Ravenclaw - A short story

What's your house, the girl enquires. "Ravenclaw!", the boy exclaims with a touch more enthusiasm than ought to be necessary for a 29 year old. But he is relieved to hear the girl chime "me too" in unison. And so the conversation begins. The boy is now rambling on for his life's worth. Spouting whatever he thinks might grab the ears and the eyeballs. Call it his greatest hits. An ensemble of accomplishments drawn into the remarks with such subtlety so as to remove the hint of hubris in them. Little did he know that the girl could hardly understand his thick slurry speech but was still nodding along. The boy intentionally misses his block but claims otherwise. The girl suggests he may as well walk her to her apartment a few blocks away. The boy obliges with a thudding chest but a dazed face. Five blocks, a minute a block. No let's make that two minutes a block as the night is warm, the bodies tired and hearts in flutter. That leaves our protagonists with ten minutes of conversation.

Ten minutes later....

They look at each other for just a fraction. The boy murmurs a greeting. "Well, hopefully I'll see you around in the gym again". The girl smiles and nods her head. The boy turns and takes two steps before doing an about face. "What's your name again, if you don't mind me asking". The girl laughs and responds. A stillness only broken by the rustling of leaves overhead. The moment comes to pass, the boy bids goodnight and slowly begins to walk alone with his thoughts. The full-scale of the possibilities of that encounter dawns on him slowly but has scorched his thoughts by the time he reaches the corner. Now he doubles back at full pelt and looks across the glass doors to the elevators of her building. But the girl is nowhere to be seen. Unbeknownst to him, she lives on the first floor and so didn't need the said elevators. The boy doesn't quite believe in fate. In fact he is a proponent of Murphy's Law. The wave of euphoria has now crashed full-faced against the rocky shores of regret and there's nary a boat in sight.

An hour earlier...

The boy is tiredly staring at his screen. He comes here every night around the same time, sits on the exact same stool and places his belongings on exactly the same spots on the marble stall. This is the only time he can eke out from his day to prepare for his MBA applications that are due in a a couple month's time. But the day is exhausting and his mind is jaded. The girl walks in to the gym, the boy looks up and their eyes meet. He is sitting in the perfect spot for the geometrical arrangement of the sight lines to take shape. His mind registers a face from earlier but cannot quite place it in the correct chamber of familiarity. The girl scampers on and the boy starts to cackle on the keyboard with furious concentration.

2 hours later...

The boy is still dazed and staring at the ceiling overhead. The sleep comes in fits and his mind is still muddled with what had transpired earlier. Was the girl being polite and making small talk (she wasn't) or did she actually fancy him for some odd reason that he himself could not fathom (she was, and he will never understand why). An idea begins to to take shape, the eye-lids begin to get heavy, he cannot take the regret and will try to salvage the remnants of possibilities as best he can.

A day later...

An apartment complex on 81st street. A box of artisanal chocolates, an envelope (a much too verbose a note inside it which thankfully has his correct contact information) and a single blue flower rests on a table-top in the lobby. The boy checks the arrangement one last time and hurries back out with his friend who came along for some much-needed fortitude. A brown guy staking out a love interest is definitely grounds for concern. But it's much less so if he brings along a white girl as his accomplice. At least, that was his reasoning. And now the deed is done. Let the impatience and anxiety take hold in place of hope.

3 months ago...

The Cherry Blossoms are in full bloom. There's a warm, breezy sheen to the evening. The kind that beckons the summer birds to sing. The light is just about dimming on the horizon when the boy saunters into the Central Park along with his cousin's family. Sister-in-law wanted to see the blossoms so here they are taking pictures and ambling around. The trees are eyeing each other across a mulched path. But they aren't agreeable to this segregation and hence their branches reach across to form a canopy for the people underneath. The boy is clearly enchanted by the scene and preserves it as a picture on his phone. But when he trains his eyes on the screen to check out his masterpiece, he notices a yellow fleck at the end of the path. Like the sun rising up the horizon. He zooms in to find the silhouette of a girl who is now slowly ambling her way across to him. She is in a reverie and after looking at her face so is he. But the moment passes and he composes himself to look the other way. It is not his way to impolitely stare at people. Over the coming days he will be reminded of the girl every time he would come across that picture. More in wonderment and intrigue than pining. Because in his mind, they are in completely different worlds that will not ever collide. He doesn't know this yet, but much like the branches of Cherry Blossoms overhead, they are destined to meet.

Two days later...

The phone buzzes. It's a text from an unknown number. There's a picture of the arrangement that he had left yesterday in the lobby of the girl's apartment. Underneath it a single word....Hi!