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P R O X I M A C E N T A U R I » the nearest

By the time we reach Tara's place, Tara keeps on blabbering about the new book she's reading - something called The Darkest Minds that I can almost write the sequel to it. Liam accepted Ruby the way she was, in spite of her big secret. She kept on saying it, that somehow made me wonder if she could find her own self in Ruby.

We are sitting on her bed, our feet dangling down the bed as we talk about the most random things.

"So my best friend locked me inside a dog cage for six hours and twenty three minutes which makes me claustrophobic." Tara speaks of the fairly traumatizing incident of her life.

I shake my head imagining what the dog would be doing then, as Tara occupied his house. Tara jabs her elbow at my sides and I realize that apparently I've been thinking out loud.

"You're a dork to think about the dog when I was the one who was suffering. For God's sake, I was hardly five. You're such a dork, I repeat." she snaps at me rudely, throwing a pillow at me. I don't dodge it, knowing that the fluffy thing could hardly make even my skin move.

"You're so stupid too but you don't see me pointing that often, Tara." I reply, my lips curling upwards to flash her a victorious grin. Tara brings the night vase to her vicinity and shows it to me, saying look what I can actually do.

My relationship with Tara somehow feels weird because I have never thought about any relationship embarking towards the feelings slope ever. For some reason, Tara means something to me. Her life means something to me, I mean. Whenever I talk to her, I don't have to force myself to laugh or I don't have to force myself to forget everything else.

Because I laugh. I forget. Naturally. Because with her I actually can't say half the things I want to.

On the other hand, Tara - she seems like a born charmer. She has an always easy-going and enticing smile that lights up her face and other's world. I am easily convinced- in just a matter of three days- that Tara is one of a kind, and I will never be able to find someone like her even with the Aladdin's lamp.

Somehow falling in love with her is easier than breathing.

"Can you please cook me the dinner today? I really had a bad night yesterday, and I can barely walk." Tara says, and I scoff at how she's playing her Oh, I am unwell card on me since morning. For starters, she made me clean her entire room which was so messed up as if a fucking hurricane had it hit it.

"You've been saying that since morning. How long is it going to take you to be alright?" I ask her sweetly.

Tara just gives me a shrug, and then passes me a smile. "I am not just not alright, Virat. I am pregnant too." she says in a nonchalant voice.

I furrow my eyebrows together, managing to go against my rolling of eyes at her answer to my idea of a very bad sarcastic joke. I fake a gasp and play along, "Who's child it is then Miss. Tara Dobriyal?"

"Ours." Tara states with a blank face.

My eyes widen like saucers, as her tone is so nonchalant that I had to blink my eyes twice to verify that whatever I heard was right. Yet I feel very bewildered at her statement. "Please tell me that is a joke. I have never had a drunken one night stand with anyone as far as I remember."

"Of course it is. No shit Sherlock. I mean look at you, I would barely want my kids to have your genes." she laughs at me throwing her head on the pillow, and I resist the urge to wrinkle my nose at her very poor joke.

"Whatever Watson." I reply, hastily smirking at her before I add, "I wonder who wouldn't want to have me as the father of their children... because as far as I know, I am a sexy bowl of butter chicken."

"Sexy bowl of butter chicken? Seriously Virat? Never in my twenty years of existence had I heard a guy objectifying himself, calling himself a sexy bowl of butter chicken." Tara chortles, bumping her head against my collarbone.

"C'mon, I thought I was special than the guys you met during your twenty years of existence." I joke.

Tara looks at me, then links her hand to mine as she tells me, "You are very special, Virat."

•••

At the end of the day, Tara and I realize that none of us would end up cooking something edible all alone so we help each other in cooking dinner. Tara also tells me about someone joining us at the dinner, which makes me a little sad because I was really looking forward to spend my time with her. Alone. With no distractions.

