Manan is sitting in the cafe, as usual, writing his romance novel. There is the cliche corner table, with 7-8 finished coffee mugs, his Macbook, and few pages of the drafts he wrote with a full coffee mug staining over them, a notebook, and few sticky notes.

His facial expressions, changing every moment, every second, his fingers typing, rewriting the drafts, the scenes, creating the moments in his head, his words, all out on the white digital screen, incessant typing, with his regular hand over the mouth, reading his script in awe and trying to feel, and put more emotions to the story, dissatisfied, fingers moving again and again.

The cafe is lit up with the mood lightening, white walls, beautiful chairs, and round white tables, with peach-orange cushions. The vibe is filled with melodious beautiful musical tunes.

He has been writing his romance fiction for a few months now.

Authors are weird people, they see so much, have a knack for all the plot-lines, have all the fantasies of the world, have power almost like a god to create something completely extraordinary, just with their imagination and words and yet live a life incomplete!

How they are able to explain it to people that magic exists and are completely devoid of the same in their real life. Weirdos indeed, Manan was one of them.

He is not in his zone these days, reading his latest draft with anguish over his face with shrunk forehead and eyes, reading line after line. He is looking for some inspiration around and sees a girl sitting three tables across. She is new here, he takes a good look around and finds same old faces, except her!

He is intrigued, she waits for a couple of minutes, talking to her own self, looking at the menu hungry, and changing her thoughts, often! A few more minutes and looking at the pastry at the other side of the table.

She is dressed in beautiful lavender, such a pretty face. Here comes the guy she has been waiting for, she is excited and they both are talking. She finally orders her pastry she has been dying to eat. Manan looks and smiles resumes his writing again.

NEXT DAY

Manan is as usual wearing his glasses and reading his draft he wrote yesterday and finds her sitting again, but with a new guy. He keeps looking at the conversation going and see both of them leave.

Until she becomes a usual face in the cafe, with a new guy each day. Probably he is thinking of his next novel idea right now, Match made in heaven and smiles to himself.

She comes to the cafe in the evening at around 5 and the guy is always late, she waits for the guy to arrive, resisting the temptation to order, when the guy is here, she is always disappointed, the guys are staring at all the wrong places, making all the self-obsessive conversations, saying all the weird things, making her uncomfortable. Poor Girl!

All of this going on and about for months and all the cheeriness in her is drained. Manan wonders when will she finally find her person feeling pity for her.

She is wearing a white dress today, her beautiful hair across her face paired with the antique earrings, her eyes believe in magic, her heart wants more, but she has already given up, he wonders if it is going to be the last date she is going to have?

She is waiting to order her favorite pastry she orders every time she is here.

It has been an hour she is waiting for another pathetic guy, to walk over to her and give her another evening of disappointed events and moments, that she will probably forget, what a waste of such a beautiful spirit, aura, music, such a beautiful soul, and this place?

She notices Manan looking at her, she tries not to look at Manan but likes secretly being admired not in a weird way.

So Manan, after a little hesitation, walks upto her.

“Hi” he says nervously.

“Hi” she looks up at Manan with her big black eyes.

“I am Manan, I am an author, I am a regular here, was just working on my novel.”

“Okay,” she looks up at Manan and smiles.

“If you don’t mind, I was just wondering, why going through all this ordeal? I know you have been meeting a lot of people, probably due to the marriage thing.”

“Yeah” she speaks up delighted and a little sad at the same time.

“Why don’t you fall in love, than going through all this?”

“There needs to be someone to fall in love with,” she says hoping someone would come along and connect with her soul instead.

“You know, stop looking for the person, instead let the person find you…in emotions and feelings there is nothing logical, there is everything magical. Let the magic happen to you.”

She looks at Manan mesmerized.

“Priti” she greets Manan with her smile.

“So guess I’ll see you around” Manan says looking deep into her eyes.

Manan walks away to his table and suddenly stops to look behind and finds Priti staring at him and she is smiling. He walks up to her, holds out his hand. Priti reaches out to hold him and they walk out of the cafe together.