First Love

"I like you"

Moments like these leave you dumbstruck. The sudden kiss on your cheek followed by the sudden confession that comes the moment your fingers touch the wet spot on your skin; such moments make you stop mid-laugh and leave your heart racing to the verge of panic, your brain stops processing and you just stare on trying to meet his eyes for the confirmation that you aren't dreaming.

His unceremonious stare trying to read your answer makes you dishevel and you try..try very very hard not stammer, but you do...you end up stammering "me too", but the moment the words leave your lips , the moment your eyes track his sigh of relief you realize the gravity of the situation. You realize how much ready you were with an answer to the question that you never even guessed would come from him, but then again the farthest corner of your heart has been expecting it from way too long. Maybe he has been expecting it too. The confidence in his confession briefs how well he had known the answer far before you, and that makes you frightened as well excited that he had already layered you out and it makes you question how well he knows you.

When you see him entangling your hands with yours and the smile playing on his lips, you feel the magic in the moments and the tingling the magic created. And you smile too as you embrace the moment as a part of the reality and not a dream.

Then again in that moment of absolute silences, your mind flashes around memories that you didn't even realize you had them.

He was the one girls like you didn't even know he existed. You used to be the girl who didn't remember having glance once towards the back benches and he was the one who had this small social kingdom in those backbenches of the class. He was the one whom you had no memory of seeing in the ten years at school. Girls like you, your world revolves around school courses, marks, and the high aims your parents dreamt for you. You never had time to go visit the dentist whose secretary had been calling you and informing you that it had been high time to remove your braces, you never had time to braid your hair, you didn't even have time to swoon over the clothes at the nearby mall or go window shopping. You didn't care about the number of pimples popped by your careless hand, you didn't care about your broken unpainted nails and your chapped lips, you didn't care about the tinted ends of your hair nor you cared about the color of your spectacles' frame. All that made you highly sensitive were the marks in your answer sheet and your fear of being second after remaining in the first for all these years. You cared about the expiration date of your library membership and stood for hours in a line only to extend it. You were one who had crush on the horn rimmed spectacled boy who sat behind you and was always your competitor. You crushed on him because you saw him pick a stack of Sherlock from the library table once and you were a die hard fan of Sherlock. You crushed on him because he was your standard and your eyes denied to farther your searches, because you thought girls like you shouldn't wither far away from your standards.

You were one among those few who cursed those hoodlums of your class for making noise and interrupting a lesson but you never bothered to turn around to glance at the noise makers even once. You used to be those girls who prefer Super-girls over Romance.

You don't remember of knowing him or seeing his face before until one day. The day you arrived at your usual time in the class which is thirty minutes earlier for others. The day you thought you forgot but your brain stored each and every details. You had sat down on your usual seat, the first seat and had taken out your notes humming in a song in the empty classroom. But the classroom which you had thought to be empty had another presence whose voices had almost thrown you out of your seat making your heart jump.

"Do you have a pencil, roll no.1?"

You weren't expecting anyone to be in there so early and you had always wanted the hour before the class alone to yourself and having a presence disturbed your routine but you had turned on your seat to pass the pencil to the intruder sitting on the eighth bench.

Yo had sneered at his unmannerly behavior when he didn't even looked up nor did he utter a 'thank you'. You had craned you neck to look at whatever he was busy doing with your pencil on his notebook. You had watched him curse and erase away whatever he was drawing on his notebook which you remembered as last week's biology's homework. Two pencils that were thrust over his ear was poking out of his hairs with broken points.

You had scrunched your nose at the tattoos that covered his arm leaving no sight of his olive skin. His black mop of straight hairs had electric blue highlights that you had found quite ridiculous, although it had later compelled you to search the internet looking for latest fashionable hair highlights. You had even looked up the internet deciphering the meanings of the tattoos that covered his arms and neck.

From that day on you had always walked into the class at your usual time to find him either scribbling on a notebook or studying. Someday he would ask for a pencil after having broken all the points of his pencils and your pencil would end up with the same fate as his. You would listen to him curse and mutter out his notes . There were moments when the wrong pronunciation of words irritated you to that extreme that it became unbearable for you to keep listening and you pronounce the word loud and correctly making him halt in his muttering and silencing him for the next two or three minutes.

And it had surprised you when one day you had walked into him sitting on your seat and you were left with no choice but to plop down on the spot behind him. But he was already turning around to look at you scratching the back of his neck.

"Will you help with my revision?",

You had stared at him , wondering what changed to make back benchers like him who was often called to the Principals for breaking rules be so intent on studying. Instead of voicing out your thoughts you had nodded and took the book from his hand. And it became a routine. His asking you questions, his asking you to clarify things and your shocking realization of how he was so so better than you in biology. You don't remember when it was , or who the first one to smile was, but nevertheless you started to exchange smiles and small greetings.

And the day you finally got the guts to ask him his name, he had looked at you with both his eyebrows raised to his hairline and you had waited for some confrontation. It had disheartened you a little when his confrontation never came and you tried to guess by your own if it meant he didn't care if you knew him or not. You had shook of your momentary drop off and had smiled at his funny name and when you went to introduce yourself he had smiled and said your name on your behalf surprising you.

You started looking for his scores before yours in the result list. You had rejoiced at his progress. You were marveled at his persistence to not be left out as the world moves forward. When you had aims created for you by your parents, aims that made you study harder, he had aims to prove himself and that made him try harder.

You were polar opposites but your persistence brought you two together. He was your only friend in the whole school in front of whom you weren't afraid of revealing your true self. Though your friends arched their eyebrows at your company and your parents grounded you for being friends with a delinquent, yet you knew he was worth fighting for and you never gave up on things that were worth.

"It's dark, you won't find taxis to your home if it's more late and since you won't let me walk you to your home due to your parents you have to walk home alone".

Now too, when you look at him care about small things, small things and fears of him that most were unvoiced you know how much he was worth and the warmth in your heart for him increases making you more daring and you say out loud "You can walk me home".

When he smiles at you and sits down back again saying that you have more time with you then and you can't hold back your smile because his smile is infectious.

Although nothing were similar between you, although he still has his blue highlights and his undeniable love for tattoos and although you still prefer Sherlock over romance, although nothing much seem to have changed, yet among those nothing much a little lot has changed that makes you blush. You no longer sit six seats apart, you are no longer alone to stand in the library never ending line. You don't dream alone anymore. You dream and aim with him because all of your dreams now have him in them.