Heart Crossings(Part 1)

They were sitting in the train, the announcement of an arriving station ocassionally breaking the prevailing silence. She was looking at him, her eyes filled with a million questions, her heart wishing he would ask her to stay. He was staring out of the window at the empty barren landscape, knowing that what he had done was irreversible, he had just let her go. The announcement of her station had been made, she stood up, straightening her coat as she said,"well then this is goodbye I guess, Ashu ..." lingering on every word,tears welling up, in anticipation of something she knew would never come. "Yeah, I guess," he said, wanting to hold on to her forever, realising he was killing a part of himself in the process of letting go.

Ashish and Krittika had first met at a blood donation camp, which Ashish and his friends were organising. Krittika had come to donate blood, just to prove a point to Sanjay, her brother that she could stand up to her principles, even though she was mortally scared of injections and needles. She had walked up to Ashish at the registration and said"Hey, I'd like to donate blood, can I have a form please?" Ashish gave her a form without even looking up and said,"fill it, go to the doc and then take a token if she says your ok." Krittika nodded and went about with the formalities. As soon as she was deemed fit, she was escorted to the assistant who would draw her blood, tears welling up at the sight of a huge needle. Ashish was making his rounds, distributing an energy drinks as he stopped near Krittika. the girl was already crying. "Silly girl, she's going to chicken out," he thought as he said,"hey its ok, you don't have to do it, if you don't want to." Krittika, by now was frantic and panic striken"Uhh, no my brother, he said I couldn't do it, I just want to prove I'm not a coward." Ashish started laughing, which had obviously offended Krittika enough to make her stop crying. "Why the hell do you guys find it funny? Being scared is a perfectly natural condition. Its that I'm scared of smaller, things and, you guys being the alpha males are fearless right? You find it amusing that someone actually has the audacity to get rid of their fears, specially if its a girl. You need us lesser mortals and our fear to torment, right?" she said, stopping her outburst finally to catch her breath, when she realised in horror that everybody was looking at her in stunned silence. "I uh... I'm sorry" she said, in embarrasment as she started running. Ashish, still stunned was looking at the direction where she took off, as Neha came and asked him, "what was that all about?" he shrugged his shouulders in reply.

Two months later, Ashish still wondered about that girl in the blood donation camp. It was Neha's birthday the next day and all of them had planned a surprise party. He had gone to the mall to buy her a gift, when he saw her, at the counter of a shop that sold kids accesories and clothes, playing with a baby. On impulse, he waled into the shop and said"Excuse me, do you have anything for alpha males who need lesser mortals to torment?" She looked at him, her eyes wide and thought for a while before she said"Look I already said I'm sorry, I didn't have to say that. That was the needle-phobic me speaking." "Do you work here?" he said, looking around. "I don't think I have to answer that" she said putting on a straight face. "Come on, lets not get onto a bad start! I'm Ashish by the way.""Krittika"."Nice name, Krittika. By the way, let me buy you a coffee and you can curse this alpha male all you want for not letting you get over your fear ", he said looking at her. She was looking at with a raised eyebrow and said"I don't think so". "Owwwh come on, its just coffee, in the same mall, just 10 minutes, so I can apologise properly, you can chuck the coffee on me if you think I'm an asshole," he said earnestly. She wanted to smile, but didn't want him to know that she was intrested,"Ok, but just 10 minutes". She said as she asked someone to cover for her. (To be continued....)

P.S. This is my first attempt at fiction, so please don't mind if its too long....