Dusted from the Drive...

The Confrontation

He parked his car in the parking lot facing the beach. The ride had been unusually silent. ‘She is not her usual self’, he thought. ‘I must talk it out today’, she decided. He did not say a word. They got down and walked towards the water. They had always liked their evenings together at the beach. They walked close. He put his hands around her. She snuggled up to him. They went and sat down, the salty moisture laden breeze settling down on their lips. She leaned on him.

"What’s bothering you?" he asked.
"I'm sorry", she said.
He remained silent.
"Won’t you ask what for?"
"Does that make any difference?"
"Yes it does. I acknowledge the fact that I hurt you and I'm sorry for it. I'm sorry for what happened in the party that night. I shouldn’t have hurt you like that."
"Let’s forget it."
"Aren’t you trying to avoid confronting your own emotions?" she searched for an answer in his eyes. Instead she found an amusement completely belying her expectations from what she sought to seek in his eyes.
"Are you ready to handle such a thing?" he asked her back. Of all the things, this is not what she had expected to hear. She should have expected this, unassuming and mysterious as always, she told herself.
"Why not? Isn’t it what people do?" she looked up at him hoping a positive answer.
"Do you really understand? That by confronting the feelings when you are unsure of it yourself means you will hurt yourself and by that, hurt me! Do you really want to do this?” he thought and looked back intently, letting his eyes do the speaking.
He knew she was unrelenting
"May be" he said and looked into the direction of the waves.

She leaned on his shoulder, her head seeking the comfort of his shoulders. He put his arms around her and pushed the hair falling in front of her face. Her face glowed in that moonlight while the streaks of her soft hair danced to the tunes of the wind. ‘You are angelic’ he thought.
"Why do you give me such a feeling? I wish I don’t have to go through the kind of feelings I go through." She pulled herself away and turned to face him.
There he was looking at her as ignorant as a kid with no traces of any disturbance and still drowned in her eyes.
He chuckled and asked "What feelings?"
"I want to understand what I’m to you. I don’t like the twin emotions of love and hate towards you".
"Hmmm"
"I want to spend all my time with you, talk all things, every minute, I think of you and love you. The weekend you do not come home, I feel lonely. I want to come over to you at those times. I just need your hug, the comfort of your shoulders. I feel you know lot more about me than I even tell you and I want to know everything about you. But I have this nagging feeling at times that I do not know you, that I mean nothing to you, that you care a damn for me, that you have zilch feelings of what I have for you, that you ignore me, that you deliberately are staying away from me and when I have this feeling, I hate you for what you do to me. Why do you do this to me?" she looked questioningly into his eyes.
He looked thoughtful. His smile vanished.
"Isn’t that the reason you kissed the other guy in the party that night?" There was pain in his eyes.
"I'm sorry. I wanted to make you jealous...."
"..hoping I would get angry and accept that you mean a lot more to me" he cut her.
She remained silent.
He caressed and set the hair flowing across her face.
"Do you want an honest answer?"
"Of course I do"
"You scare me".
"What?" She looked at him in disbelief.
"I'm scared and one reason is you" he repeated very softly.
"You are rushing things too fast and that scares me. I want us to take time, be friends, but you do not seem to want that. You are rushing into the relationship too fast and I'm scared of hurting you, I’m scared of losing you"
"Don’t you feel comfortable with me?"
"Infact, I feel a kind of comfort I have never felt with anyone and that precisely is the reason for my apprehension. I want to give us time and take it easy. We started to talk and let me admit that you mean a whole lot than you think you mean to me. But I would like you to understand what you want"
She smiled.
"But you never say anything about you to me. We talk more when in a group than we are together."
"Learn to listen to the silence", he winked and continued "Seriously, how do I say when everything about me seems just exactly what you want. You scare me when everything for you revolves around me, when you make me feel like I'm infallible, that there is no life beyond me. You scare me even more when you try to change yourself to suit every mood of me, when you want everything that I want. I want you to understand that I have my own shortcomings too. I want to sit with you, talk to you for hours about us, about our past, and listen to our stories of childhood, our crushes, our mistakes, our dreams and our fears. I want you to understand what I mean to you, the real you.
"Hmmm" she listened.
"The way you take this relationship makes me feel it is too good to be true. It feels great to get all the attention a girl can possibly give. It is a feeling of intoxication and it makes me wonder sometimes that you do all this just out of an infatuation and when it all fades, you would be gone. I have a nagging feeling that this is not the real you. And that you are trying to be everything that may interest me. I would like our relationship to be defined by friendship and love, not desire. And that precisely stops me from being anything more than a normal friend. It makes me create a wall around me. We share a friendship that is so very different for both of us. I want us to give that friendship the time and respect it needs"
“I understand".
He smiled. "I really hope you do".
She smiled.
"There are lots of things you do not know about me and there are a lot of things that I know about you that you have not told me yet. It makes me feel you do not trust me enough. And I believe if there is one thing that can create that kind of a trust, it’s only a friendship. I just want you to be yourself. You entered my life at a point when I needed that one friend. I'm scared I will lose her. That I will hurt you by leading you onto something that I'm not prepared to give as of yet. And reasons are plenty behind it. Today, I'm not sure if you would be able to understand them and wait. Honestly, if you ask me today, I would only say, I would prefer to be a friend for life than a lover for a while. You are too precious for me to lose. And that my dear, is how much you mean to me. I like you to be what you are."
She leaned on his shoulders. His hands went around her to give a comfort hug, the one in which she always felt secure.