They start policing her, judging her. They see truculent intentions behind a friendship forged on childlike comfort. They give her hell, ostracize her, shame her. It’s hard to see our heroes fall, and she can’t take it. She endures the heat, but not for long. She needs space, while he watches helplessly from the boundary that prevents his entry. Their lives slowly disentangle, although it is the last thing they both desire.
Space doesn’t help. Time doesn’t help. The shaming gets worse. The heat becomes unbearable to her, and he can’t stand that all of it boils down to him. The vicissitudes overwhelm them both. The guilt of not having heard her laughter in weeks bleeds him dry. An impossible anger strangles his grief; he just wants her to be happy.
Proximity becomes too much to handle. Perhaps distance was not the enemy they thought it to be.
He continues to wait beyond the frontier, wondering if the memory of her will become poison in his veins. He wonders if, one day, she’ll catch herself wishing she’d never known him, so she’d be spared her pain.
He writes. Will she read, he wonders?
The lives are parallel again.
