Years later, they meet in the shadow of the great oak. They stare at each other with the blankness of the years that divide them. Recognition succumbs to uneasiness. The stares grow softer. The uneasiness abates stutteringly.
He removes his glasses and wipes them gingerly. August rain is raging against the tree, enveloping the silence that shrouds them. He can't bring himself to be the first to speak. He wipes his glasses more animatedly, dismayed that he can't get the rain off them. He realises the rain managed to sneak into his pockets as well. He pauses and lets the raindrops that cling to him descend to the ground.
The meeting isn't planned. It could not have been. He had left the city soon after she left him. His last memory of the city is a bus-stop not far from the great oak. It was raining that day too. They had planned to take a bus to the cafe that had nursed their love for many months. He remembers that day by the colour of the sky. He likes to remember it as the day the sky bled rain.
He knew it would be the last time he'd see her. In the days before he saw her last, she had said many things that he had taken care to forget. A few phrases, though, had slipped through his efforts to erase the unwinding of her love, and had lodged themselves permanently in his memory. Phrases such as "a mistake", "pointless to continue", "shouldn't have started", "completely incompatible" waltzed around his head in moments of solitude and made him dizzy. There was more, of course. Cruel, lacerating phrases that detailed his failings. And a cool goodbye that finally cut the cord. She was pragmatic. He was hopelessly in love. He clung to her like a falling man. She discarded him like a once-loved coat. Both knew their love was broken.
Shadows of their last meeting still linger in their eyes. Suffocated by the silence, he looks up. She looks up but avoids his gaze. He wonders if she's wary of finding the answers that lurk within his eyes. For a moment, he wonders if she recognises him at all. Much has changed since they last met. Age, that relentless messenger of time, has tarred them differently. She has been allowed to cling to her youth. He has greyed and crumbled.
But when their eyes finally find each other, familiarity flares furiously within them. He looks into her breath-depriving eyes with questions too many and too tumultuous for a single evening of rain and regret. She breathes a little faster now, as if preparing herself to speak. He waits breathlessly to hear her speak after the silence of these years.
She takes a step towards him. After a pause, he edges forward as well. Seconds are transformed into minutes. They swim unblinkingly in each other's eyes. Suddenly, a whiplash of thunder cuts through their reverie. Startled, she grabs hold of his arm. He pulls her close. He finds the fingertips of her other hand with his. Their fingers meld together with an ease that never taught itself to forget. She looks at him bashfully. And in that moment, before their questions are laid out, they find the answer that must precede all utterances.
Sheathed in mad rain, their lips find each other with a certainty that the years could not erase.
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