The Power

“Well, I think this is the time when,” She paused. She looked in intense anguish as she shut her eyes tight and inhaled, “When… I’ve gotta say… say that… Well…” She breathed in, looked up at him and sighed, “This is it.”

“What is it?” He didn’t sound convinced.

“You know! Please don’t make me say it loud! It’s already painful enough!” She begged.

He simply looked at her, his lips buttoned up, his face expressionless. She tried to force him to speak with the fiery looks of her excruciatingly beautiful eyes. But he wouldn’t budge.

“Well, you know,” Finally she gave in, and pain surged through her veins as she prepared herself for the words, “We can’ be… We can’t be together anymore.” She finished, her knees trembling, she was almost off balance. He tried to hold her, but she shied away. She looked him in the eye, “Got it now?” She expected him to look sad, tormented. But what she saw in his eyes was not that.

He seemed ridiculed. He tried to smile, “Look, don’t joke about such things! I can’t take it!”

“I’m not joking!” How am I going to make him believe! She knew it too, how unbelievable it was, she didn’t even believe them herself, she couldn’t even believe she was capable of saying these things to him, let alone mean them. But now, she had to make him believe.

“I’m serious! I’m… No! Don’t” He had come forward and grabbed hold of her shoulders, and it felt so soothing, so appeasing! She felt herself melting away. But then she forced herself to jerk his hands off. “No! We mustn’t try to hang on to this any longer! This is getting us nowhere!” She shrieked. She was about to shout again, but stopped when she saw the look in his eyes.

He was frozen, grounded where he stood. Till that moment he was sure she was joking. After all, they always used to joke about themselves breaking up. The idea that they could ever break up seemed the most hilarious and lamest joke there could ever be in the world. But the way she shook his hands off herself was what showed him the truth. She really meant it! And on that moment the world around him seemed spinning. He wasn’t standing anymore. And the poor boy on his knees wondered, why’s everything getting so blurry?

“Oh no! Don’t cry! Please!” She lowered herself on to her knees as well, “Come on! Be a man! Men don’t cry!” She took his face in her butter soft palms looked at his watery eyes. She saw the depth in there, the begging, the agony, the cries of a drowning child…

And then…

Something inside her cracked. She knew it shouldn’t have, but it had.

And there she was, in the heaven of his arms, crushing herself against his warm chest and soaking his shirt with her tears. His hands caressing her back as she let herself melt away into him. Then he cupped her face in his firm hands, and lowered his.

“Why did you cry?” She whispered through his lips, “You said there was no power in the world that could ever make you cry!”

“Yes.” He whispered back, “But you can!” He smiled, “You don’t know the power you have over me!”

“I do.” She smiled back, “It’s the same power that brought me back to you. Forever.”