For virility and balcony break-ups

|{And there it was, the plain truth hiding beneath his web of complicated lies. It was simple and it stung his tongue as he spoke it, “I don’t exactly care how you feel. I don’t want to care. Don’t make this one of those sappy romcoms you keep watching. If you think this is love, you’ll have to be happy being the only one participating. Do you understand?” He wondered when and how had he become so ruthless. Where had his innocent, beating heart given in to the pressure of being a ‘man’, of making nonchalance an art form. He rose like a tumultuous storm and made his way out of that sun kissed balcony. Grey clouds were quickly rushing to his temperamental aid.

She stood in the balcony, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her cheeks were burning red, like she had just been slapped, but her attention was held by her cuticles. A guttural rumble forced her to look at the sky. Storm was coming.

He was sitting on the toilet, tugging at his collar and wiping his forehead. He stood up and paced, then decided to sit back down. His mind was wandering faster than he could keep track. He thought of his elder brother and he thought of the times he had to prove to his parents that his elder brother had beaten him blue. He shrugged that feeling off – it was a heavy feeling. He thought of his father, back from a long and tiring day of mediocrity. He thought of the days when his father had walked in on the boys fighting and decided to break the fight up with his leather belt. And he thought of his mother. All he really could muster was her braid snaking across her back while she cooked and ignored the mayhem.

She knocked on the bathroom door. He stirred and sat up. She asked faintly, “How long are you going to be in there?” He pushed his hair back, buttoned his shirt properly and opened the door. Her eyes had no sign of tears or desperation. He searched them, looking for a moment of vulnerability, a moment of helplessness but she blinked with confusion. “Excuse me”, she made her way past him and picked out the purple toothbrush. Thrusting it in his hand she said, “I will be happy. It will be painful and it will take sometime but I’ll get over it. I don’t care what this makes me sound like, but I really did give my 100%, I really did want this to work and I really did think this is… was love. Whatever it was, it was good enough but I think you should probably go now. Before either of us lose our clarity and start something stupid again. Thank you though, for being man enough to tell me the truth”

There it was. Another plain truth and god knows that’s all his tiny heart had the courage for. How could he have done the ‘manliest’ thing and still felt his virility get punched in the face by a pair of big brown eyes?}