Love-evoL

Taj Taher
“You’re doing it again.”
Tazetta froze, fingers spread through the hair on his head. His eyes jerked towards the
laptop. An expression of such irritation was etched into the face displayed before him, he
wondered whether the heat coming off the screen was being produced by the laptop or by her.
An amused smile diffused across his mouth. “Doing what?” he asked innocently.
“Playing with your hair,” Gunj growled. “Every time we Skype you’re constantly fixing
it, trying to make it look a certain way.”
“You can’t blame me for wanting to look good for my girlfriend.”
She tilted her head and stared at him pointedly. “For me? I can see where your eyes are
pointed. They’re not looking towards me. They’re always focused on that corner of the screen
that shows your own face.”
Tazetta chuckled. “How do you know I haven’t switched it so your face is in the little
corner box?”
“Well that would mean that your face would take up most of the screen, only proving my
point.”
“Which is?”
“That you enjoy staring at yourself more than at me!” Gunj shouted, throwing up her
arms in the air. “We walk down the street together, I catch you checking yourself out in the
reflection from the shop windows or passing cars.”
“What? No way, I don’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. He absentmindedly reached
to his forehead to brush away a strand of hair, but noticing the way her nostrils and eyes flared,
he instead chose to feign an itch and scratched himself. “Can we just go back to talking? I want
to hear more about…”
“About what?” Gunj snapped.
“About whatever we were talking about.”
“Which was?”
Tazetta stared at her blankly. Her mouth was a flat line, save for the slightest twitch at the
edge – the crack in the dam portending a flood of invectives. Unable to maintain contact with her
glare, his eyes drifted away from her face and landed upon his own.
Goddamn it, he thought to himself. I just can’t get this hair to swoop to the side the way I
want. Maybe I need to change the ratio of water to product when I –
“TAZ!”
He jumped in his chair, startled from his styling conundrum. “What?” he asked
bemusedly.
 She shook her head, her steely gaze and frown blasting contempt at him with such
radioactive potential he felt like shielding his eyes. She let him scorch for a solid minute before
saying “I’m going to hang up now. When you’ve decided you can love me as much as your own
damn reflection, you can call me back and I’ll maybe listen to an apology.”
With that, she was gone, and Tazetta was left staring at their chat screen, without even his
own face in the lower corner of the window to keep him company. He sighed, running his fingers
through his hair one final time. Pulling himself out of his chair, he ambled over to the mirror on
the wall. He placed both palms on either side of the mirror and leaned in close. Tazetta examined
the contours of the face intensely looking back at him, following the angle of the jaw across the
hairs on the chin, up to the nose and the small blemish on its side. Then his eyes rested on the
eyes in front of him and locked in.
“Why do you always have to make life so complicated?” he asked his reflection.
“You’re the one who decided to date her. I just follow along,” his reflection replied.
Tazetta snorted. “Don’t pretend to be an innocent bystander. Whenever Gunj and I are
together, you go out of your way to distract me.”
He turned around, but before he’d taken more than a step towards his laptop, a voice from
behind him called out “I do what I do because I’m looking out for us.”
Tazetta whirled around and raised an accusatory finger at the man in the mirror, the man
standing with his arms crossed and an amused expression on his face. “So you admit it!” Tazetta
roared. “You are sabotaging my relationship with Gunj!”
“No, I’m just expediting a process already in place.”
“You think Gunj and I are going to break up?”
“I certainly hope so, because I don’t just think – I know – that you’re unhappy.”
Tazetta’s mouth hung open as he struggled to form an indignant response. His reflection
chuckled. Tazetta shut his mouth and jutted his chin out. “It’s not that I’m unhappy. It’s more
like…”
“You’ve become indifferent,” his reflection completed, nodding knowingly.
“Exactly! Thank you,” said Tazetta. He began to pace back and forth in front of the
mirror while his reflection watched. “When we first started hanging out, I was genuinely excited
to see her every time. I would look forward it. Now spending time with her feels like an
obligation.”
“Is that normal? Do we become desensitized to the people who are regularly in our lives?
