Love In the Library

She scanned the bowed heads along the rows of seats in the library till she came to the one she was looking for. The seat next to the dozing head was occupied by a bag so she sat on the only other one available, with her back facing his. She clicked a photo of him as a memento and on second thought sent it. 

They rarely looked the same way, always a step late to get to the other, slipping away to other people who would never be enough. 

A couple minutes later her phone buzzed with a message asking her where she was. She touched him on the right shoulder before appearing on his left.

"Why didn't you sit here?" He asked, placing the bag on the floor "And I don't like that photo," he added.

"I do," she claimed, for all the ways he managed to confuse her on a daily, she deserved one little victory at least. She wondered why she didn't recognize his bag, she never missed it in the crowded hallways, so this had to be new. 

She took a round of the library looking for something to read, although she struggled enough to read him as it is. She paused and looked to where he was seated, knowing she'd catch him looking her, incomprehensible as always. And over the neatly arranged books in the rack in front of her, she did, just before he ducked to the flurry of words he held in his hands, that were orderly just a moment ago. She took the seat he had saved, next to his stubborn head that didn't jerk up to smile at her like she wanted it to. 

As the powerful droplets of the librarian hushing the students decimated everyone in its path, she turned to look at him. Her arms could ache and her hands could hurt all they want but they wouldn't reach him, not the way she wanted to.

But he was in arms length for her to play him that song, that one song that he always managed to play in her head. She hated how he could do that every time, but today he would sit through the melody she's grown to hate endearingly. She pretended to knock on his shoulder and offered him a pair of her earphones and started playing the song. She felt it leave her ear, and looked down to retrieve it when she noticed how close he was. She met his eyes as he placed the earphone in the ear further away, apparently having done the same to himself. She found herself leaning towards him as he moved his chair closer, her tangled up earphones cupid for once. 

They sat there, as the song played on deaf ears, hearing nothing, nothing except their beating hearts- sappy I know, but haven't you been in love? She noticed how her earphones had long fallen out of his ear when the song stopped, the confusing idiot's eyes never having left hers till she looked at him. That's all it took for their heads to snap forward, to avert their eyes from the one person they always searched for in a crowd. 

She didn't know why she had to look away, it's probably the same thing that kept her from saying that she was jealous of that girl he always spoke to, in need of his touch, and in love with everything about him. 

Her fingers tapped the desk, to the beat his restless heels fidgeted against the wooden floors. Even in silence they seemed to find each other's rhythm, but the comfortable silence that filled the space between them spoke of the unsaid. About how she used every excuse to touch his arm and how each time it made him swoon a little. 

Their knees knocked against each other under the desk and her eyes strained against her will to not look at him, and she knew she had to tell him. She had to tell him that the glances she stole would never rival drowning in his eyes and that their brushing fingertips would never heal the need to hold him, but she couldn't say that here, not under the watchful eyes of the librarian, who could even breathe fire to guard the quiet of the library.

'Coffee?' She wrote on a sticky note, and placed it on his hand, to make up for the drink she owed him for over a week and the words she's owed him for even longer. 

'Sure' she saw him write in reply before he offered it to her. 

She pointed to her cheek in a tease before starting to pack her books. But when she looked up to the clock on the wall, she felt a warm hand through paper on her cheek. She knew his eyes had clasped onto hers the way she liked them without having to look. Even though they laughed it off like it didn't send electricity from the tips of their toes till the ends of their hair, she saw him tuck the fallen post-it note into his wallet.