"Woh cheez jise dil kehte hain,
Hum bhool gaye hai usay rakh ke kahin."

~ Meher ~

Mumbai, India

I thought I had lost my head at twenty five. Kabir Raizada asking me about my well being was the last thing that would come to my imagination. I stared at the message for a solid ten minutes, I counted it by the way, but I couldn't help not stare at it.

This was such an alien thing to me. Every day you are not used to your arch nemesis asking about your well being. Well, this was fishy. Did he want something from me? Even if he did, there was no way he would be so polite.

I kept the message unanswered and quickly typed Ahaan a yes. Another ping came in a millisecond. Damn, that guy was on his phone the entire time. Obviously, I mean it must be nerve wracking for him.

I checked his message.

How about tomorrow?

I bit my bottom lip. Tomorrow was Tara's death anniversary. There was no way I could go tomorrow.

I quickly wrote another message.

How about the day after?

A thumbs up reaction to my message answered the question. So I had a date, a real one.

I did not know how to feel about it. I think it is sometimes okay to feel about yourself, second chances are always nice. The pain of losing Abhimanyu would never go away but maybe finding a companion and sharing the pain would help me reduce it to an extent.

I did not know why but I sometimes felt like having a partner can be nice. Like sharing your entire day with him during the night or just talking in general.

But then again, there were times when I thought that I could manage well without a partner just fine. Well, if anytime I felt that I am alone, I could always adopt a baby and raise them.

But in every thought of mine, the thought of having love and romance was always on the backseat. Even if I was finding a partner, I was not sure if I was looking for love. I don't think there are second chances in love.

Will there be a person who could just offer to be my partner rather than find love in our relationship?

Probably not.

Love and trust were the most basic things in a relationship.

A snap of fingers made me come back to my senses. I looked up to see Aryan, his toothy Colgate smile seemed weird to me.

I flicked my finger over his teeth. He winced as he tried to hold his mouth. I held back from laughing lowkey, preventing him from being offended.

"Let's go," I linked my arm with his, picking my bag from the desk as we made our way out of the office.

A piece of mellow music played in the car as we drove towards our home, Aryan hummed to the music the entire way. The afternoon sun directly fell over my face, making me wear my shades to protect my eyes.

"Aunty is pissed at you," Aryan broke the silence and I looked at him with a sigh. "When is she not?"

"True that," he nodded in agreement.

I looked out of the window and the thoughts of my mother consumed me. "What did I do this time?" I finally asked, partly not interested because I knew the answer already.

"You did not spend time with her ever since you came back," I knew it, "she even went as far as to compare you with Bhai."

My jaw clenched at the mention of him. Sometimes I felt that I was born to the wrong mother, he should have been her child. By the way, Dad's amazing. But I can't say the same about Mom.

But Mom was true. I did not spend time with her. I just forgot. Maybe, I was a little inconsiderate as well. Damn Meher, get your shit together.

"Your brother must be happy seeing my name being butchered by my mother," I mumbled to myself.

"Hein?"

"Mom can be," I paused for a better choice of words, "suffocating," I muttered the words at the end, guilty of using such terms for my own mother.

"I get that bro," he puts his hand on mine, "Shikha aunty is a handful."

"Haina!" I exclaimed looking at him, "she wants me to socialise and do drugs," when I noticed his widened eyes, "I was kidding. But on a serious note, she's never happy with me. She always wants me to be someone I cannot be."

"Happy," he said as he focused on his driving.

"She wants you to be happy," he cleared.

"I am happy, Aryan," I muttered, avoiding his gaze.

He snorted. "Even a fool can see how unhappy you are. And she's your mom, she knows better. You know ever since you came back from Bangalore," my heart drops at the mention of my past, "she has a hunch that something has happened, something really bad. You were not here but we have listened to her saying every time that something has changed within you, you are not the same anymore. Even if you were quiet and introverted, you were affectionate, you paid attention to little details of other people. But suddenly you don't. In her language, you have acquired passive aggression."

