Almost The Perfect Love Story

~Was bored one evening~

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There are stories about life, there are stories about love and there are stories about the various interactions of the people in this world. There are also stories about other things but this isn’t one of those, as the title suggests this is a story about love in the city, it can be any city of your choosing but you’ll have to make sure that your fantasy city includes black cabs.
In this city there is an old Georgian style building, four stories tall with one apartment on each floor, and as you can imagine the rent in this part of the city is not cheap.
In apartment 2 it is dark because heavy curtains have been drawn across the window shutting out the hustle and bustle of the outside world.
Above in apartment 3 linen Roman blinds allowed the morning light to creep softly into the room as the fresh day dawns.
In 2 the solitude is broken by the sound of an exuberant talk radio host, the kind of guy that makes you wish that your speakers would short circuit, whilst from the floor above there filtered down the sound of romance and the music of passion.
Slowly he awakens, the bed is his haven, his own little cave of serenity, his bed is his nest. Morning robs him of his dreams and reality reminds him that he has work looming on the horizon that is the rising day. Throwing back the duvet he rises groggily from the bed and he ambles to the window to draw back the curtains and allow daytime to flood into apartment 2.
She is curled in the foetal position, the morning light caresses the exposed flesh of her shoulder and gently warms her skin, she moans softly as waking comes over her. There is a scent of Jasmine in apartment 3 the air as she flicks back the lilac and green pastel sheets, with an absence of haste she rolls up the blinds to peer out into the city streets. She smiles as the love song on her radio reaches a beautiful flutter that makes the world beyond feel just that little bit better.
As he showers he thinks about a novel that he is keen to read but has found the time stolen from him by his work.
She hums softly to herself as she shaves her legs, she is thinking about an old romance that she once read about love and impossible dreams. It occurs to her that she is caught in some strange loop of impossibility where she lives in a city of over ten million people and yet she cannot find true love.
As he brushes his teeth he remembers the pain of the loneliness of his life, it has been months yet still the slightest thing will bring back the feelings of despair for the love that lost him. He wishes that he could meet someone and move on with his life, that perfect someone with a quirky sense of humour and the tender heart who could make him whole.
She runs a brush through her hair whilst thinking about the infinite possibilities afforded to six billion people on a world orbiting a nondescript star in an outer spiral arm of the galaxy.
Whilst he shaves he wonders whether or not he will ever again be capable of feeling love, of being consumed in that fire of passion that once burned deep inside his soul. He steps back from the chasm in his heart and returns to his bedroom where he flicks idly through the clothes in his wardrobe.
In the back of her mind she has the image of a tall brown haired and blue eyed man with a taste for the classics and a smile of a true romantic. She just wants a man whom she can fall into his arms and know immediately that the world is an alright kind of place.
He gives himself a wry smile in the mirror as he knots his tie, he knows that somewhere out there is that tender woman with whom he will feel whole.
She sighs as she inspects her clothes in the mirror.
He sighs as he straightens the lapels of his jacket.
She moves to her kitchen for some juice and a scone, she turns on the television to allow breakfast tv to drone in the background. Sometimes she wishes that she had never moved down from the coast, that life up there had seemed a little simpler and moved at an acceptable pace.
He makes a cup of coffee and thinks of the country. He’d left there at a time when he had wanted more from the world, now he isn’t sure that everything he ever really wanted wasn’t back home. He turns on his television and is greeted by the sight of Audrey Hepburn in the rain, he must have forgotten to turn off the DVD payer when he went to bed last night.
She picks up her coat and purse, flicks off the television and heads to the door. She had no sugar for her tea and didn’t feel comfortable with dropping in unannounced on the neighbours whom she had never actually met in the year she had lived here.
He realizes the time, sets his cup in the sink and grabs his case as he heads for the door, his bus is due in a few short minutes. He hears the click of a lady’s heels on the stairs and lets his mind wonder.
As she steps lightly down the stairway she hears a man mumble something about his keys, she recognizes the voice as that of the guy who lives below her. When on the phone that voice would filter up through the floorboards to her, there was a certain gentle authority to it that she had always been attracted to.
He grabs the keys from his desk and dashes back to the doorway, now if he doesn’t rush he will miss the bus and have to pay another extortionate cab fare.
Stepping out onto the crowded street she sees the bus pull up, normally she would have been traveling later but since she couldn’t have her tea she has decided to make an early start. She pays her fare and is shocked to see how crowded the bus is compared to how her normal one half an hour later is, she sits in a free seat and looks longingly at the one place remaining next to her. She hopes as she does every day that her dream man will take that seat, but knows in her heart that it will be one of the thousands of weirdos that congregate in this city.
He hops out the door into the street in time to hear the bus gun its engine. There is one clearly empty seat and he makes a dash as the bus begins to pull off, breaking into a run he stumbles on the kerb and hears a screech of tyres.
She sets her bag on the one empty seat and lets out a sigh as she has reached the decision to move back home. She doesn’t see that behind her the traffic has ground to a halt because a man has fallen off the pavement into the path of a speeding black cab.
If only he had been watching his feet, if only all stories could have a happy ending. And maybe, just maybe if you had been imagining any other city, a city with a distinct absence of black cabs then perhaps this story would have ended differently.
If not for pre-destiny things could have been different, but maybe this is retrospect and the story hasn't yet been written.
This was almost the perfect love story.
Maybe it could be.