“I love you”
“Not convincing enough!” she tells him.
So he tries again, in different intonation, and different rhythms.
“Convincing enough?”
She laughs, he looked good, especially when trying to be convincing. He had tried to convince for a while, though she had other things to occupy herself with, than being convinced by him or love.
Once, she had been convinced by another, who did take her for a good ride.
“Have better things to do,” she muttered, unheard by him, who seemed to be on a rant of which she had missed the start.

“So, which colour will the flowers be?”
“Red”
“So cliché!”
He was decided on red.
“You have to learn a thing or two, from the Italians, red it shall be,” he adds.
Red it is then!

“No red roses though”.
He makes a face. But she was decided too. She was decided that he shalt not have things too easy. She has being an idiot with one, and not with this one.
“Let the effort unfold,” (mental note for herself).

She was happy. She liked bugging him, just for the heck of it. And he didn’t seem to mind. She has known him for a while, and she always wondered whether it was her bugging that made him call her, or hang out with her, or constantly try to “convince” her on why she should date him, or consider dating him, or anything that comes close to the concept that he was trying to promote.

“I should try car-pooling,” one of his eco –friendly solutions of late.
“Or the train,” she adds. (Didn’t want him to get lost, and then start a search party for him, once again categorised under “mental notes”)
“You’ll be doing a lot of sight-seeing,” she adds. An informal way of saying that she will be busy and that she will have to figure out what he will be busy with during her hours of reading, and reading, and many a meeting.
“Sight-seeing, what?” (he seemed to have missed the point).
“You will figure out,” she adds. ( Smile, and throw that charm what is left, after dishing out all the bugging in the world on a poor soul).
“Why do I have a feeling that this is going to be a repetition of the Washington venture!”
(Now he was genuinely having doubts. Last work trip he had joined her, he had left him to wonder around for a few days on his own, till he was tired of wondering around, and for a change annoyed with himself for waiting on her. Then again he had calmed down, eventually though.)

“I love you,” he says.
(Pause)

She was not yet convinced. She needed a lot more time, space and healing..