Silence followed after he said those words. Was I so unbothered that I did not notice people around me?

I was speechless. I was in no two minds to speak and if I did, it wouldn't go down well.

"Do you think it's that way?" I sigh.

"What?"

"That I am emotionless, unbothered and all the other things she said?"

"You are," an instant reply came, "to some extent," he corrected his words in a better way. "Meher, some incidents change people, it changed you for a fact. But you know what the problem is? That you don't share," I did not want to get teary eyes but then I couldn't tolerate the tears brimming. His words pierced through my soul like a knife, every word that he had said was true.

It was a habit that I could never shed, something that stayed with me all this while. Sometimes I did feel that I failed my parents' purpose of moving cities to an extent because even then and even now, I never shared anything significant in my life with them.

I had watched the twins and even Kabir share their life's achievements, relationships and even smallest to smallest things with uncle and aunty but I never could do the same. It was in my nature.

I loved my parents a lot but I always felt something holding me back, it wasn't as easy as sharing with Arya and Aryan. I could have told Mom about Abhimanyu but whenever I wanted to share, something held me back, as if I was chained.

I braced myself when I saw our home from a distance, I knew that Mom wasn't going to say anything. But I would feel the distance anyway.

When I entered home, I saw people sitting in the living area, which included the Moms and Arya.

And I saw the way Divya aunty gave a stern eye to Mom. I ignored the exchange and masked my face with a smile and went over to them, giving each one of them a hug.

"I am so sorry I couldn't greet you all this morning," I apologised, "my boss had summoned me to the office." Aryan shook his head looking at my futile attempt. I shrugged and turned to look at my mother.

Mom just nodded and she handed me a glass of water. I gladly took it since I was in need of one. I finished my glass and kept it on the table, and hugged her from the side, resting my chin on her shoulder. Mom breathed out, in a not so subtle way, her head resting against my forehead.

"What happened, bachcha?" She softly asked which made me smile and I shook my head in answer. "Can I not hug my Mom?"

"It's not every day that you do this kind of thing," she mumbled but loud enough for me to hear her complain. I hugged her even tighter.

At the end of everything, she was my mom and this was my family. The family that I could always come back to without any regrets. I had so many people around me to think about me that sometimes there were days when I could feel my pain being very less, as they were always there to make me smile.

"Are you crying?" I felt her hand wipe my cheeks. I hadn't realised that I was crying until she pointed it out. I quickly wiped my tears and smiled at her. She looked warily at me. "What is it?"

"Nothing, Mom. It's been a long while, like this," Arya awed from the other side and I just shook my head at her childishness.

I was lying.

It had really been a long while since I was finally home.

*   *   *

Every year this day and the day a week later felt like it was a dark phase in my life. I could still see her last smile, her last laugh the way we joked over the gate crashing a wedding. Yeah, that was the last time I spoke to her.

And then suddenly the next day, I get a call. Upon reaching her place, I saw loads of people surrounding the area. The police had barricaded the area where she had fallen after she had jumped from the building.

Her body was not there but I saw the pool of blood. The blood of Tara. My eyes travelled to the distraught faces of Abhimanyu and Sahil, especially Sahil. He looked so broken that day.

The day I and Abhi clicked our last picture together, hours before he died was the time when I saw Sahil being normal for the last time, the last time when I saw him joke and smile. Even that didn't last.

The kind of love we had only gave us the pain, the pain of separation. Sahil could never say to Tara that he loved her, that it was always her. He was pretty good at masking his feelings, that was the only day I watched him cry. The next day he was fine and even upon asking a lot of times, he never told me what he was actually feeling.

Today, I decided not to go to the office. I'd rather stay home and watch Tara's favourite movies, and eat her favourite food like I always did. Doing things that she liked made me feel that she was there with me and we were having a day out.

