The Soulful Atom

He sat at the bar. Moustache and all, white as snow, fluffy as a rabbit. He sat sipping a draught beer, peering at the menu. Suddenly riddled by a bout of sneezes, his typical roof-shattering sneezes. He then switched his attention to the phone, trying to figure out the contraption through his glasses, that he had to put on since a few years now. He had never thought he would ever be a victim of these, but she always knew. She teased him by fantasizing about how he would look wearing them, and how he would squint when he had to read something without wearing them.

She watched him quietly, from a table full of lively friends, a bit too lively at the moment. She wondered if he would notice her too. He seemed to occupied in his phone as she stared at him hard, willing him to look up. Her eyes bore into his balding head (as it always was), she never knew why he bothered growing the scant hair. She liked him bald. She’d like him any way he looked. He put his phone aside without looking up and turned to his beer. Again staring in the distance, as if he could see beyond the panels of the bar. She got irritated. It took her by surprise, she had stopped getting irritated at minor things since a while. But then again this isn’t small, a small voice told her. Running into him here like this. Well they had not technically run into each other yet. She wondered how she should play this out. Or shall she let the heavens decide. Maybe the latter since her way never really worked with him or maybe with anyone. So she shifted her gaze back to her table, where people, by now semi-drunk, were laughing their heads off at some silly joke. She will let the heaves take a call. The small voice smiled, inaudibly, but she knew it smiled. She would wait. Like she had waited all these years, unknowingly.