Hi friends
Sorry
for being absent from forum from almost a year'
I had promised to update my FF Love makes life...but since it's yet under-construction-mode...
I am compensating with final part of long incomplete One-shot (I know name
suggests to have it complete in one go.. but I am the weird case)
For those who don't remember it or who haven't read, here's the link: Maybe-part 1
P.s. - For those who remember, It was real story, but due to realities of life
for not being that interesting and intriguing and happily ending flick types I have given it the fictitious end. I have already waited a year, but nothing
came up of it...
Maybe.. (final part)
Plunging in to her wardrobe yet again she pulled out yet another top, green this time. "Not green!"
Another try lead her to the far forgotten red one. "I fail to remember how I even got this here. Must be another of those world-class gifts from that NRI aunt"
She was skeptical of this whole movie outing since morning. She just wished it wasn't what she suspected.
"Damn you Archie! I didn't tell you every detail of conversation I had with him to lead you to act as some director of a setup where hero 'accidently' runs into his damsel-in-distress and they fall in that clichd love-at-first-site." Well, not exactly for the damsel here, she is already head over hells in' whatever.
She took a deep breath to calm down. She knew it. She just knew her friend so well. Her intuition was right about fishy element in the so-called-casual-outing. This was yet again Archie's plan to set her and 'him' up in an 'unintended' encounter. But this time instead of jubilant she felt tensed. There was lot of stuff to be thought upon and acted accordingly. A hap-hazard meeting might distort things furthermore.
The last time she met him, she had felt the warmth of his eyes on her. The radiations emanating told her he too was affected by her presence. But as soon as the party was over the effects had gone haywire. Even the few chats she had with him or better would be to say, 'tries' to chat felt forced and imposed. He was a confused species and confusing as well.
She felt herself in a huge mess, huge with double quotes.
Damn you this green dress and damn you Mayank Sharma! He is responsible for all this mess. Ever since the last meeting she was in a hope that this unrequited saga of her love might get to somewhere. But still... Anyways now she needed to handle this task carefully... too much for a fragile soul caught in the world of cruelties... Pities on you miss Nupur.
******************
She was waiting in front of mirror trying to fix that wild tendril of her hair when the car horned outside, indicating 'their' arrival, their- Archie, Archie's brother Rajat and 'him', Archie's cousin Mayank.
Briskly walking out to the door she made it a point to ignore looking towards him. Yes, it would at least avoid the potential heart attack or any possible blockage in her blood vessels. She must survive at least till they reach the venue. At least till then, else the doom was quite definite today.
As she climbed onto the car, she hallucinated something like a smile coming her way. It must have been an illusion. Why would someone as cold as him would act humanly with a 'no-body-to-him'?
Dragging herself in the back seat next to Archie, she found Rajat on the seat at her front; it was difficult to concentrate on anything but Mayank's visible side face while he drove to the movie hall...
************
She jerked back to her senses from her dreams of 'the perfect world- me and you' when car stopped in front of the mall. With a grace that of a Elizabethan princess she descended onto the ground and took in the sight with confidence. Yes, she wasn't that bad at pretending then.
All her preparations to counterattack any kind of questions, that could have been shot her way by Mayank, went down the drain when not even for a second she was spared a glance by the angry-with-the-whole-world person.
Inside the dimly lit hall, she found herself loaded with popcorn bucket; Archie who sat on her right regularly plunged into bucket while conveniently ignoring facing or talking to her. Mayank and Rajat who sat next to Archie were deeply immersed in the action thriller flick on the silver screen.
She forced Archie to face her and gave her the trade mark frown that said I'll-see-you-later-for-this, and turned back to the screen, to continue her pretense of 'enjoying' the movie.
A beep notified her of a message received. '' I did it for you to get over the fear of facing him... If this time it doesn't work I won't poke in my nose again. Just don't panic.''
She eased out a sigh. She knew Archie all the pains to help her but she still needed some time for the confrontation...
As a wave of laughter filled in the theatre hall; she registered that movie had some comedy elements too.
At least this movie wasn't the typical idiot-romance type where a guy falls for a vulnerable-and-untouched-from-the-cruelty-of-the-world's-fire type girl whom he saw waiting on the bus-stop another morning. The love at first site bullshit and what follows is stupidity personified.
Girls aren't always that arrogant as they depict it in those chick flicks... There exist girls like us too. Who can dedicate her whole life to that one person even if it meant to see him go... wishing him to be happy with whom ever he be. Did it hurt?
