Choices

 

“Even the people that I most love, I only like about 80% of them. It’s a question of where on your personal intolerable scale the 20 lies.” She looked at him for affirmation. Hoping that he would feel her observation insightful, therefore her intelligent.  And therefore x 2 worthy of his love.

They were both lounging on comfortable chairs in her idyllic balcony. With gin, leisure and butterflies for company. The weather fairies were in a mood to dance. A plump, setting sun was painting the sky in all shades of crimson. She had loved him for so long, through his casual indifference, through his coldness. But she had been feeling the shift in him for a while. Today was the day, this was the moment that it would all turn. The moment that their relationship would shift and justify the years of undeserved worship. She could almost taste the words that she would use to tell this tale of love to all the doubters.

“I wonder what Sarika is doing.” He mused out loud as he stared out at the sea of tree tops.

Her figurative transformation into stone took about a moment too long. He turned to look at her with the impatience only a lover-in-the-wings knows, “Don’t you know?”

“Isnt she with Vikram this weekend?” If she couldn’t have him, they could at least be joined in the pain of unrequited love.

He exhaled his frustration out with his cigarette smoke, “Is she? I thought that was over?”

All Savina offered him in response was the loaded shrug of casual indifference, known to sharpen that particular pain.

He turned to her, “you look lovely tonight, by the way.”

She smiled as she wondered how many consolation prizes had been called lovely by their evaluator. She wondered which was worse; Walking away in a preservation of dignity or being a disposable consolation. She wondered if walking away was a measure of self-respect or could it be removed as a factor in that entire calculation. She wondered if she was ready to walk out of the station into nothing at all or go back into that sparse waiting room. She wondered if flat lining was better than pain.

“Really?”