Romantic Friday Writers Challenge #45 : Oh how I hate my beautiful friend!

It’s time to go back to RFW for the fortnightly challenge.  You can read more about that here.  Membership isn’t a requirement for participation, so do go over and see if you want to give it a shot. 

If I weighed up all the prose and poetry that I have written in word counts, then I have probably written more fiction than poetry.  But I have never put any fiction on this blog, how odd is that?  Anyways, this challenge felt like the perfect opportunity, so I am heading back to RFW with a flash and not a rhyme this time. What do you think? Let me know.

 

Myra isn’t beautiful in the conventional sense, she doesn’t fit the mould.  Her real beauty lies in things no-one notices, in the shape of her ears, for instance, behind which she tucks in her hair with a two-fingered movement, breathtaking in its grace.  In the slant of her collarbones, from where her honey warm skin falls away in the most absurdly tender plane.  And her eyes, those great wide hazel eyes with their thick fringe of lashes.  Looking as though she can look right through me, but of course she can’t.  Above all, her beauty lies in her unaffected ignorance of her own charm.

We met at the clinic, she came in with Widget, an absurd name I had thought, for such a large dog.  Widget was the last patient, and afterwards we got chatting and I was surprised how easily we both slipped into this friendship. She was lonely, and I was new here, so a few coffees and walks later, I felt I had known her all my life. 

Things transformed when Ravi came.  I had never believed in this love-at-first-sight caper till then, I have had to change my mind since. I sat there that evening in agony, desperate, maddened with the unbearable turmoil in my heart, but he and Myra seemed to have a sizzling chemistry that left me tongue tied.  They kept the conversation going, I remained a bystander.  I willed Myra to sense my feelings, but she sat through it all, unseeing.

“Why are you so quiet, Babs?” she had ventured once. 

“Oh, nothing, just a headache,” I had surprised myself with the steadiness of my voice.

That has become the pattern of our evenings at the cafe now, their attention fixed on each other, and me nursing my misery beside them, the evenings peppered with meaningless small talk, punctuated with anguish.  Have you helplessly watched the man you love slowly fall in love with someone sitting next to you?  Oh, how I hate my beautiful friend!

No, I don’t.  Most times I just feel wrung out with love – for Ravi, for Myra.  I had thought that people like her have keener perceptions, an evolved understanding way beyond physical senses.  Another one busted.  It is not her fault that she does not fit the mould.  Not her fault that those exquisite hazel eyes are sightless.  That they cannot see through me.

WC - 400

FCA