I Eloped From Love

He hadn’t changed a bit; I could tell. I saw him talking with a lady at the checkout counter. I was on this side of the road. He stepped out of the Supermarket holding a trolley and looked in my direction. I looked away instantly. My heart thumped heavily inside.

I could sense his eyes on me. My legs went numb. I blankly stared at the cars passing by, completely forgetting that I was to cross the road. Those eyes, I knew, were still seeking answers from me. He stayed put while I began to cross the road as the signal went red. Every step towards him brought me an inch closer to the memories, which I was afraid to cherish yet feared to let go of.

At one point in our life, we both could have sworn that we knew each other completely. We’d shared our deepest secrets, darkest truths and shabbiest lies with each other. But we’d failed at sharing the simplest ones. Instead we had preferred to rely on our own inferences.

The last time we had met was 5 years ago. His elated eyes had stopped the well rehearsed words from escaping my mouth. But they couldn’t stop the obsession called love in my heart from blinding my eyes and I eloped, the next day, with the man of my dreams while he kept waiting at the altar.

Inevitably, my marriage hadn’t worked. The obsession had turned out to be a humongous blunder. And I, along with my shattered heart, had eloped again – this time all alone.

But with the tiny voices of conscience inside, you’re never alone. It knows how to smash the broken pieces of your heart into more fine ones. So it’d served its purpose and I’d begun to miss his presence in my life more and more. I wished I could share every guilt, every regret with him. I wished it were still that easy to do so.

No, it wasn’t but I, despite knowing that, had come back to this town in the hope that may be it was. The honking vehicles brought me back to the present; I hastened my steps to cross the road.

As I neared the Supermarket entrance, from the corner of my eye, I saw him duck into the Newspaper stall. He hurriedly snuck out thinking I hadn’t noticed him, got into his car and drove off.

And with that, I realized it was too late. They rightly say, sometimes there’s no going back to how it was before.