The Butterfly Hair Clip

The sky was greyish red when she drove near the coffee shop but she seemed not to have noticed it. She was always mesmerized by how the sky made a strange blend of colours on the sunset and found an inexplicable connection with them. But today, her eyes were neither fixed on the road (as they should have been) nor on the sky (as they usually do). So anyone who even remotely knew her would have been surprised for life to see her this unaffected by the sunset today. The sky itself would’ve been offended at his usual gazer’s indifference.

Lost on thought she has approached the coffee shop she has been dreading to approach for the past three days since, what was later came to known as, ‘The Call’ (both metaphorically and literally) . That night when she picked up the call from an unknown number she was surprised how calm she was to hear his voice for the first time in four years. She felt almosg nothing when he said that he wanted to invite her to his wedding and that he wanted to meet her to give the invitation card. She didn’t think much about that part. She knew that it was just a matter of time that they both moved on and was glad he could do it way before she did. Even though she was doing fine, there were some unanswered things she wanted to know, unsettled business that had made reaching closure almost impossible for the past years. She told herself that she had moved on but deep down inside she always knew what she found would always be less than a closure. It was something like an anti-climax where there was no full catharsis. So, she wondered if this is why he also wanted to see her after so many years, to find answers or to give answers.

She reached the cursed coffee shop and gave herself a minute to observe the waters before she drowned in. ‘Enough with your poetic ranting idiot! Go and just meet your god damned ex and get it over with’ she heard her more sensible version shouting inside her head.

She stopped at the terrace and observed him sitting in a corner eyes glued to his phone. The first thing she noticed was how old he really looked. She did not expect to see the same young boy when they were dating and she has seen enough of his photos throughout the last four years. But he seemed as if he had been sucked by a black hole and came out lost on time, suddenly matured and seasoned. The traces from times when the life had knocked him over were visible in the wrinkles under his eye. There was something unsettling about it. A completely uninvited heaviness was suddenly there inside her chest as she realized that in those mature lines visible even from a far away, in those grey hair stubbornly emerged here and there, in this distance between her and him though the terrace, in her struggle to move towards him were the missing years of their lives. The leap days that neither happened nor did not happen. He turned around and waved at her with an awkward smile, not the smile she was hoping for.

“This is gonna be so awkward’, she thought to herself. The preliminary greetings and pep talk went without much hazard but it got harder than she thought it would be. He seemed like someone physically stuck in a place he did not want to be and drifting in a faraway place in his mind. She blamed herself for that stupid lump in her throat which, she tried to convince herself, had nothing to do with his unmistaken coldness and aloofness. All those questions for which she longed for answers were stuck in that lump and he seemed completely unaffected by this unbearable awkwardness. While nodding and saying yes and no occasionally for her failed attempt to keep the conversation alive he had strangely fixed his gaze at a little girl nearby playing with her doll while her mother was deeply engaged in some gossip sessions with a friend. The Colombo upper class ladies who heavily invested their time on coffee sessions to enlighten themselves with information on who slept with who and named those sessions charity. She tried to ignore this and continue the conversation by ‘filling him in’ with missing details of her life for the past four years but he wasn’t even trying to hide his indifference.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” And the answer came out of her mouth automatically as if it was there the whole time ever ready to be said out loud again. As if four years have not passed by since this familiar conversation happened frequently at various points of their relationship.

“Nothing… Do you want more coffee?”

A familiar answer to a familiar question. How agonizing it was that amidst so much change around them this is the only thing that managed to remain unchanged after so many years! There they were like an old couple, her talking things that mattered to her and him pretending to listen to things he did not want to understand. The only thing that did not follow in the routine was her trying to drag him back to the conversation by mentioning something he loved like his car, his nieces or the little puppy near his workplace but never herself. She cursed herself for all the unwelcomed nostalgia that was crawling back making her feel that familiar sense of worthlessness and insignificance which she tried so hard to keep away at any cost. And he continued to look at the little girl as if a ghost of a memory from their past didn’t just appear and disappear. There was a perplexed depth in his look which was almost offensive to her. She knew he was usually good with kids but this look had a hint of pensiveness to it as if he is trying to remember something that was long lost.

Is it possible that he is dreaming of his own happy family with his beautiful wife and his own kids? Is it possible that the same person, who used to complain about his neighborhood screaming kid all the time is dreaming about having his own kids? The same person who used to apply baby cream for his back pain instead of pain relief balm coz he hated that smell, the same person who spent half his salary decorating his car with weird garnishes is actually ready to take responsibilities she couldn’t even imagine him doing years ago. How the time changes people, she thought to herself with a strange pang in her chest.

The little girl suddenly looked at him and smiled. And then there it was, in his face, the smile that she has been longing to see the whole day. The slow smile that starts from the corner of his mouth and slowly spreads wrinkling his nose and dimpling his cheeks illuminating his whole face as if he was surprised by what he is seeing. She hasn’t even realized until now how much she has missed seeing that smile. ‘The Emily Smile’ she used to call it, coz it resembled her the smile of the protagonist of one of her favourite books, ‘The Emily of the New Moon’.

