Lost In Love |✓

3 | Glance

Look at my new beautiful cover and the fan-freakin-tastic banner above.  -leatherkisses- is an amazingly talented friend that just makes my day everyday. You are the motivation behind this story.

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  प्रभा - jhalak

effulgence | blaze | radiance | shine | glance

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There was the taste of the sea on my lips and the glint of moonlight on my skin, spilling iridescence and white radiance onto rippling crests and fallen waves.

I watched from my spot at the shore of a beach that rolled high and volleyed low between land and sea, as the night stretchered long and far, the sound of laughter on the breeze. I felt the smile, light on my lips from the joy that lingered on the air as I watched these people, these people who I had grown up with and went to school with, these people who would never remember me, burn crimson in the flames light.

There was joy warming the air.

Like clockwork the time had arrived for Jackson High's annual bonfire which always landed in the frigid month of October. The night's wind was chilly, frigid on my skin of goose flesh and raised hairs but the bonfire, a large creation of flame and wood and gasoline, flickered high and burned bright against the waves of Cresely Beach. Shadows of bodies flickered black in the sand, but I wasn't one of them.

There was joy warming the air.

I hated parties. Maybe it was the air, the acrid scent of alcohol lingering on my tongue and coating my skin; maybe it was the noise, a base so heavy it shook and rattled my bones, only a background to the chatter, the laughter, the shouts that spilled lightening in the air, electric; maybe it was the people, the classmates, teenagers, young adults, who I didn't know, didn't care to know, knew anyway, they're touches grazing, eyes lingering, voices bombarding.

Maybe it was me, because I was never a part of anything.

I felt the pull of the waves and sink of the sand beneath my feet, felt my skin grow warm as he came into my peripheral vision.

Who was I kidding? He was always in my sight.

There was joy warming the air.  

Alone. He was alone. It was rare and far in between when you would see Amit Samaroo alone. He was always with someone, doing something, somewhere where the smiles were endless and the jokes were free, but there were moments, if you looked at him close enough, when his gaze would shutter and drift and he would be alone in a room full of people. Sometimes he would wander off, without a word or glance and just be alone and revel in it. A boy not in a crowd indeed.

Amit Samaroo would always be an enigma to me, and as I watched him at the edge of something wide and translucent and something solid and stable I traced the curve of his jaw with my eyes, glided a gaze down his tall frame and imagined the intricate tendrils of life and thought that made up his mind. I wanted to unravel him. I wanted to indulge myself in his presence. I wanted to know him.

With my heart in my throat and the reflection of flames, of the stars and the moon and seas so vast, in my eyes, I watched as he turned his gaze from darken oceans to me with a flicker of his eyes. His eyes shun wonder and midnight browns and my goodness I could hear the sound of Indian poems on the wind and the sigh of words adored echo.

There was joy warming the air.  

I watched as he tilted his head, his brow raised, and stared back into my wide eyes. There were questions on his lips and curiosity in his eyes, for me, for this moment but also for other moments, for all the moments.

He glanced back at the party, flames burning, laughter ringing and his name pelted on the wind, then back at me in my world of shadows and moonlight, and I could see him contemplating, making decisions, until his feet was leaving prints in the sand and my breath was stuttering and his body was warm and real next to mines because he was sitting down next to me, sharing my space.

And it was there that the smile of suns and gold, the smile that touched my heart, graced his lips and turned to me and we sat there, understanding and not understanding, in silence.

There was joy warming the air.