So I did the first task of the day. Watch A Walk To Remember. I hated melodramas but Tara loved them. I was in the movie room, my eyes trained on the screen as I was halfway through the film when I heard the door open.

"What are you doing here?" I fired, as soon as I saw Kabir in the room.

"Nothing," he shrugged and came over to sit beside me.

Something was off.

"Fancy seeing you here Mini Mathur," he casually rolls up his sleeves when I notice that he wasn't dressed in his usual office wear. Instead, he was dressed in his long shirt and jeans.

"Mini what?" Kabir whistled a song, ignoring me, training his eyes on the screen.

What the fuck was happening?

"Out with it, Raizada," I said as I was unable to handle this type of Kabir.

There I saw him look, that nasty glint in his eyes. I may not know how great of a son Kabir is, but I was aware of his bad side.

That's because I have only seen that all through the years of knowing him.

Kabir's face came dangerously close to mine, making me shiver. In a repulse, I moved back, making him chuckle. I narrowed my eyes at him because this was definitely not something that you consider to be funny.

Kabir Raizada had lost his mind or maybe it was me.

I was certain that he was enjoying my discomfort, considering the fact he had smiled three times in a row in front of me.

"Well, I just wanted to spend some time with you," he went back to his original position but his elbow still rested over the handrest of my seat.

"Are you kidding me?" I watched him in disbelief, scoffing at his nonchalance.

"Do I look like I am kidding?" He looked at me seriously and for a moment, I was frozen. Maybe because it was the way he looked at me.

It was always the same— it had the same hate, that dark intensity but this time, there was something else as well. Something I couldn't figure out. I noticed his lips curl up and I rolled my eyes at his cheap trick.

"How do you know Sahil?" Not again. I closed my eyes and then focused on the screen. "Why do you want to know?"

"I mean, I am just curious," he shrugged.

Liar.

"As if you would not have hired a bunch of private investigators to get details on us," I scoffed and boy, I hit the nail. He didn't say anything further.

For a long time we didn't say anything, the silence prevailed. To be very honest, I had never spent so much time alone with Kabir during my twenty five years of existence. My eyes took momentary glances at him from sideways and I kept on wondering what he was on about.

Kabir was someone who never spoke to anyone unless he saw his benefit. I was sure he was here for a reason.

He sat and watched the entire movie.

"The movie is great but it's not my type," he said, as the end credits started playing on the screen.

"No one asked for your opinion," I rolled my eyes at him.

"The movie is sad," he said anyways, but I caught on to the sad undertone. To people, it may look like he was taunting the film but I knew better. Whenever Radhika came up, I always felt bad for him. He did not deserve it.

And so didn't I.

The reason why I always ignored the discussion of Radhika passing was another sore spot for me. First, I couldn't see someone bearing the same pain as me. Not seeing your love again felt like the biggest trauma, whenever the thought crosses your mind, the pain feels fresh.

And second, I was jealous of Kabir Raizada.

He has countless memories of her. He got to experience what being in love and a relationship felt like. Whereas I, my story ended before it could start.

I was not saying that my pain is bigger than his or not, it just made me think about how it hurt really bad.

I switched off the screen and got up to collect my things. When I turned around, I saw him stand closer to me, our faces inches away from each other, our bodies almost touching each other.

I got startled by the proximity and took a step back and that's when his hand took hold of my wrist and pulled me to him, this time even closer.

I struggled hard to get my hand out of his hold but he was stronger.

"What the fuck are you doing, Kabir? Leave me!" I tried to free my hand but there was no luck.

I literally had no idea why this was happening until I heard him say.

"Marry me, Meher Mathur."

Bang bang wada wada boom boom!! I am done with another chapter this week! Yayyyyy!! Hopefully, I made up for being late all this while.

What a weird proposal it is, right? But weird is me and I am known to make weird marriages happen so watch this getting unfolded lmao.

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My semester starts next week. Wish me luck!

With Love,

Akii.