He & She

I wrote this short story a long time ago. Not everyone like it. But some love it. I tried to re-write it in a blog style. Change quite a few things. Short and direct yet keep the smooth flow of the story. Most of my friends prefer short snappy style. Too long they find it tedious in reading. Anyway it is a challenge to write short stories that are engaging enough to keep a reader interested.
I hope I have done justice to my story.
If not, I will try harder.
Enjoy.

He & She

She could not control her thoughts.
Damn it.
She took out her mobile, her finger poised over the buttons.
Damn it.
She should have a clean break with him.
She did.
Yesterday she called him, telling him she could no longer be with him.
Her reason was simple. She wanted freedom.
He could not understand her reason.
They argued.
But she was persistent.
She ended the call first, after one hour of tiring conversation.
After that she cried herself to sleep.
Not out of regret or guilty.
But the notion of him vanishing from her life was too much for her.
Now, barely eight hours later, she already missed him.
She shoved her mobile back into her LV bag.
The bag was a gift from him.
Damn it.
She remembered everything about him. About them.
In the end, she surrendered to the temptation.
She took out her mobile again and dialed his number from her memory.

-----

He could not sleep at all.
Why?
He kept asking himself.
Why?
He received a call from her in the middle of the night.
A sudden call and at first he was worried something bad had happened.
Indeed, it was something bad.
She wanted a breakup.
Why?
He asked her.
She replied in a detached tone.
Freedom.
That’s all she said.
A lie, he told her. There must be a third party involved.
She asked him to grow up.
Breaking up did not always involve other people.
He argued with her.
She kept denying.
After an hour, she ended her call.
That’s all.
A call. A breakup.
The world once filled with a future of him and her no longer existed.
It was the first night he ever felt so lonely.

-----

‘Hi.’
She spoke. Her tone was as cold as the morning air.
But her heart was thumping.
Fast and hard.
‘Yep.’
She heard his answer.
Usually he would call her ‘baby’.
Now it became an unfamiliar and perfunctory answer.
Cold. Fierce.
Her heart sank.
Silence expanded.
‘What do you want now?’
He finally spoke.
A good start, she thought.
She took in a deep breath and exhaled.
Her lungs hurt.
Feeling relax, she spoke: ‘I just want to say…’

-----

‘Sorry?’
He wondered what really happened during the hours between the two unexpected calls.
Did she feel regret about the breakup earlier?
Or was there another person involved?
‘Do you mean you want us to be together again?’
He waited for a confirmation.
But she did not answer.
‘Hey, what do you want from me?’
Suddenly, at the other end, he heard sobbing.
Crying, he thought.
His heart melted.
‘Hey are you alright?’
His heart pained.
This was not what he wanted out of their relationship.
He always thought he would marry her. Soon.
Having a family with her was the one and only wish he had after she agreed to become his girlfriend three years ago.
Three years later, his wish was nowhere getting near to fulfill. Almost vanish.
Perhaps she waited to long for him to pop the question.
‘I…forgive you. Why don’t we start afresh again?’
The words came out of his mouth with difficulty. After all, he did not expect to face such a situation.
It did not matter anymore,
he just wanted to be with her again.
‘Hey, are you still there?’

-----

‘Yes, I am…’
She stopped her sobbing. She wiped the tears from her face.
In the crowd, no one noticed her.
She kept her wet face away from the human flow around her.
‘Where are you?’
He asked.
Her mind drew a blank.
Was that what she wanted after all?
She did not know.
All she knew she wanted badly to be with him.
It did not matter what she wanted hours earlier.
In modern days, being together and being breakup could co-exist a second in between.
She should enjoy the time with him.
She dared not think about the future.
It was too far to think.
‘I want to see you.’
Her voice was determined.
She knew she had made up her mind.

-----

‘I see you.’
He watched her from across the street. She was what attracted him in the first place. She stood tall among the rest and owned a face which would arouse attention.
He always felt eyes of envy landing on him as he took her hands and walked down the streets.
She was too beautiful to be true.
He could not lose her.
‘Talk to you later.’
He ended the call.
From red light to green light, his eyes had never left her. She was standing there, locking her eyes with him too.
He suddenly felt alive.

-----

‘Okay, talk to you later.’
She shoved her mobile back to her LV bag.
He was standing across the street.
Wearing a dark windbreaker and a decent pair of pants, he looked suave enough to catch some attentions of young school girls.
She always felt a sense of pride whenever she walked beside him, his hands held on to hers.
However, the years of being with him, she felt that he had occupied most of her world.
The idea was frightening. She wanted freedom. Not confined to a world of him only.
But she could not bear to leave him too.
In the end, she wanted badly to be with him again.
Green light came, she started walking.

-----

He and she walked past each other.
They were strangers, sharing the same present at the same moment.
Each of them was walking towards their own love story,
unaware of the ending their love story would bring them to.
That was the mystery of love.

~The End~