Blondes and butterflies

She looks at me out of the side of her eye, sneaking a glance. As she looks out of the window, I inconspicuously scan her face and commit it to memory. A moment later, she’s drifted off allowing me to fixate on the colour of her eyes, it seems to change with the light. She has her hair pulled back showing off a pair of eyes that have me itching to get a third look. I am not a fan of blondes but this girl knows her selling point and knows how to accentuate it – I am a guy, but I know the effect of eyeshadow and mascara.  I definitely would not mind getting a treat from her goody bag, yes I said goody bag! But, it’s not the type of goodies you’re thinking about.

I wonder if she even knows that I am looking at her, who even cares. I get back to composing a killer tweet and a voice snaps me back.

“Hey, I saw you.” With disbelief etched on my face, I turn and she’s still looking at me

“It’s rude to stare you know,” she snarls.

I am tempted to say something sarcastic so I tell her that my friend Pablo Mejia Herera said, “If you see a beautiful woman but you don’t stare, whistle or ogle to show appreciation of her physical beauty, then that is politically incorrect.” She consequently asks If Pablo is Latin American, I confirm by telling her that he’s Colombian.

“No surprises there, those Spanish speakers are lovers of women,” she says with a tinge of aggression in her voice.

I dare her to defend her view point, “You say it like it’s a bad thing?” Baiting her like she’s a fish and my words are a juicy worm.

She breathes fire in my face, “Did you notice that I said women, instead of a woman?”

She doesn’t need to explain any further. I already know what she thinks about men. Her words carry no trust in the male species at all, just my luck another damaged one, I say to myself. I always meet the ones who have lost trust in men or are so insecure that it’s annoying. The type of girls who paint you as a douche bag before you’ve even said a word to them, it’s sad:  but, it’s a cold world out here.

She pokes and digs for information. She asks, “So why are you so shy, why you so timid? You sat next to me for an hour and haven’t said a word.”

I look at her and just smile, a Muslim girl said that to me once. She was just as pretty and inviting as she is, it’s like déjà vu. Words fail me. I can’t seem to string enough together to form a response. She has me by the collar of my shirt.

“It’s because I am white isn’t it? You’d think after 23 years we would all get along.”

I’ve had enough of her chatty mouth, no matter how juicy her lips look and regardless of how much I am tempted to taste them. She’s pushed me just a bit too far. I strike back with the truth.

“You weren’t doing any talking either. I don’t trust people, especially new people. I don’t trust you, for all I know you could be a terrorist.”

She seems taken back, a little flustered and for just a second she seems not to know what to say next. Have I shut her up? She dashes my hopes by firing off another chatty remark. “Don’t be melodramatic, I just want to talk.”

I smile at her, giving her my full attention. I tell her in a non-authoritative tone, “Go ahead, and talk. I. Am. Listening.”

She has some nerve this chick, personally I always look at white girls like scared little Barbie dolls. Especially the Namibian ones, comfortable in what they grew up with; looking like an endangered species the minute a black guy glances at them. But maybe I am being judgemental, what would she think if she could read my mind, would she label me as a racist? Then out of the blue she just hits me with a sledgehammer.

“Why are you so scared? Are you afraid that I won’t like you back like the princess of the far away kingdom?”

I am this close to screaming, “Chick! Are you mad?” But reality forces me to be a bit more logical.

She doesn’t know me, how on earth did she know that the princess of the far away kingdom was the object of my affections, affection that she did not reciprocate on the same level. My mind ponders deeply. I start running from her green eyes, afraid to look into them now that they seem to look straight into me, revealing all my secrets. Before I could regroup, she had me on the run again

“Or maybe you’re scared that you are going to be a jerk and run from me like you did to Lucia and Josie?”

At this point, I am like, “What the fuck?” But, the words never leave my throat. How does she know about this? Which alien race sent her? It must have been Lionel Messi; I always knew that he was the leader of the alien invasion.

