Closed Doors and a Guitar Pick - Sen Cal Kapimi

Second Chances are for Losers (2)

-- continued from last chapter

After that showdown, Serkan decided to keep away from Eda, because it was evident she was trying her hardest to erase his presence from her life, and get ahead of this unfortunate phase. He resisted meeting her, stopped frequenting the roads she walked on. He stopped waiting for her to come back to work, even if to meet her friends and he resisted the temptation of asking Ceren if he met her. Ceren had almost stopped coming to the Art Life office since that altercation with Selin. Serkan had forced Selin to take a holiday to her parents because she really needed to get away from the daily reminder of her failure with both Ferit and Serkan. Serkan worked hard and to fill up any free time he might have, he started prepping for running the annual marathon, so that he had no energy left by night and could fall asleep exhausted. Yet he knew that on most week days, Eda worked late at school because her classes got over only by 9 pm. Frequently in the evenings he would time his departure from work so he could check on Eda and make sure she was fine. He made sure she didn't see him and Engin sometimes advised him that he might keep a discreet bodyguard for Eda if he was so concerned.

It was hard, keeping up all the subterfuge, but that was the only way for him to keep her within his care, so he did what he thought was necessary. He sometimes wondered if he had gone back to his old state of before he had met Eda. And he knew, it wasn't possible any longer to be that arrogant, self contained self-satisfied man he had been. Falling in love had changed him so. It brought in him a new appreciation of the people he lived his life alongside, he was far more sensitive and it made him look for meaning and oneness with nature like never before. He no longer looked at stars as the remains of a massive whorl of gas in a numbered quadrant of the sky, dying slowly and emitting energy in bursts. Now he looked upon them as many people do, to find inspiration, to spin stories and to make memories. He was quieter than before, less irritable and more forgiving. He spent a lot of time reading and walking Sirius. He had recently started working on a project of a Science museum and a Planetarium and frequently he held imaginary conversations with Eda , trying to guess what she would have said how would a child look at the night skies.

Every night he looked at the flowering cactus and remembered the woman who had told him to stay off in such poetic terms; but even the plant, which was a symbol of rejecting him, was precious because it came from her, the last in the series of her thoughtful and surprising gifts, he thought ruefully, as he took care of the plant. He read that cactus bloom better with other cactus around them and bought a whole batch of the succulents to surround the cactus gifted by Eda. He learnt to see beyond the thorns and admire the beauty of the most delicate flowers growing in the fortress of the thorns.

He thought about the way things had turned out and knew he had not done the right thing. He frequently remembered how he had suffered when he was sent away from his home after his brother's death, and recognized that he had done the same thing to Eda. There wasn't anything he could do now but at least he knew where he had gone wrong. He knew that even if he had told her the truth of her parents, she would have left him, but if would be an honorable loss. That they were their parents children and his parents were responsible for the death of hers—this was the truth and that truth would make sure they would never be together, but not this way, not hiding things, wounding each other leaving the other to grope her way out of the darkness.

He had planned a cactus nursey in the planetarium complex and was reading up manuals on its cultivation and export from Mexico when he noticed the quote

The cactus is a symbol of impossible love and attraction surviving in the most painful condition. It is a symbol of unconditional love enduring all challenges, loneliness and physical distance.

And he sat up..he read again and again, the same sentence.. Was it possible Eda knew the significance of cactus? She did know an awful lot about plants. But cactus was not really a plant of the Mediterranean, it came from South and Central America, would it be she knew of the symbolism? He thought deeply, and remembered her look and say " For you, always cactus". It seemed very like it. She wouldn't send him the cactus, unless she was trying to tell him something. A small hesitant smile broke his seriousness. What should he do? If it meant that she tried to tell him she believed in their impossible love, what should he do?