Slowly, painfully yet uneventfully and yet thankfully the movie ended. And here she learnt another thing about the insane crowd that they are in as much hurry to leave the hall as they are in to get inside it to see the useless credentials.
Adam Lambert said it right, "And I find it hard to tell you and find it hard to take... with people running in circles, it's a very very' mad world."
"Let's wait till the crowd rushes out" Archie had to shout in her ear to make it audible.
"Yes, let's just wait" Mad mad world!
As the people took there time to slowly vacate the crowded doors. Rajat made his way through it while other three yet waited inside. We need 'more' air to make it through the doors.
Taking the opportunity Archie started, "ok let me introduce you both. Nupur..." she looked at Nupur with a devilish smile. "'this is Mayank and Mayank' this is Nupur" she ended with a smile, but was met with a glare from Nupur side and a stare from Mayank's. "What should I do then? You guys are behaving like you don't even know each other's name!"
"Hi Mayank!" Nupur threw her pleasantries in the clumsy, unpleasant way and went on with glaring at Archie.
"Hello Nupur, for the sake of formalities. And.." he turned towards Archie with the same stare which if had been subjected towards Nupur, she might have been found melted on the theatre floor seeping into the ceiling of floor underneath, "if we are not talking like some chatter box that doesn't imply we have lost our basic communication skills?" Well, he didn't have to be rude to her, did he?
"She was just being her jolly self, don't take it seriously" Nupur intervened in the brother sister to defend her innocent and yet devilish best-friend. After all everything she did was for Nupur's sake.
"If you say so, sorry Miss Archie, it's entirely my mistake that I ignored your friend and did the blunder of watching movie without exchanging the formal pleasantries with her." The typical sarcastic Mayank. How can anyone ever fall for him? Damn! Why did it have to be me? Double damn!
"Mayank there's no need for getting..." Nupur was interrupted with the phone vibrations indicating a call. "Wait!"
It was Rajat calling from lobby outside and he called for Archie, for some urgent work that couldn't wait 5 more minutes. Nupur proposed for all to leave together at once but Archie insisted to go alone, excusing that she knew why Rajat needed her and she didn't need a company.
Staying in that huge yet a bit crowded place with
the most sarcastic and ignorant man she had ever seen in her life, Nupur felt
the panic seeping inside her. Is this again a setup? Why would Archie set her
up in a suffocated cinema hall? How could she have convinced Rajat to be part
of it? Nah! Not a setup. 'It's the god's
wish for you to be with him' spoke the voice inside, better be ignored.
Stupid little heart, Stupid Archie, double stupid this green suffocating dress.
She wished she had brought her inhaler she used whenever she felt suffocated. Claustrophobic as she was. She remembered how to invoke those violent coughs when she felt some blockage in heart, yes. There were much better things to do than dying in front of her man' umm... Not yet.
"What were you saying?" this came form the person who might have never given a crap even if she was hanging from a cliff, but now he look actually into conversation, genuinely enough to come closer by two steps. Maybe an illusion yet again?
"Uh?" she stared into his eyes in that dim lit place, catching up with what was being talked about. Dark brown! Yes, his eye color was dark brown. Alike hers' *blush*
"Uh. Umm... It wasn't something of much significance." She averted her eyes towards door, Archie might return any instant. She should. 'Or shouldn't?' shut up you little throbbing heart of mine.
"Don't worry, she'll be back soon. They can't leave you here and go there way." She turned back to be shocked out of her wits. What glimmered on his handsome face was an actual smile! A huge 440 volts smile. And yes suddenly the dark place didn't look to be so dark after all.
"You don't do that normally, do you?" she asked in daze. That was actually a genuine smile not a smirk or a grin or teasing one, that too for HER.
"Do what?"
"Umm... your smile suits you. Do that often." She stated in matter-of-fact way. Awkwardness avoided. Good.
"Is it? Thanks!" And the naughty grin that replaced the mesmerizing smile must have something to do with that 'potential awkwardness' which she hallucinated to have avoided.
Again a few moments of silence passed, with her glancing at door twice every second and him shuffling and reshuffling his feet on the floor.
"Nupur?"
"Hmmm?" the serious tone underlining his voice compelled her to look into those dark brown eyes which somehow with the passing radiations of some new phases of his personality seemed to change. At that instant they were jet black, raging with the desire that only could be penned by a poet deep in love with those eyes.
