Love Bites

Lego

2.

Lilly was not willing to go out to dinner that night. She looked at herself in the mirror with a forlorn expression. The colourful flowers and frills on her dress failed to cheer her up. They were going to that boy's house. That bad boy. She didn't want to go. But a tantrum had only resulted in further spoilage of her already bad mood.

As they stood in front of their new neighbors' house, Lilly clutched on tightly to Daddy's leg, burying her face in his trousers.

She did not even want to see the bad boy's face. The front door swung open when Daddy rung the doorbell. The boy's Daddy greeted them and the Mommies hugged. But Lilly's attention was somewhere else. Her eyes were fixed on the little boy, clutching on to his father exactly the same way she was.

When he saw her looking at him, he quickly let go and ran away inside.

Out in the living room, the parents were occupied with pointless gossip on pointless topics. The boy had a big brother just like Lilly's big sister, and they had become friends too. The boy's mother was serving something on a tray. Lilly had been placed in the boy's room, where she was expected to play with him. She sat on the floor, peering at everything around her. Four years in this world had been enough to teach her to stay away from bad people.

A little farther, the boy, lost in his own world, had his back turned to her. He was busy making a crayon drawing.

The room they were in was still unfinished. All the furniture had not been unpacked, and there was no paint on the walls. The most significant thing in it was a low table, on top of which were all sorts of toys, coloring books, crayons and other such stuff, haphazardly arranged. 

Lilly advanced towards that table. After trying to chew a crayon but failing, she picked up a lose sheet of paper and started to fold it.

A tap on the shoulder interrupted her.

The boy was standing right in front of her, with a wide, toothy grin on his face.The moment she saw him so close to her, Lilly started to cry. The grin disappeared from the boy's face, replaced by a scared look, as he hastily shoved a drawing book in her hands.

Lilly stopped sniffing and looked at it. On it, written in big, shaky, colourful letters, were two words:

SORRY         - Ben

With a huge smiley face at the end.

Lilly simply looked at it for sometime without doing anything. She sniffed again, and Ben almost mistook her silence for rejection. But just when he was about to retreat, Lilly tore the paper off the book. She searched for a while, found a stray crayon lying around and picked it up. With fingers as shaky as Ben's, she sketched out a smiley face on the opposite side of the paper, and handed it back to him.

He stared at her unblinkingly. She smiled.

They spent the rest of the evening building the biggest Lego house Lilly had ever seen.

3.

One argument. And everything was ruined. Forever.

It was the night before Lilly's seventh birthday. She was teaching Ben how to make paper airplanes. Ever since the evening at his house three years ago, folding paper had grown into a hobby of hers, and she found herself becoming extremely good at it. Ben, however, was a disaster. Every time, he ended up tearing the paper and earned a blow on his head from Lilly. In return, he chased her around his front yard, and they ended up on the ground, wrestling and tickling each other, their high-pitched laughter echoing through the walls of their tiny world.