He loved the study. He claimed that he could spend a lifetime there. It was one place he cleaned himself, managed and even arranged.
It had been the same since ages. The Mahogany was consistent through the room. A leather sofa set to the left with a small centre table that often had a book or two on it. The huge collection of books towards the front wall boasted of about a thousand different reads. It reminded him of the first library he visited.
He was very particular about the aura the room projected. Every book had been hard bounded in the same wooden colour with name in golden. His table was at the right corner beside the only window in the room. The other side was just the textured wall which he insisted to keep that way. The only break in it was the entrance, surprisingly without doors.
She had just had a bath. Her brunette hair that turned almost black in damp, still dripping, making few translucent spots on her white gown. She stood at the entrance holding his coffee; her left shoulder leaning on the wall. The beige eyes almost smiling; she looked at him not in awe, not in appreciation, but a certain amusement, the romance that made her love him.
The first rain had enhanced the petrichor that somehow always lingered. His pensive state , his thumb supporting his chin, the index resting on that upper lip, the rest caressing his beard; with his right hand, motionless holding a cigarette above the ash tray. He had always said that he loved the surrealism of the place.
The dream broke with him taking a whiff of air as she moved towards him with the coffee. She bent, her hair curled towards the end, dangling near her cheek now rosy in the winter. He put his hand on hers and looked at her with what she knew overwhelmed him.
“I love you” he wanted to say more, but failed with a slight sigh. She smiled and ruffled his hair, “I am lovable” and started walking back.
He chuckled silently to himself. It wasn’t the assurance his fairy tale needed but the cliché of a fairy tale is always ironic to romance he believed.