The Difficult Man

Déjà vu.

Rain has to witness us every time we happen to meet.

The sloshing downpour dancing over the hood, the wipers working ceaselessly, big water-drops racing down the glass, the purple skyline that seems dangerously beautiful, thick with grey clouds, the swift sound of wheels splashing water around. Always the same.

We never play music.

It's either the comfortable silence that has come naturally from years of familiarity or the sound of our laughter.

Till the air becomes thick with the mentions of bitter memories.

The memories of misunderstandings, harsh words, severe actions, thoughtless outbursts of anger. He always passes them off like a joke, with a forced cheerful smile on his face. I look away, hiding my apologetic eyes that have never met his ever since the moment of realization.

Behind that cheery face, I try finding the lines of a well-hidden grief, a hint of an unforgiving indignant wound. I try recalling the hoarse cracks in his voice when he had beseechingly pleaded to have just an opportunity to say his point, which I had mercilessly denied- Go to hell, you pathetic man!

'You told me to go to hell. I really went to hell. After you left, it was nothing but hell.' he says matter-of-factly, 'Three years... I didn't even know what I had done to make you hate me so much. People told me to try hating you. I couldn't! How could I hate you!'

'I called you horrible names!' I mumble, trying to remind him. My fists automatically curl and my nails dig in the flesh of my palms.

'Nothing can make me hate you.' he says simply with a smile that reaches his eyes, 'Nothing.'

How does he still manage give me a serene smile that I don't even deserve? I never know.

So I hate him. I sting, I taunt, I give indifferent shrugs. Repeatedly.

 In the hope that someday, that serene smile is wiped off his face and he finally snaps at me, stings me waspishly.

He only smiles more at my sharp words.

He smiles till I begin to imagine the pain inflicting power of my uncaring words, till I get tears in my own eyes.

Then with a sudden crestfallen face, he apologizes for making me cry.

'You will never understand what you mean to me.' is all he says, patting on my arm playfully, making me give him a teary sniffly smile in the end.

And really, the point-blank, unforbearing person that I am, I never understand subtle things.

I call him 'The Difficult Man'. The truth is that he is just too simple for the difficult world this is.