Charmed

She sat down comfortably, plugged on her headphones, ready to assail the diversed selections of inflight movies with glee and anticipation.

He approached his allocated seat a few minutes later. They stared momentarily at each other. He gave a sincere smile, the crimson glow on his cheeks even more apparent and dazzling. She responded courteously before looking down coyly. Her heart started fluttering unconsciously. She stood up from her glued position to let him pass through to the adjacent seat next to the window.

She went on with her flipping of the flight magazines, figuring that it would just be another mundane 8-hour journey back home. As the plane took off, she even had a quick nap before waking up for the ever non-appetizing dinner. Every single minute, however, she sensed his forlorn glance from the corner of her eyes and felt the warmth of his presence.

"May I....?" he requested in his heavily accented brief English, before making his way for the relief.

"Are you German?" she asked him when he returned, her usual curiosity begetting her.

"Yes", he replied, flashing his wholesome grin and maintaining a sincere eye contact intensely.

"What about you?" he asked in return. They began chatting cordially.

He spoke very limited English vocabulary. The high-decibelled plane engine in the background did not help either. They found themselves leaning almost against each other while trying to hear what they were saying. She felt a blush of embarrassment as she noticed other passengers smiling at them inadvertently.

They talked about their lives, their homelands, their families. They shared a little about their personal love lives and their jobs. They spoke as if they had known each other for ages.

They exchanged email addresses, promising to contact each other should they decide to visit their respective countries. The air of romance was strong and thick, punctuated only by her fatigue and her insistence to finish the screening of "Shall We Dance" towards the end of the journey. He never ceased staring at her miniature screen [and her ;)], inquisitive about the Chinese subtitles that followed.

His smiles were mesmerising, and his gazes penetrating and tingling to her senses.

She was definitely charmed to the core.