The Ordinary Girl

" She's just an ordinary girl", his friend exclaimed. "Why are you even thinking about her? We are on a holiday and you have better things to focus on.."

He heard him alright. After all, this was his best friend, giving him advice to stop thinking and start acting. But in his favourite club as the music started to get louder, he started  to get claustrophobic. Something wasn't making sense here. He felt lost in the crowd, so he finally stepped out and started walking towards the beach, his only getaway for now. He would sit there for a while, to sort the thoughts in his head. To find the answer to the question his friend kept asking him that evening. Why was he thinking about her?

After all she was just a simple girl. Someone he'd not known for too long. She was what someone would call a Plain-Jane. A girl who had few colors in her closet and wore no make-up except for the kohl in her eyes that brought out their hazel color. She took no effort to look pretty and made no attempt to draw attention. And yet when she walked into the room, her presence would bring a glow in there. A feeling of warmth, like he was at home, a home he dearly missed. Her perfume reminded him of the smell of the flowers that his mother would bring home after a hard days work. 

Her childlike laughter was so real, unlike those of the women he met on lonelier nights on boring dates. Her work of art was a reflection of her warm persona. The beautiful pastels, the bold brush strokes brought life into the portraits she did. That's how it was so easy for her to impress him. 

So that evening when he asked her out, she politely declined and only after much insistence agreed to. That evening and many more that he spent with her were magical. One of those quiet evenings, as she handed him an early birthday gift. She asked him to open it only later, on his birthday. And on that same night she told him she had to leave. Go back home. She gave him no choice but to let go.

So here he was on the eve of a new year of his life, celebrating with friends yet unhappy. Where was this feeling coming from? Why was he looking for her in the crowd at that club? 

He decided to drive home, to open the present she had got him. As he tore open the paper, he found a small wooden framed portrait of himself standing at the porch of her home. A scene she had captured on canvas, of the day he came home the first time. 

That's when he realized that to the world she may have been an ordinary girl. But to him ordinary was special.