A Matter of Propriety

Five: Blindsided

It wasn't logical for Padma to be head over heels for someone she had only just begun to know. It was pure madness if you asked her. This was an action saved for her twin sister who, before marriage, had fallen in and out of love week in and week out that Padma had no longer tried to keep all the names straight. But, for all her fussing and uncertainty, she couldn't deny that she had done exactly that.

Men were a confusing species, if you asked Padma, especially when she had been younger. She'd had her fair share of flirtations (mostly when Parvati thought she'd found The One for her twin and absolutely insisted upon the two meeting) but nothing serious. But now? Now she looked forward to her meetings with Theo, happy to spend her afternoons discussion an obscure topic, or simply talking about anything, usually trying to see if she'd succeed in getting him to laugh or smile, as he seemed more prone to doing now that they'd spent a great deal of time together.

Still…Padma remained firmly on her side of the fence. She was either unable or unwilling (she wasn't sure which) to take that dangerous first step towards a redefinition of their tentative attraction. It was a step into the unknown that no book or theory she had ever studied could give her advice upon. There had to be an easier way, she thought, making lists of the pros and cons of such a move, unable to come to any longstanding conclusion at the end of it.

It wasn't logical, and yet, somehow, it all made sense.

--

Theo didn't need anything or anyone else in his life. He was content in the house he'd been left in the event of his father's death, burying himself within the library for hours at a time when he wasn't already occupied with his work. His work was the most time consuming, taking up precious minutes of each day as he read over cases, preparing to speak before court, and generally attempting to keep himself free of office politics. He was a planner, with many ideas in his head about what he wanted to do and what he was meant to do with his life in the near (and sometimes the distant) future. But, for all his planning, he couldn't have planned Padma.

Usually Theo was irritated at even the smallest hitches in his plans, frowning and grumbling as he tried to rewrite it to how things were supposed to be. Yet he found her company soothing, invigorating, and pleasantly interesting. She was a breath of fresh air he'd never known and something always brought him back to her, no matter where their conversations took them. The most surprising thing was, she made him laugh.

This, of course, meant that, in light of the change, he had no set plan anymore; no absolute way of going about this in a logical, sensible way. Some would speak on how that was the way of it, that he should just let go and free-fall into the emotions but Theo didn't quite see eye-to-eye with anyone who spoke like that.

Other women had caught his eye from time to time, but he usually found underlying flaws within each and every one of them before things got trickier and complicated. Theo hated complicated. Relationships with him rarely lasted and yet, somehow, he found himself always gravitating back to Padma.

It didn't make sense. And, yet, somehow it did.