The Meeting: So how did you two meet?

It was at the 7-11 near the bus station where I usually rode home after my classes. He approached me, asked me something, I'd forgotten what, and that's when we stopped being strangers from each other. That's when I met my future. Or at least, the future I wanted, even if for just a while.

We clicked right away. Bypassing the perfunctory getting-to-know-each-other stage, we talked about a lot of stuff-- complex and mundane things alike. We talked not to pass the time -- neither was in hurry, we have all the time in the world-- but because it felt like the most normal thing to do, like scratching an itch that won't go-- you just have to do it. Not bad for two people who had just met at a 24-hour convenience store and had a mutual liking to the classic hotdog sandwich. Perhaps I liked it more or maybe I was starving for hotdog, I cannot recall which, so when I was done talking and eating and drinking, he bought me another hotdog sandwich and a medium Gulp and we resumed our conversation. That day we first met, I thought it was just another day. Same old crappy same old. We didn't even know where the other lives or comes from, but he did get my mobile number right before we parted, though he never texted me that night so I thought it was just another day. A nice talk with a guy I met at the Sev whom I might never see again. So when our classes formally started, which was the day after we met, that's when we learned we were both nursing students & belonged to the same block-- the same classes, same hospital assignments. How serendipitous.

But as any budding relationships go, whether intimate or simply platonic, we started to getting to know each other, though belatedly, and he had his computer games and gadgets, I had my books and music and we learned that we shared nothing in common. Nothing at all except our conversations. Yes, we talked about anything under the sun, under the moon, even. Those times when we were on night shift and the rest of our duty mates are either asleep or nodding off to sleep-- the easy humdrum life of a student nurse assigned in a private hospital with the empty beds.

So with our stark differences, what is keeping us from walking away from each other while bypassing the rules of attraction? After five summers, he gave me the answer because it was only at this time that I asked him that question. This is what he said, Because we have this certain kind of connection, almost like an invisible, elastic thread binding us. We may drift apart from each other but however sooner than we would like to, the thread shrinks back to its original length, that being the length of the distance between two bodies wrapped around each other it almost looks like a fusion.

I can see the thread is shrinking back now, I murmured. Yes, he said. It felt like we were at that Sev store all over again. Only, our bodies resumed the talking.

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