So when the doorbell rings, I nonchalantly ignore it, hoping that the blockhead standing outside the door returns to his place of belonging and leave us alone for sometime. But as I said, the person, the person standing outside the gate is a fucking blockhead, so he ends up ringing the doorbell multiple times which results in Tara asking me to open the door.

With heavy footsteps, I walk towards the door, and open it. A smiling guy stands in front of me, and his eyes widen at my presence like saucers. "Virat Kohli?" he voices out like he had seen a ghost.

"Virat Kohli." I confirm, turning my head and walking back towards the kitchen.

"Tara, you did not tell me that Virat Kohli was coming to your place. Is Dhoni inside the hall?" the guy speaks out aloud.

Tara laughs as she replies, "This is not a cricketer's reunion, idiot."

"Oh," the guy smiles at me again, and I feel like slapping that smile off his face. "I am Jatin Bhagnani, by the way." he stretches his hand forward for a handshake, and I do it, feeling so obliged to do it because I don't want to act rude in front of Tara. "So you two were cooking the dinner for me, huh?" he stands by Tara, and shoves the salad I prepared for me down his throat.

I mentally scoff at him for giving himself so much self-importance. "Yeah Jatin. Now don't let your head fly in the air or else -" Tara brings down the knife to his neck, "I will be the one shouting in the jail look what you made me do, Jatin."

Jatin takes a seat beside Tara, and links her arm with hers. "So Virat?" he voices out, looking at me with his sharp, piercing gaze. "Are you going to stay here?"

"Yeah." Tara replies, and I look at her as if I want to say her a thank you.

"Where are you from?" Jatin further asks, making me wonder if he was a RAW agent by any chance.

"Yes. I, um, I am from Delhi." I reply awkwardly. I feel weird because I have never been asked so many questions before, and honestly Jatin doesn't seem like a best friend kind of best friend, but more of a dad kind of best friend. He seems very protective of Tara which was a good thing, but it also makes me insanely jealous of him. Every time he looks at her with concern leaves a confusingly gap-wrenching hole in my heart. Because somewhere in the back of my mind, I wanted her best friend to be apathetic. Sullen. Uncaring.

But he clearly isn't all of that, I think as he continues his interrogation, "Oh I see. So you live with your family?" Tara gives Jatin a warning look, while he just shushes her up, and scrutinizes me with his overbearing gaze.

I really want to throw up now, I think as I open my mouth to answer but Tara beats me to it by answering, "No Jatin. Not at all," she laughs, shaking her head. "Virat stays all by himself in the dog cage where you locked me up sixteen years ago. Apparently, that dog cage was sold at the cost of gold because of my Midas touch."

Tara's interjection does make the dinner's atmosphere a little lighter as Tara's morbid best friend's morbid mouth comes to a stop from saying something that might make me want to throw up again.

"Don't bother him, Virat. Jatin is just one pure blooded asshole who often needs to show people that he is in fact insanely insane."

That earns Tara a light smack. "Shut up and stop acting like you're some privileged angel in a land of demons." Jatin snorts, shoving his knife into the pasta.

I cannot help but chuckle because I had always imagined Tara as an angel. I mean she has always looked like an angel to me, even though looks can be deceiving in reality. But with Tara, reality seemed far away.

In my defense, hey I can't help if she does look like an angel.

After half an hour when the dinner comes to an end, Tara disappears into the kitchen to keep the plates in the dishwasher. I am walking towards the wash basin to clean up when Jatin stops me from going any further by calling out my name aloud.

Get ready to throw up, Virat. I think bitterly as I turn around.

"Hey, I just wanted to thank you for saving Tara's life." Jatin speaks up as his eyes rivets on mine. "Yeah, she kind of told me how you saved her life twice. So yeah, thanks man."

I stay silent and somber and stoic as if I am caught in the middle of a spider web. Saving Tara was never something I was obliged to do for him to thank me. So what was he trying to prove here?

