Untitled Pt. II

(unfinished)

He changed all because of Amena. 

Their eyes first met in the bloom of spring. His eyes; there’s so much to talk about with his eyes. It beamed at once with alluring depth and a shine which always startled her. Every time she saw him across the field with mouth barely smiling, face so amicable, eyes so transfixing, she feels a sort of strange gravity. She helplessly turned her head towards him every few seconds and as she always gained a rhythm and flow in only peeking when he’s not looking back (not that he really would mind even if he did notice), even stumbled a little to his direction – a loss of blood flow perhaps, from her legs all the way to her scampering mind, butterflying torso and pale cheeks flushing red. 

He tried to not make note of it too. She had an exotic flair that he is not used to seeing in the girls he adored in the past. Scant, monolid, but somehow the face is well put-together and harmonic. Not to mention her hair, so luscious and with her careful styling each and every day to match her outfit, expresses an extra layer of personality, an element of surprise even. 

The gaze back and forth continued for a while. I did not mention that both were very shy and not used to romantic courtship – courting or getting courted. Both thought that there was no chance the other would even entertain themselves because the other is so well liked. A hint of jealousy always rose in both whenever they saw the other talking and smiling to someone of their own gender. Both did not lack suitors too: both turned down affection time after time, hoping that they could get with THE person that they chose, not someone that just happened in their life. 

So Pat and Amena (sometimes I would call her Amen by accident and she would fiercely retaliate: “that’s my brother!!”) eventually broke the ice, with Pat’s biological desires surmounting all biological fears. He would not tell me about the details. The only story I know of was how they first started talking at that poetry festival. We saw her with her friends from far away. I saw her friends peaking towards him – by this time, he had asked her friends if she was open to him; subtly as he thought it was, this was objectively no different from walking up and straight up catcalling her — she knew. He knew that she knew but without a voice to put to that thought of hers, he could still not be sure. I smiled in a trouble-provoking fashion back at her friends while patting him just heavy enough to seem exaggerated. He pretended not to see the girls, all except for Amena, holding in their laughter (not an antagonistic one but one driven by humor), doing the samely exaggerated pat to the samely shy girl who looked away. You could just barely see the smile that gave away her internal beam of satisfaction.

Surely enough under my pestering and pressuring he had to find out. From a distance he seemed to have the same smile as he did when we ran in the rain – that told me they would end up together.