"Forget about what Archie assumed. I want you to answer me why have you been avoiding me since a long time. Every time I login on g-talk to see you online, you vanish into the thin air and within those seconds your green light turns grey. And the other time I caught you in enough time you went away saying you had some work and never returned again." She looked directly into his eyes, fears and apprehensions long forgotten in the maze of her own thoughts processing.
Why did she stop talking to him? Because Archie mentioned that he had found his "the one" in some of his old classmate, while she herself was sitting on the shore in wait of high tide to lower down and push in her boat at right time, that is a different case she never found a 'right' time to confess her love in those 3 years of waiting. A mute observer, who kept her love hidden in her heart all the while and kept that fluffy heart locked into the cage of layers of her silence. Maybe afraid of letting it out and get hurt or waiting for him to realize it himself somehow, which had the meager possibilities to even happen. "I was just busy with the work load of assignments from college. You don't know how much work is given in architecture everyday."
"It's not like I haven't done my graduation. Why does all the work arrives the instant I log in. Now say that it's a coincidence which happens 5 times in a week!"
"It's not like that Mayank."
''Then what is it?'' he asked stepping closer, his eyes plunging in hers' to read some secrets unrevealed.
"Why do you want to know?" her curiosity took better of her and she forgot to calculate before answering anything. "Why does it matter if I am ignoring or avoiding you? It's not like all other people whom you ping while you doodle your cursor on screen have gone to Eiffel for the vacation! You must have got a fair amount of fan-following" she etched double quotes with her fingers to emphasis on 'fan-following'.
"Where are you coming from?'' he raised his voice enough to have an impact on her yet keeping the conversation a private affair.
"Mayank lets not discuss stuff here. I guess we should now go and fetch Archie and Rajat. Hall is almost vacated now." except a cozy going couple in the corner, she noticed.
"It's better to clear the doubts first. They aren't running away. I would have never asked you about it considering it actually to be a coincidence unless you had made the 'issue' obvious by not talking in front of Archie and Rajat''
"Even you skipped a decent 'HI' when we met"
'' Is it about the thing I told Rajat?'' she froze.
No, it isn't. Rajat never told me anything, Archie overheard you two and told me that you have found someone, someone whom you love so dearly to have gifted your personal diary to her. She wanted to yell it out but instead what came out of her mouth was "what thing?"
He heaved a sigh and took a step closer measuring the depth of her watered eyes by diving into them through his eyes. "I know what you know." She just stared at him like a mute and stared some more. "That was a prank we, me and Rajat played on Archie. It started as a tease game; we purposefully made it look like Archie accidently eve-dropped our conversation when in actuality it was a plot to have some fun. It turned out to be serious one when we in turn overheard her telling it all about my 'fake story' to someone on phone. Well, later we found out, she had called you"
She stared again, intently at first then in daze. He knew it. He knew all along the time she passed mourning to have lost him. It was all a plot, a trick, a lame one but it worked wonders for them and hell for her.
From the corner of her eyes she noticed the initially cozy-getting couple and the last people in the hall except the two involved in a quarrel exited from the door at the far end. She made attempt to run away in her mind but wasn't able to uproot even a step ahead. She needed fresh air. She felt suffocated all over again but this time suffocation was because of disorientation from insides.
"We should leave now" she whispered in a low undertone but was audible due to vacancy all around them. Instead of waiting for his answer or for him to lead the way she started to make her way towards door. Cursing Archie's plan from the very start and cursing the darkness surrounding her which made it furthermore difficult for her to walk without anyone beside her.
Just as she was about to place her hand on door to open it and exit she was held aback with a hand that rested on her wrist, the touch that sent vibes of completeness, so tender. She knew who it was but the question was why?
She turned to face him, though his face wasn't much visible because of the even dimmer pathways to doors. Just outline of him and the heaving of his chest told her that they stood very close, too much for her to stay in senses. She tried to locate his eyes in the darkness, trying to gauge what they emit. But all she could gauge that moment was the warmth that rested upon her lips.
It took her a moment to comprehend what it was and another moment to slide her arms over his shoulders slightly reaching for his neck to encircle in the passion that his raw masculine scent evoked in her.
Sighing against his lips she molded herself in his arms giving away all she had, all the feelings she encased in her heart since 3 years of a one sided love story, in those few seconds of life.
If waiting always turns out this sweet in end who would mind doing it. Some things were yet unanswered but time can take care of that... Right now they were too lost in each other.
So much that they didn't even hear the hi-five Rajat and Archie shared outside... after knowing with a glance inside that the plan has finally worked in right direction.
************************
Let me know your views 😊
Love
Deepika
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