Love Is...

1. A Compulsion

"I just got highly drunk and not at all stupid," I corrected her as I remembered the night that was so unclear in my own memories.

"But, you don't remember that," she argued, looking at me with her huge, hopeful eyes.

I rolled my eyes at her while a smile tugged at my lips, and grabbed the rubber band that was placed on my table to tie my brown bangs in a bun.

"My goodness! How gross can you be, Lia?" My head snapped towards Steph as she left her seat and started moving towards me.

"What?" I asked in complete confusion.

Ignoring my question, she came and stood by my seat. Suddenly, she grabbed my hands and started looking at them from every angle possible, while what I did was stare at her with complete confusion. Once she was done with her investigation, she looked at me in horror and asked, "Since when have you have not removed your body hair?"

Blood rushed to my cheeks as I removed her hold from my hands and tried to hide them behind my back. As quickly as I could, I stood up from my seat and grabbed my coat that was placed on the back rest of my seat. I wore it, effectively covering my naked three fourth arms from human eyes under my formal coat. I hugged the coat once it was on my body, sat back in my seat and narrowed my eyes at her. "I don't know what you're talking about." I tried to play the fool, even though, I perfectly knew what she was talking about.

My best friend of five years, Stephanie, was very particular about each and every thing that was even minutely related to beauty. It didn't help that she wrote the article about all the Beauty Tips and stuff here, in 'We Are the Divas'.

An extra hair in my eyebrow and she goes all Ninja on me. She is dangerous.

She looked at me with disbelief and said, "Just tell me, since when have you not waxed?"

"A week," I mumbled, but she clearly didn't believe me. "Two?" Still, she didn't believe me and I caved in. "Okay. Seven weeks. That's it."

Her eyes widened even more dramatically, if that was even possible and she screeched, "How could you?" 

"I didn't have the time." I tried to reason in a meek voice.

"You didn't have the time?" she asked with disbelief clear in her voice and her face. "What were you so busy doing?" She challenged me and my lack of response made her continue, "Let me guess. You must be busy hating love."

I was at a lack of response and just squirmed deeper in my seat while giving her my puppy eyes look. It always worked on her.

This time too, it did.

She threw her hands in the air and took deep breaths in order to calm herself down. She looked back at me and said, "You do now that men do take notice of hair on women's body, right?" She was getting in the form of her Beautician mode and I was least interested in facing her in my situation.

"Well, yes, but thankfully, I don't have to meet any men today." I blew out a breath of relief at the end, to make her believe that I was very well in verse with her teachings, when in fact, I was far from it.

She caught my sarcasm and narrowed her eyes at me. "You never know when you'd collide with a hot guy and that hair on your arms is just making you look like a bear." She pointed towards my sleeve covered arms.

I huffed and shot her a sarcastic smile. "Thank you very much for the much needed confidence boost, Steph."

Just as she opened her mouth to retort, my intercom rang and I mentally thanked whoever was calling me and saving me from Ninja Steph. Quite happily, I picked up the phone and answered, "Yes, Tori?"