I have always wondered how it would feel like to be loved back.

The amount of films that I have made, the amount of scripts that I have written about love, there always comes a point in every one of them, where the heroine or the hero in the film feels helpless, lost, desperate, searching for the question if they are ever going to be loved back by the person they love the most in the world?

The films always end with a twist, sometimes they find that they are but they can't do anything about it because something worse is happening, other times it ends before they can because something worse has already happened.

I guess my life is the second type of movie.

There's this woman standing wearing a yellow Dior dress, and Bottega Veneta shoes in my apartment, the girlfriend of someone I love the most in the world.

What are you supposed to do when you love someone, and you have to take their love someone to a party arranged by them, so that they can finally end it all with one knee on the ground, the other up, hand holding out a ring box?

'There's going to be anannouncement.' he had said. And my heart had died down a little inside my chest.

"Shanvi, could you please help me with my hair?" She says, hand curling thoughtlessly through her thick raven black hair, her heart-shaped face turned in mild annoyance towards the mirror. The Times of India called it a 'face of the century.'

I stop my hands restlessly settling things right and left on top of my writing table, realising I have been doing it since the past five minutes, and she is annoyed by it."Yeah sure."

She opens her Coco flap bag, and takes the bottle of Jo Malone's Flowerbomb out, filling my nostrils with the sharp perfume. "Which hairstyle do you think will look good with this dress?" She asks thoughtlessly, waving the bottle in her hand in front of her hair, still looking at the mirror.

And my mind stubbornly goes there; his deep voice doesn't waste a drumbeat of a second in invading my head and puncturing my heart with a knife. Just let your hair open, he had said to me countless times in the past.

I don't want to give this to her, my heart whispers frantically, don't give this to her. But I remind myself there was nothing mine of him to hold on to, to not give it to his fiancé.

"I-I think you should just let it be open," I say hating myself, and hating the slight quiver in my tone.

Her caramel eyes dart to me, and then narrows, as if she couldn't decide if I was serious or joking. She decides to give in a laugh, and turns back to the mirror of the dressing table. "What? No please Shanvi, I think I shouldn't even have asked, you don't know anything about fashion," her eyes roll, "No offense."

"It's just that I think he would like it, especially if it's as important as the announcement day." My heart canters before I even realise what I just blabbered out.

"What announcement?" She turns like a falcon frowning at me. My chest starts thudding so hard; it stumbles around like a table with a broken leg, around and around and then falling into the ground and smashing into bits of pieces.

I give in an awkward laugh and stammer out, "Nothing."

She takes an unfaltering step towards me, her caramel eyes zooming down on mine, a cat's aim on a rat.

I know she won't let it go like this. Her narrowed eyes and my thumping heart are testament to that. I have never been good with lies. Dammit why did I have to go and spoil it at the last moment? I wait for her to step back and let it go, but she doesn't. So I take a giant gulp of breath, clear my throat valiantly, and try, "He....he...." the words stick inside my throat, burning like a hot scalding iron.

The memory of the gold and brown flecked eyes flashes inside my head, the one that I have been trying in vain to push too hard away. The day is like a red traffic signal, but I know I have to keep going, even when it's going to butcher me into pieces.

"It's time that I announce our engagement at the party." He had said in that curt voice of his; the one that hid thousands of emotions behind it. His eyes had been so striking golden brown it could have light up a grate.

I remember not being able to breathe and forcing myself to not ask if he had already proposed to her and they had gotten engaged. My mind had whirled like a Banshee with no sound. I had found myself speechless, but when he had kept looking at me, I had forced a real smile on my face.

I always did, for him.

"So you both have decided?" I had gathered the words and pushed them out through my pinching windpipe.

I had gotten my answer as his long golden fingers had moved up from the red-white clothed checkered table and had rested on top of his chiselled jaw. He did it when he wanted to delude the world that he was thinking, but it was something he did when he was nervous. I knew it because he had started doing it from fourth grade in school, from the day he was forced to go to swimming lessons and he was there standing in the line wearing blue swim shorts and rubbing his jaw endlessly as if a bug had stuck there.

At first, Kiyansh didn't notice it, and ignorantly took my hands in his, instead of me initiating the hand holding whenever we walked to the swimming lessons. But when I took my hands out of his more than two times outside the swimming pool that day, he had frowned at me and asked if something was wrong. And I had lied to him, that we should stop doing it because we both had grown up and others would think something else of it.

I didn't want to be embarrassed by telling him the truth.

He hadn't said anything but just stared at me outside the swimming pool building, even when the bell had rang and the throngs of students kept walking past us and inside the building.

He had stared for a long time, then eventually just nodded, turned and walked away from me.

From that day on, we had stopped holding hands when he was nervous. Even when my hand itched to hold his so bad sometimes that I had to clutch them into a fist, to hold myself back.

He didn't rub his jaw anymore but I knew the signs.

"Let's leave it as a surprise." He had said that day with a cavalier tone, dropping a bomb on my heart.

I knew what he was talking about. Sahana hated talking about future because the only thing that mattered to her was her present acting career and Kiyansh. So I had taken a painful gasp of uncertain breath and forced myself to smile, "Okay surprise it is then."

"Hey Shanvi! Back to earth!" fingers snapped in front of my eyes, extracting me out of the painful memory. The pain stabbed through my gut, as she asked "What did he say, what announcement, are you going to tell me?"

I shook my head in answer.

Her eyes hardened. "Shanvi I swear I am not stepping into any freaking party if you are not going to tell me, right fucking now what were you talking about."

My heart bobbed to my throat. I had to tell her, I knew she was stubborn enough to keep her words. I closed my eyes and pushed through my parched throat, spoiling my best friend's surprise. "He's going to announce about your engagement at the party."

"What? What engagement!" she frowned, stepping back from me. I looked at her in confusion, thinking maybe she heard me wrong, but then she said, "You know it can't happen right? I am at the peak of my career. We just can't."

"So he didn't propose you?" My heart thudded against my chest in such high staccato; I thought I was going to hear the sound of my heartbeat in my ears, the rest of my life.

"What? No." She said voice stern, "When did he talk to you about this?"

My throat felt tight, I closed my mouth shut. I wasn't going to tell on him, he was my best friend. I had already done enough damage, maybe he meant it as a surprise, maybe, I didn't freaking know what was he trying to do. But it wasn't my place to talk. I kept my mouth shut.

She glared at me, staring at me as if that would make me talk more.

You don't know how lucky you are, do you? I wanted to say to her, hating her Flowerbomb perfume.

"Guess I'll have to talk to him myself," she said with a hard edged tone. Then turned and walked out of the room, her open hair billowing around her and the Coco flap bag knocking against my bedroom door.

Author's Note-

So how did you feel about chapter 1?

This is Quarantine time I hope you are doing good.

This quarantine made me change my life on so different levels. I am really grateful that we can be safe by staying at home. Stay Safe. Stay Happy 🧡