‘You have a brown stripe of color running from your pupil to the bottom of your iris.’
‘It’s a mild form of heterochromia. Some people have different-colored eyes; I just have this stripe. It’s something I’ve had since birth.’
Without asking, I peered into his eyes. He accommodated me by opening them wider.
‘It’s very beautiful. Unusual.’ I sat back in my seat once I was satisfied I’d studied this ocular phenomenon enough. I made a mental note to google this heterochromia later and do a thorough deep-dive into the subject matter. Now was not the time for it though; I knew from past experiences that suddenly googling something in the company of others, in social situations, can often be perceived as rude. But my fingers itched to pull the phone out and type that word into the search bar.
‘Thanks,’ Andrew said, sinking into the seat. ‘You have lovely eyes too.’
‘My eyes are just green. Nothing as interesting as yours.’
‘You don’t meet many people with green eyes,’ he continued.
‘Only two per cent of the population have green eyes, actually.’ I lifted my phone to my face, put it on selfie mode and stared at my eyes.
‘Moss green,’ I finally announced, once I’d established the exact color of my eyes. ‘Lichen green – they have some gray in them too.’
‘Lichen? As in fungus?’
‘Yes.’
I heard a small, soft chuckle next to me and turned to look at Andrew, holding eye contact for only a moment before looking away.
‘What?’ I asked.
Andrew shook his head and smiled. ‘Nothing, you’re just . . . surprising. That’s all.’
‘Surprising good, or surprising bad?’ I wasn’t sure what he meant, considering synonyms includedshockingandunpredictable. Two words I didn’t much care for.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I talk to you almost every day, and I guess I didn’t imagine you being this funny.’
‘It’s not like I can showcase my humour while navigating a plane to the ground.’
‘True.’
‘Besides, I don’t consider myself funny. I simply say what I say, and sometimes people find it amusing, even though most of the time it wasn’t intended as such.’
‘Funny, yet strangely informative too,’ he said, continuing to smile.
‘Sorry, I have a habit of bombarding people with information. Sometimes they find it useful; most of the time they don’t.’
‘Personally, I’m glad that I’ve been forewarned about my soon to be declining sperm count and been introduced to the world of throuples. Not to mention the importance of opposable thumbs.’
‘Are you being sarcastic?’ I asked, always unsure.
‘Not at all. I mean it. Seriously. I don’t think I’ve ever covered such a variety of fascinating topics in such a short space of time.’
I studied him until I was satisfied I believed him. ‘Good, because synonyms forsarcasticincludemockingandridiculing, not to mentioncontemptuous, andtauntingeven.’
He tilted his head, bringing his eyes to mine. I immediately looked away. I hated the intensity of eye contact; it felt like such an incredibly intimate act, one that shouldnotbe done with strangers.
A long silence descended on the Uber. I shuffled in my seat, hoping to make some kind of noise to break it, even if the noise did sound like flatulence. I dreaded silences like these. Silences in the presence of others made me obsess about what the other person was thinking. I didn’t like not knowing, and silences were the ultimate manifestation of not knowing. I’d long wished I possessed the ability to read minds; it would be so much easier for me to make my way through life if I was able to read people’s thoughts. A few years back I’d research extensively if the human brain was indeed capable of such psychic feats. I’d even enrolled in a Udemy course that promised to ‘unleash my innate psychic abilities’. It did not. And when I demanded a refund from the instructor, she told me that ‘some of us are just not meant to be psychic’. I asked her why she hadn’t known this before letting me enrol, considering she claimed to be psychic herself. She blocked all my emails, but not before telling me what a ‘negative soul’ I had.
‘So, tell me a little more about what I’m walking into,’ Andrew said, and I released an audible sigh of relief. ‘Let’s start by what school you went to.’
‘Redford Girls Academy.’
‘Wow. Fancy.’ This was usually the response I got from people when they learned I’d gone to the most prestigious girls’ school in the country.
