Understated in love...

College romances, frivolous and tumultuous affairs and feverish swooning was something that Kimberly had long left behind. She was too old for this nonsense. She would steer clear of this childishness; a new found love for sobriety and understated display of affection had taken over her psyche. You could blame it on the fast moving tickers of time or on the several heartbreaks that she now had in her arsenal. Why arsenal? Because those heartbreaks were what she used to steer clear of actual emotional connections with people.

Everyone saw through this ‘façade’, her parents, her friends and even the suitors that somehow approached her. That angered her even further, the fact that no one understood that she wasn’t against love or its feverishness, she just was looking for a different kind of love. A love that would understand her, understated but pure, something that she could cherish and someone who would cherish her. A love that loved her for all that she was and especially her negatives. But her vehement denial at wanting any romantic rendezvous made her sound like a challenge for all those worthy and not so worthy. What she yearned for was something entirely different, she wanted respect.

Sometimes the laws of attraction worked in mysterious ways, usually people say that you attract what you talk about but sometimes you attract what you are truly running away from. Doesn’t that make you wonder if you truly were running away or did you subconsciously want what you were pushing away? She wondered the same thing. All the time.

Running away made her bump face first into Ralph - calm, composed and relaxed Ralph. He was everything she was looking for and everything she was thinking of. At this point how they met holds no real meaning but here they were a year later comfortable and understated. The question was, did they really love each other? Somehow this never occurred to them. They were together because they were on the same page, they had the same life goals and they both were looking for something that did not make them swoon.

Their future was clearly written down with an intertwining of career goals even though it wasn’t an intertwining of fingers and hearts. They were comfortable with each other and they understood each other. Then came a time when Kimberly had to move away for 6 months, this was pre-empted. They knew she was going to go, everything was planned. There they were at the airport, bidding adieu, discussing everything they had discussed, re-discussing how they would keep in touch and that it would be alright, because they had discussed this. They hugged goodbye and promised to text, just then, just at that moment they felt a pang, a tiny little tug at the strings of something in their chest area, something called a heart? But they just nodded it away.

6 months passed by just as they had planned, they kept in touch and it was absolutely alright. As she rode down the escalator to the arrivals, she glanced at her arm and the 4 feet long card that it was holding. I missed you more than pizza misses cheese the card said, ‘cheese’ something that didn’t figure in her plan, but she decided to do it anyway. As she started walking towards the arrivals, she couldn’t spot Ralph, she looked around but kept walking with the ‘cheese’ clenched right to her. Suddenly she heard faint music playing in the background, she thought it was someone’s ringtone. It was a faint melody, but something that she knew all too well, it was her favourite 90s track! As she walked towards the gate she was stopped in her tracks by this butch security guard as she was about to ask him why, he started jigging to the music. The louder the music got the more people joined in, she started looking around to see who all this was for. Suddenly, a placard bobbed in front of her that said, “I missed you more than coffee misses some more coffee!”

Right there, in the middle of good-byes and hellos, they bumped into something that they were both running away from, it was tumultuous, feverish and there definitely was a lot of swooning. Magic was found…