Coincidence | Age is not just a number | Part 2

 "You know, the week off from work was at like the perfect time for me. I had been delaying a lot of emotional drama in my life, and that was high time for me to go through it, deal with it and just move on." he said, as he and Shubham walked into the Pike Place market. They both have their coffee cups in their hand. He has his all time favorite, the Vanilla Frappuccino, and Shubham was trying something new, a hot Pumpkin Caffe Latte with Whipped Cream. The whipped cream on a hot drink did not make sense to him, but Shubham liked it, so he never said anything.

"It's good. Sometimes we need that extra time to go through thoughts in our head." Shubham replied, took a breath and continued asking, "What happened with the girl who rejected you because you were younger ?"

"She was just two years older, and I didn't get rejected. It was mutually decided that she wouldn't be comfortable with me because I was younger." he replied.

[Death stare]

"Okay, she was three years older", he continued

[Continued death stare]

"Okay, yeah, I was rejected. Maybe I'm still not over it, who knows?" he replied, and then smiled. He took a deep breath, and continued, "She tried to be friends with me, but I thought it would become too complicated since it was already like, twice I had done a 'rejection++' from her end and tried to move on. And instead of saying this to her, I made a bad joke in reply to her and just said No, lol."

"Hmm, things happen, what can you do about it ?"

"Yeah, nothing really, just gotta move on. I usually think of moving on as 'if somehow she showed up just like that somewhere, what would happen ?' At the moment, I don't know what I would do if I saw her again." he slightly chuckled.

"I know. You'll fall on your knees and confess your love!" Shubham laughed. I made a face and kept walking.

At this point, we were around some tables which had various decor items. There was a square made out of a lot of such tables in conjunction and it created a loop you could walk around, with tables to buy things off of from either the outside or the inside of the loop or the square. They had entered the loop from one end, and were going to be exiting the market itself after exiting the loop. That's when it happened!

He heard a voice, on the opposite edge of the loop. He quickly recognized the voice. He looked towards the voice, and amongst all the crowd, he saw her! The same person whose smile made him feel like the world did not need anything else anymore. The same person who, for a week, tried to figure out if age difference was something that made a difference to her. The same person he probably was trying so hard to move on from. In his head, he had thought of so many different scenarios which could naturally change the course of the conversation between them. This was after he had stopped talking to her since the last time he saw her. He had thought of so many different things he would say to her if he bumped into her someday, obviously to change her mind about him. She was the same person!

Has everything ever gone into slow motion for you, at any moment in your life ? This was it for him. Everything started moving super slow, but his heart started pacing. His eyes were fixed on that single person, and suddenly his ears cancelled all the noise and could hear each and every word coming from that single person. He could hear every word from her, but his brain was falling apart, and so, could not comprehend anything. He could also hear his heart thumping! He could not move. It was like someone gorilla-glued his shoes to the floor, and it was very difficult lifting them up. His mouth remained open, and he kept exhaling in a very monotone way, and with an exhale every second. He was facing all possible emotions, anger-fear, nervousness-excitement, love-hate, all at once!

That is exactly when she saw him! He saw that she noticed him standing there. He also noticed the color of her face turn to pale for a tiny microsecond. And in that microsecond, she looked left and right, pretending not to have seen him. And in that microsecond, he understood that he was really the one who had bothered her. And in that microsecond, he gained back all his consciousness. And in that microsecond, they both knew that they don't care anymore. So, he caught up with his friend, who had walked a bit towards her direction through the loop.

They passed each other just like two strangers in the crowd.