Sensing my confusion, Jatin decides to extend his thanks by saying, "I mean, I know you two aren't close and still you helped her. That's very kind of you."

I give Jatin a smile as I reply, "You don't need to be close to someone to save their lives, Jatin."

"So Tara isn't any special person? She doesn't matter to you?" he asks with an amused smile. I close my eyes, and feel the frigid air coming from the nearby window slapping the numb skin of my face hard.

"She does matter, Jatin." I tell him softly, but there's jagged ice underneath. So much that I don't know what matters anymore.

Jatin smiles at me like that was what he was longing to hear all along.

"Then promise me that you won't hurt her. Ever. She has gone through so much in the past already that I don't want her to go through the slightest pain in the present." he says, giving me a small smile. I slowly nod at his words, realizing that maybe he wasn't bad after all. But jealousy can make you so irrational sometimes, that I want to laugh at myself for the thoughts which crossed my mind earlier for him.

"I won't hurt her. And I won't let anyone hurt her either. I promise."

-

After Jatin leaves, I ponder over his words so much that I don't even notice when Tara sits in front of me, and looks at me as if seeping her gaze through my skin to my bones.

I shuffle in my seat with nervousness, skilfully avoiding her eyes on me. From the corner of my eyes, I can see her expressions hardening. "What did Jatin tell you?" she comes directly to the topic, and the sharpness in her voice amuses and scares me a little.

"Nothing of that sort. He just wanted to make sure that I don't hurt you in anyway." I hear Tara's sigh so I speak my next words in a careful soft murmur, "and that you went through a lot in your past."

"Oh did he?" Tara's eyes widen a little, her face showing hurt but she quickly composes herself. "Nothing so tragic. I just left my dad because we had an argument." The honesty in her voice doesn't go unnoticed.

Over? I really wanted to ask but chose to go against it because I know that would be treading over an uncharted treacherous territory.

Tara relaxes onto her seat and takes a deep breath. "People like to run away from their problems, don't they?" she says with a small laugh, as a lone tear escapes her eyes. "Because fuck, my dad loves to run away from the biggest problems which are in my life and that honestly sucks, because this," she points to her head and then her chest, "is my life. My fucking life and he doesn't understand that and treats me like a baby. So I ran away from him."

"Well, I really don't know how to react because I've been running away from my problems half my life, Tara -"

"- that isn't a great thing though. But I am sure your life isn't half as fucked up as mine."

"I, um, didn't go to my dead best friend's funeral and haven't talked a shit to his family about it. They probably hate me more than the driver who drunk drive and hit my best friend because I was so close to them. I don't even know what can be more fucked up than this." I say, feeling scared because that was something I have never said before.

Tara's reaction scares me more.

"I am more fucked up than this," Tara laughs sardonically. "But I think it's hard, you know? To deal with someone's death. It's very hard and I understand why. Thinking about the what ifs and could have beens if the person was alive. The lost moments. But Virat, you know that you're not the reason behind your friend's death, right? Neither your dad's. It's not you, it's just the circumstances. The cumulation of the worst circumstances that took them away."

I can actually understand why people are so afraid of being vulnerable to others. Because somewhere, you only meet people who either don't care or the ones who have one thing to gift you - pity. But talking without filters to Tara was different. Because Tara feels. She felt what I felt, when I was seventeen and had to see my dad with closed eyes, or when I was twenty and I was too scared to see my friend pooled in blood. That's why there's this part of me asking me to run away from her, because the more I let her inside me, the harder it will become to let her go. But still, I don't want her to go away.

She stays all the time, talking to me. That's what mattered to me the most at that time.

"You think I can feel pain, Tara? You think I know what pain is?" I question her like a baby, my eyes turning glassy due to tears.

Tara nods at me with me a smile, wrapping her arms around me. "You know what pain is, Virat." she says, closing her eyes, "But you don't know that not acknowledging pain and not knowing pain are two different things."