“You keep playing these silly pranks!” he tells me.

“Yes, but they are still funny!”I reply.

It was too easy to make him believe things sometimes, in spite of he being the one who had warned me that he would be playing pranks, and I should be careful not to get annoyed.

A few weeks back he had found some video to be hilarious, and decided I should distract myself from the long awaited sleep. The video shows a guy trying to prank his girlfriend by saying he had cheated on her, and ending up the one being pranked in return.

“See this is what I mean! You should not get pissed off when I decide to crack a joke!”

I do my usual rolling of eyes, and turn to sleep, while he turns to his rugby match, still laughing over the practical joke.

…

It’s New Year, Christmas, and whatever other festivity that comes along with it, both of us, with our families, before he commences his travels again, and I, mine. Our lives would go on our own separate ways, but would yet move in parallel. I would get the “I love you, I miss you,” a sign that could mean a few thing:  he is highly intoxicated, stoned, or actually quite in his senses and really missing me.

I have stopped asking how his day was. He had stopped saying good night. But there would be those random moments where we would drop a line, when we would cross each other’s mind. Life has become simple and with less obligations, and restrictions.

I think of life. I think of us.

And then I think of this “thing” which is nameless, unnamed (voluntarily) yet very much acknowledged.  It could be love, but without that need to be obsessed.