vii.

T H U B A N » lethal gaze & breath

I promised myself I wouldn't fall for her.

But our relationship was a heartworm, I couldn't get it out of my head. I thought that maybe staying away from her would fade away my feelings. But somehow these feelings were still raw, alive, and unfinished - just like an abandoned campsite who's smoldering embers still have the power to run a forest on fire.

"All of us are made of stardust," Tara says, making my heart waver. Tipping my head back, I looked up the stars. They were so, so, so beautiful, their startling brightness leaving us to laugh breathlessly into the night. "Like, our bodies are made of remnants of stars, and massive galactic explosions." she continues, resting her head on my shoulder.

I close my eyes, jutting my chin out at the city skyline. "What's your point?" I ask her pointedly.

"That some people are meant for each other. That maybe some people don't find each other by chance, or by accident - or what you call it... serendipity. But you meet them because at some point, you both were part of the same star." she smiles, "This way I can meet the dead, ha."

"Don't say that. Don't you ever say that again." I warn her in a treacherous voice, and she merely nods. "I'm sorry for the tone -"

"- no, it's okay -"

"- it's not, Tara. You know, all my life people have kind of seen people seen me in a certain way... and I don't want them to see me in that way." I begin, realizing that my sentences are incomprehensible. For anybody. "I'm sorry, I know it's hard to make you understand -"

"- no Virat, I get it." Tara says with a slight nod in my direction. "Some people like to show off their beauty because they want the world to see it, and others... Others try to hide their beauty because they want the world to see something else."

I can only smile at her words. "So what do you see in me?"

"Everything, Virat. Everything."

-

Right now it's 4 a.m. We are laughing just so hard, whispering the most juvenile confessions to each other, as we lie side by side, our bodies pressed together. For the first time in a very long time, I feel really alive, and for that I already know, there's no more reason denying it - I'm screwed.

I knew from the beginning that I will fall for her. All the fucking time.

"There's something I've been meaning to tell you, Virat." she says, her voice barely a whisper. I stare at her intently, preparing myself for her most juvenile confessions. But instead of her voice, Taylor Swift's voice is all I can grasp.

'Cause I can't help it if you look like an angel.

"What? Sorry. I couldn't catch that, Tara." I chuckle.

"No. It's nothing." Tara shook her head from side to side, eyes tightly shut. "No, never mind."

"No, you were telling me something. I'm listening now." I grapsed my fingers around her wrist, making her flinch. "Oh, sorry."

"It's okay." she heaved a sigh.

Maybe Tara wanted was trying to tell me something then.

And maybe, I would never know all of it now.

-

I LOVE TARA, only this thought lurks my mind.

But there is still a part of my mind preventing me from telling her because I don't want my feelings to ruin our friendship. Because Tara's friendship actually means the world to me.

Right now, I am sitting in a local coffee shop named "Bean There" near my hotel room, waiting for my orders to be served. It was almost a week after I had met Anvi and shifted to my hotel after the landslide mess was cleared.

I tap my fingers against the wooden coffee table mindlessly, a quirk on my lips as impatience started to rule my mind. I need to tell her, I need to tell her, I need to tell her -

But what after I tell her? A question formed at the back of my mind.

It isn't like I am going to take Tara with me to my home (unless she wants to). We are different, our professions are different, our lives are different. Then there's this voice inside me which always reminds me, but you love her -

"Sir," a waitress suddenly shows up in my eyesight. "Are you sure you don't want to order anything else? We've a lot of discount, courtesy of Winter Fest."

I raise my head, and give her a flat and withering look. I could sense that the waitress' comfort level started to lessen from my glare. "No, a black coffee without sugar will be enough. I've been waiting for ten minutes right now." I punch my statement outside my mouth which is enough to send the waitress running towards the kitchen, doing whatever the hell she is supposed to do.

Being in love is horrible in my opinion. It's like I've opened my chest, and opened up my heart and made myself so vulnerable. Like Tara gets inside me, and messes everything inside me. All my life, I've been building these defenses, this granite wall around my heart, so that no one can hurt me. And then, one stupid person named Tara Dobriyal enters my stupid life and does something stupid like giving me a stupid smile or wink, and then my life isn't mine anymore. Like she has etched her name intricately on my granite heart.

But in reality, love is a war, and it only knows how to takes hostages.

Love is horrible. Stupid. Idiotic.

I sigh, and still I am in love.

•••

I think it's the best if you don't try to supress your feelings. Maybe that's why I am driving my car in the direction to Tara's home so that I can finally tell her my feelings. I'm scared, I feel like I may have a panic attack any moment. But I've to tell her; it's about the bloody time.

While passing through the Marker Road which is bordered by forests on both the sides, I can hear the screams of the same person echoing in my ears just like they did two weeks back. The same skin piercing and agonizing screams which haunt me every night. I jump out of my car, running towards the direction of the noise with an innate feeling of paranoia.

Filled with apprehension, I glance up to see a girl standing there. A girl I knew very well.

"Tara?" It's all of a sudden silent. A metastatizing silence. After all people say, silent ones kill the most. And as we bore holes into each other's eyes, all I can see are the tear tracks caressing her cheeks. She has been crying.

She has been crying and screaming.

I don't know how to ask or pacify her mainly because I've never been the person who would love people questioning, hey? Were you crying just now? Why the hell were you crying? Oh, please stop crying.

Maybe Tara knows why I'm not making a move when she collapses against me. "I'm terrified, Virat." I feel my hands trembling, and my heart quivering with the fear about what she is going to say next. Tara looks at me with melancholy, skeleton sunken eyes, "I'm sorry, Virat. I lied to you - I didn't come to Dehradun to complete my documentary." I gulp as she continues, "I came here because," she points towards the stone which has been dug inside the Earth. I realize it's a tombstone with the letters RIP NISHA DOBRIYAL written over it. I link my arms with her, and make her stand against me. "That's my mom, Virat. This was the place where she died. This is the place which reminds me of home where I've never stayed. This is the place which breathes in nostalgia in my blood, Virat. And I miss her so, so, so damn much that sometimes I feel like I can't breathe, and my heart is over this huge boulder which no one can remove."

The word is at the tip of my tongue, how? which Tara answers without flinching, "It was a car accident. She was -" she closes her eyes, holding back her tears. "Virat, she was -"

I inhibit her from speaking any further as in no time, my hands loop around her waist, and all my eyes say is I know the pain, Tara. Then, I kiss her roughly like a sailor hanging onto his thin string of life amidst a shipwreck. I taste the saltiness in my tongue, and I don't know if the tears belong to her, or me. It can be both for all I know.

"I like you," I breathe in the kiss. The string shoots through her hand as she pulls away, and moves back.

She looks at me incredulously, wiping her tears. "What?"

I said I like you, while I'm supposed to say I love you, I think, scratching my forehead. "Scratch that, I love you, Tara."

Tara stares back at me in perpetual shock, like she had not been expecting this or maybe her feelings weren't the same, and then runs away from me in a heart beat.

And just like that: I shatter.