Sighting

                                    

                                          


                          
[for Suganthi Akka, for laughing with and at.]
                          
❝When I saw you, I fell in love, and you smiled, because you knew.❞  

                          


                          
                  
                          
2 :: Sighting
                          
Crestfallen was all she was these days. Time had its own way of bringing back memories, and with memories came new realizations, new discoveries of the heart and new observations that weren't made earlier. 
                          
Looking back in time Savannah wondered how she could be so clueless about things that were right in front of her, clear as a crystal. This is where the guilt started trapping her, bit by bit eating her for being so aloof and above all, it disgusted her for being the girl in love. It made her feel like loving was a crime for her. 
                          
It would all have never happened had she been a little less gullible, had she not let her guards loose. It all could have been clearly avoided if she had taken her experience seriously and not trusted- again. Savannah tried to make things right though, persuading and pestering her to talk to him, she did all she could to make things right between him and her- the girl she could never be, the girl she envied for she had control over the heart for which Savannah died a bit every day. 


                          
She didn't have to do it, she knew, others didn't have to tell her more. Even though she was the one hurting, even when she was the one fooled, it felt like a moral obligation to make things right for people responsible for her misery. It was as if she owed him, for making her contrite life joyful for a few minutes in the clock of life.
                          
Sipping her coffee sitting alone in a corner table of a dim-lit café, she imagined how beautiful it would be if he was there with her this moment, their light banter echoing through and through the lonely walls of the café, making people jealous of the two stars crossed lovers.
                          
Every day dream that Savannah had involved him, Good or bad. 
                          
From the corner of her eyes she saw Emmet walk into the café with a stoic expression as always. Perhaps he had his own story that made him like this, but she wasn't going to bother herself with that right now. 
                          
Both had crossed each other a few times since the conversation they had in the past week, Emmet trying to avoid her as much as he could and Savannah trying to catch hold of him to get over with this assignment. Finally, today he had given up and asked her to meet him in the café that was located a few blocks away from her house.
                          
"Be there on time." He had murmured and now hypocrite was how she saw him. She resisted to roll her eyes at him as he sat down opposite of her, ten minutes late. 
                          
As if reading her mind his eyes faltered for a moment and Emmet almost gave away a sheepish grin, almost. 
                          
Accustomed to his practical nature he just jumped to the point, "What is the topic of discussion today?" 
                          
If there was anything of Emmet that annoyed the living life out of Savannah, it was that he never exchanged pleasantries; it was as if hellos' and byes' did not exist in his dictionary at all.  For a child who was groomed in a military household, Savannah found this plain rude. For others it might be very trivial, not for her though. 
                          
"Well, Romeo falls in love with Juliet after one sighting." She said not speaking her thoughts.
                          
"Do you believe in love at first sights?" Emmet questioned wondering himself.
                          
Did she? As a child the idea seemed so wonderful that she would imagine herself in situations where a handsome lad would look her in the eye and then they would create their own fairytale. But this was reality and not very wonderful, this was not her imagination but real life; a place nowhere near wonderland where she was certainly not Alice.