‘You and your fantasies! It’s time you started living in the real world child’, he used to say every time she mentioned it. Being much of a practical person he was always amused by her always having her head in the clouds. She fondly reminded how he always kindly bore with her random references from fantasy worlds for anything and everything. A rush of affection filled with a sense of familiarity came to her as she gazed into that same smile she fell in love with a long time ago.

“You know you wouldn’t have a cute kid like that right, if you would’ve married me at least you would’ve had a 50% chance”. The words came out of her mouth before she could stop it.

He was taken aback by surprise. “Are you saying that my wife is not pretty, missy?”

She felt the love in ‘wife’ and familiarity in ‘missy’.

“Well actually no, she’s beautiful! Lucky you’re marrying her and I hope to God that your kids get her looks or otherwise they’ll curse you their entire life”

“You and your goddamn mouth! Some things never change I guess”. She knew that even he felt the invisible wall that was there between them was suddenly lifting apart.

‘’Seriously why are you looking at this kid? I know she is cute, but you’re getting creepy, I don’t wanna end up in jail for associating a creep”

“No idiot! I was actually looking at her hairclip’

She looked at the violently purple, butterfly hairclip the kid was wearing that she hasn’t noticed before. It seemed like a very ordinary hairclip but there was some strange familiarity there she couldn’t seem to recall.

“Ok that’s random! Why would you look at her hairclip”? She asked genuinely perplexed.

“What? You had the exact same hairclip those days! You can’t remember……?” He asked incredulously.

She almost slipped her coffee. “I had’??

“Yes!! Remember that day we sneaked into Sydney Park and ditched our parents? Our first unofficial date? You were wearing something exactly like this!”

And then she remembered. Like a flash across a rainless sky it came to her mind. She has had lost all her bobby pins as usual and her mother was being frantic with her for getting late. She had to decide quickly whether to go without any pins and let her crazily stubborn hair, coupled with persistent bangs she had get done just to see him, cover her whole face making her look like a clown at a Halloween Party or to go with the only remaining butterfly hairclip which did not in the slightest way matched with the black and white dress she was wearing making her look weird as if a giant purple butterfly landed on her head. She chose weird. She always chose weird. She fondly reminded of her weird 18 years self. But not even in her wildest imagination she would have guessed that he would remember this little detail after eight years when she, a class one memory hoarder, couldn’t even recall it. She didn’t know how to react to it. She didn’t know whether even he understood the impact this moment was having on her.

“I thought it looked ridiculous but weirdly beautiful with your black and white dress” He mumbled softly and looked directly into her eyes. She felt the genuine affection inside them.

“Like you always have been, so out of the place but very beautiful……. Inside and out. Haven’t I told you this before…?”

Tears filled her eyes and words stuck in her mouth.

“No I don’t think you have”

Then he reached for her hand. There was a strong tenderness and firmness in his touch. It was not romantic as used to be once upon a time, but she felt an assuring comfort and a familiarity in that touch that she has not felt in so long.

‘’I’m sorry for everything.” He was saying and she wanted him to stop. She wanted to tell so many things but nothing came out. She wanted to apologize too, even though she didn’t even know why. She wanted to tell him that there’s nothing to apologize and that she is grateful to him for everything he has done for her, that she never regretted there time together. Those sleepless nights, heartbroken outbursts, self-questioning, yearning for closure suddenly seemed like things that happened in a parallel universe.

“I’m sorry too” she managed to whisper.

The waitress came to collect their left overs as if to remind them that the world didn’t freeze for them, that there existed a real world where mundane things like cleaning leftovers mattered.

Things went smoothly after that. They talked about all the missing years in their lives the laughter, heartbreaks, setbacks and achievements but never their time together as lovers. She realized, and pretty sure that he felt the same, that there time together belonged to another world and there was no turning back. Its rose hued hopes, bubbly dreams of future, inevitable defeats that naïve young lovers like them could not win over must be kept intact in that world where they belonged. She was glad that she rediscovered the same comfort she felt in him as a friend, as a brother long before they started dating. It was like coming to a familiar place after a tiresome journey. He was like a cozy cottage that she would find shelter during a windy storm. Less than a home but more than a completely strange place. And she was happy about it.

That night she took out all the foreign train tickets that he had given her coz she liked their colours, the letters she wrote for him for so many years but never sent and threw them all away. And then she cried like she hasn’t done in so many years. She could not express the peace of mind she felt afterwards. While going into a trouble less sleep that night, she recalled how amazing it is that someone can love you in their own way even though it might not fit any of the definitions the other person might have about love. How paradoxical it is that, in a world where, human bonds are impacted by worldly aspirations and differences that love alone could never win. Yet how humane and wonderful it is to know that against all the reasons, against all the expectations and all the endings how at one point of time two people can be together and beat all the odds. And how a little thing like a hairclip could make sense out of these complex feelings and have a ripple effect on the rest of your life. And for her, that was closure and that was more than she could ever ask for.