Platonic

Platonic is too idealistic a word. No relationship can be entirely platonic. At some point of time, every woman keeps the guy she's with in that special place in her heart, tries to figure out if he fits. If he doesn't, best thing ever. If he does, things get screwed. But probably, she never made it to that place in his heart, the tipping point. She must have stopped an inch behind it. And even if she did reach it, she must've been a bad fit, and he wouldn't tell her how badly she had failed. She knew, she could never fit. She respected that, silently. She understood him, was vocal about it a lot.

She classified the men in her life into two water-tight chambers, the ones she was friends with, the rest she could ever be romantically inclined to. The former category was obviously for the ones like the rest of them, who failed the test or the ones who could never sit for it. The ones who always saw her suave, coy, never stayed beyond a time. The ones she was romantically inclined to, the ones who got to see her worst, see her for real. Even then, there wasn't any porosity allowed between the two chambers. She got scared if she doesn't hear from him all day, and that scared her hell-lot. Not that she was mad about him, or afraid that they would lose each other, but just that he had become a habit, a part of her day. And with the oscillations my psyche was victim to it, it felt comforting to have one companion that would stay.

She never exactly got to figure out his perception of her though. She never asked, the conversations strangely never took them on those lanes. It hurts to say that no man will affect her the way he does. He stayed shut.

But yeah, it hurts. Still does.