She must be an extra terrestrial, because she is spilling my deepest darkest secrets like she can read my mind, she is doing things that normal humans can’t do.

I am scared now, “I don’t know what or who you are but you don’t scare me.”

She replies “Stop being so afraid, running from every woman who gets close to you. We won’t hurt you, even though you reject us like we are donated organs.”

I retaliate because she’s treading on shaky ground and hitting a little too close to home. “You have some nerve, you don’t know how losing her affected me.”

Before I could build up steam, she shot me down faster than a sniper. “I didn’t even mention her, you need to stop dragging your past around with you. It’s unattractive.”

At this point I am screwed, she has my number. She knows every woman I have wronged and the women who have wronged me. Either I am in the matrix or I am being punked, but I try to listen to what she says. She speaks so seductively though, how I am still holding on to my self control is amazing.

“Love is beautiful. But you need to leave the past behind, stop comparing us to her. If you don’t her eyes will haunt you forever.” I want to tell this chick that I created the ghost that haunts me and I can kill it just as fast. But chick is on a roll.

“You’re such a sweet, charming and intelligent man. But, so damaged, open up!”

She pauses, long enough for me to listen but not long enough for me to say something. “Stop breaking hearts that shit isn’t cool, you can’t keep doing that and you know it.”

I jump to my own defence. “I apologized to those I hurt. You know that.” Awkward silence, it hangs in the air like her perfume, a scent that tickles my nostrils.

“A million apologies will never erase what you did, it helps us move on, but that shit you did hurts us forever”.

I can’t help but slide in a sarcastic jab. “Who is bitter and living in the past now?”

But, chick has the evasiveness of a boxer. “Everyone has their demons, we just don’t drag them around like you do.”

She looks at me, with her piercing green eyes cutting through all my pathetic bullshit excuses. “You know that if you want an updated version of a program on a computer, you have to uninstall the old one first right?” She whispered, but her fierce show of courage reminds me of the character Dynaeres Targaryen (Khaleesi) from Game of thrones.

She continues. “You can’t save two files in the same folder with the same name, the computer will always ask you to replace the original file or save the new file as file(1).”

She rambles on, knowing full well that I am tech savvy enough to understand and possess enough common sense to interpret her subliminal message. She’s known me for all 30 minutes and she’s already starting to speak in circles like I do.

“Are you trying to tell me something about moving on?” I ask her as I attempt to stem the tide. She smiles. She dares to flash that smile that is slowly starting to do things to me.

“Not moving on, but letting go. Confining the past to the past.” She says, clearly being smug and feeling herself, her words exude the swagger of a woman who knows she has a man running in circles. I concede that I am in deep trouble, blondylocks can tear me apart without lifting a nail.

In all of 30 minutes that this conversation has flowed, I still don’t know how this chick knew all of this about me. Maybe I am dreaming? Dreaming, but how? It all seems so fucking real.

“You need to love, it’s great that you have so much faith. Fear god and your soul mate will find no reason to fear you. She will see all the reasons to love you.” She says.

To me, it sounds like some born-again Christian Church nonsense, rehearsed and regurgitated. But this chick has done a number on me and that much I respect, so I can’t ignore what she has just said.

Just at that moment I feel my head move suddenly, my neck feels sore as my eyes start opening slowly. I slide and creep out of sleep, still drunk from the bliss of my 30 minute nap.  Eventually I am conscious and aware, I finally force my eyes open and realize that all of this happened in a day dream.

I had fallen asleep and drifted so far into fantasy that it morphed into reality momentarily. The blond girl seated next to me is sleeping with her head against the window, was it all a dream? I ask myself this question as I slide my earphones in and play the song ‘Give me love’ by Ed Sheeran, his suicide music always calms me down. His music quells the confusion, but a warm fuzzy feeling still fills me like a sugar rush, it can’t be.  The feeling is all too familiar, slightly nauseating and disorientating, it feels like butterflies. After this weird day dream that borders on something out of an episode of the Sci-fi series Fringe, I am never falling asleep on the bus again.