Once the novelty of a new relationship has worn off, are we left without happiness?” his
reflection prompted.
“No, otherwise how would I maintain any of my other relationships? I see you everyday
but I’m still happy when you’re here. I want you to be with me all the time,” Tazetta said as he
continued to pace, appearing to focus more on his strides than the truth of his speech.
 “Tazetta, I’m flattered.” His reflection grinned widely, then said “So why continue this
charade with Gunj?”
Tazetta stopped in his tracks to turn towards the mirror. He thought for a moment before
saying “We’ve been dating for this long. What does it say about me if I give up now?”
“I don’t know. What does it say about you?” His reflection seemed lost in thought for a
moment, then his eyes popped wide and he snapped his fingers. “Here, pretend you’re Gunj or
anybody else, and pretend that I’m you. Now tell me what you think they would say to you.” His
reflection opened his arms wide in invitation to begin firing.
“Well…” Tazetta began, rolling and unrolling his fingers into a fist. Then he looked up at
his reflection and said firmly “You’re an ass. You can’t just toss someone aside because you’re
bored of them.”
“Okay, well to be fair dating is about figuring out whether you can last in the long-run.
Making things Facebook official isn’t the same as signing a marriage contract,” his reflection
pointed out. “I think you’d be more of an ass if you kept stringing Gunj along when you knew
your heart wasn’t in it. It would be kinder to cut things off now and let her find someone who
really cares about her in that way.”
“That makes sense,” Tazetta admitted, glancing down at the floor to ponder further. But
then his head snapped back up and he said “If you break up with her, it proves you’re not mature
enough to sustain a long-term relationship.”
“HA!” his reflection barked, causing Tazetta to jump back in surprise. “Maturity? People
in this world get married when they’re teenagers without giving a second thought to how they’re
going to build a life together. It doesn’t matter though because they’re so in love,” his reflection
said, stretching out the words and exaggerating the movements of his mouth and eyebrows. He
sniffed dismissively, then continued “Or think about the opposite, people in arranged marriages
who will carry out their long-term relationship until they die even if they’re completely
miserable. Does that sound mature to you? If maturity was just a matter of persistence, then I
guess every kid that picks away at a scab until it’s bloody should be allowed to vote and drive
cars too.”
Tazetta laughed and shook his head. “Gross, but I think I see what you’re saying.”
“Good,” his reflection declared, nodding firmly once. “Because at the end of the day, we
don’t have to prove ourselves to anyone. We don’t owe anyone anything. All that matters is that
we’re happy.”
“Isn’t that selfish though?”
“Selfish people only do things for the individual,” his reflection asserted. “You’re
looking out for me. I’m looking out for you.” His reflection raised one finger, then another next
to it. “If I’m calculating correctly, one plus one makes two.”
Tazetta breathed a sigh of relief and finally allowed the tension in his shoulders to ease.
“Yes, you’re right. That makes sense. Wow, this makes me feel so much better. Thank you.”
His reflection waved him away. “You don’t have to thank me.”
 Tazetta shook his head and approached the mirror. “No, I really do. You seem to really
understand me better than anyone else. And I feel like I can really trust you, you know? I have
no problem with being completely open with you.”
His reflection smiled, shrugging his shoulders. “I have always been with you, and I’m
always going to be here for you.”
“Yes, you have,” Tazetta said, placing both palms on either side of the mirror and leaning
in close towards his reflection once more. “And I’m starting to realize that the person I’ve been
looking for has been right in front of me my entire life.”
His reflection leaned in closer too. “Always looking right back.”
Tazetta and Attezat closed their eyes, felt first the warmth of their breaths combine and
then the cool touch of their lips pressing against one another.
They stepped back, and in unison whispered “I love you.”

Bio:
Taj Taher’s claim to expertise on love comes from his childhood exposure to Bollywood films
and a string of failed relationships pursued to avoid an arranged marriage. He graduated from the
University of Washington with a degree in English Literature and currently studies at Oregon
Health and Science University, from which he hopes to gain an MD so he can attend to literal
matters of the heart.