When David met Ib, his heart fluttered in his chest, his cheeks reddened, his feelings burst.
He first encountered her at the edge of the lake near center of their university, a grand fountain in the middle before the main library. She sat on the edge, bare feet kissing the surface of the crystal-clear water, a small canvas on her lap and a paintbrush in her hand.
Ib was a striking beauty, with long, chocolate brown hair, fair skin, and piercing crimson eyes. Her manner was quiet and reserved, but sweet-natured and warm all the same when he approached her that first time. David knew he was rather handsome, and he had a way with women, so shyness was never an issue for him. He simply turned on the charm, smiled a little, complimented the rather lovely blue rose she painted. She responded well; with a small smile and a nod.
When he asked her out to lunch sometime, she agreed. Not with the usual flustered excitement that other women displayed, but with polite acceptance.
Perhaps his first mistake was falling so hard, so quickly.
She was a dream. The perfect woman, really. Beautiful, intelligent, kindhearted. She had a knack for puzzles and logic, a true artistic spirit, and a certain sense of humility and maturity that others didn't possess. As if she'd lived two different lifetimes altogether in the relatively short twenty years she'd been on this earth.
He'd brought her roses once. Red ones. Her smile was soft, sad, in a strange, whimsical way. David almost panicked and apologized when she pricked her finger on one of the thorns, but she shook her head, letting the droplet of blood bloom from the tip of her thumb. She watched it carefully, closely, almost as if comparing the color to the petals of the roses.
"It's alright," she whispered, "I love them. Thorns and all."
David smiled. "Are red ones your favorite? They match your eyes."
"... I like blue roses."
He laughed, knowing that there were no such things as blue roses.
"Yes, there are!"
David brought her blue roses—well, not quite, as they were white roses that were dyed blue, artificially. At first, she smiled gently, appreciating the effort and the thought behind it. However, he jokingly called them fake, since blue roses never existed in real life.
She hesitated for a moment, crimson eyes widening and her bottom lip quivering. That was wrong, she insisted, blue roses were real. They existed. They were gentle and sweet, feminine yet strong, protective and silly and lovely and far safer than yellow-!
Ib began screaming at him, over roses. During her frantic ramblings, she'd crushed the dyed flowers and ignored the red stains across her palms.
That was when things had gone downhill. Her slight oddities, the peculiar darkness of her paintings, her obsession with art, all those bowls of lemon candies, her fear of bunnies and dolls, and the colors lavender and blue …
He thought they were just little quirks about her, lovable aspects he found adorable, if a bit extreme. But there was some underlying madness there; a searching need beneath her crimson eyes.
A month later, he left her. She never asked for him back. That was fine by him. She did say that he would never be the man he was, whoever that might've been.
Ib was beautiful. But she was just another crazy ex, nothing special about her.