"Kiyansh do we have to seriously go?" I ask him outside my parent's home glancing at him nervously.

He's standing by the passenger door opened, waiting for me, his hands in his greyish blue jeans pocket, paired up with baby soft black t-shirt. I know because I had dumped my hand like a creep in the bag which his housekeeper had brought this morning at the condo. His hair was more messed because of the shower he had taken early in morning and he was smelling heavenly and god, that was not helping. He pulls out his hand from the pocket and holds it out towards me, his olive golden face glistening in the morning light, he was a modele pittoresque, I thought, as one French women in Paris told us when we were there for holidays. "Come on, it will be just for an hour we can make excuse for the match. Your dad will be beyond elated, I will handle your mom." He says easily.

I sigh and put my hand on his coming out of the car. He was right about dad at least, he had rang me thrice since morning, shaking us out of the sleep first. The thought of morning leaves heat of embarrassment pooling in my stomach, because apparently Kiyansh had put a pillow between us maybe as a barrier or something and I, as a sleep monster had woken up above that pillow, my legs on top of Kiyansh, my arms clinched to his waist, my face stuffed into his chest. I had no shame at all, even unconsciously I could not leave him alone. I did not know for what reason he even considered me as his company. I mean he was the one who cooked for me, calmed me, made me decaf, and also helped me completing my short story. And now this the top of the list, dealing with my crazy family. God whatever good work I had done in the past life, please make me do that in this life too. So I can have Kiyansh and my dad in my next life too and also Kiyansh's mom and also...okay the list went too long.

"Oh hello Shanvi Beta, Kiyansh Baba." Tanya Kaki the head housekeeper of my parent's house opened the door beaming. She was Ashraf Kaka's wife and also she cooked food for us when my parents weren't around or busy in work. She was a beautiful spidery woman with tall limbs and sharp face, a 'Maharshtrian' by birth.

"Hello Tanya Kaki. How are you? Where is Kaka?" I asked hugging her.

"Oh he's at the office to get madam's work file." I roll my eye, trust my mother to send Kaka to get work file at ten am on Sunday.

"Guess what?" Kiyansh winks and ceremoniously turns his back towards us. Tanya Kaki laughs and pats on his back knowing the drill.

And he turns with hands full of Dairy Milk, which she picks out from his hands grinning gleefully.

"You remembered Baba?" She says with a fond expression.

"Of course I did." Kiyansh smiles, and my chest beats a little too loudly, these are the little things that makes me love him more.

"What is happening?" the click of heels this early morning could only mean one person in the world.

As sure as I was, it was my mother in a minted red marbled velvet dress and red Gucci heels smiling voluptuously, her lips painted a perfect matt red. The epitome of perfect buisness woman who has no time for other wordily things like meeting me, and some traitorous part of me still tugs inside me when I think that she is going for a meeting leaving us even when she knew we were coming.

Her caramel eyes falls almost instantly on me, and I set myself straight like a rod protecting a ground. Then it passes onto my white chucks, and her face turns sour.

She hides the expression almost instantly turning towards Kiyansh, smiling. "You came."

She didn't even look at me properly. The thought crawls like a traitor inside my head, I shake my head as if it can shake the thought away.

The thing is I used to be sad by all this, when I was a kid; I tried every whim and every way to make my mother happy. I used pink hair bands because she wanted me to, pink shoes. But then she would find fault in my clothes, like how I was not supposed to be obsessed with 'Hagrid' and buy different plants and pets. So I did for a long time what she wanted me to, to just once get a look that those other kids got from their mom's, to hear once from her mouth that she loved me, or was proud of me like Kiyansh's mom told me she was.

But then, sometimes you try so much for a person that in the end you realise that there is nothing left. You have tried and drained yourself out, and you accept that's how it's going to be between you and that person.

There was uncomfortable silence.

With a side glance I saw Kiyansh nodding his head a little, his expression closed off. I almost wanted Kiyansh to have a good relationship with my mother because some selfish part of me wondered that maybe then my mother would take interest in me, but I knew that was a lie.

Tanya Tai took hold of the situation and laughed falsely, saying, "Sahib is cooking extravagant food in the kitchen since morning, let's go."

We all followed herinside the house, it looked clean pristine and like any other shiny bungalowfrom outside with the package of an elaborate garden and backyard. But from inside, it was like walking in a museum of black and gold with creamand off white painted walls, bold structures and artefacts from all over theworld which my mother collected almost obsessively. My favorite part of thishouse was the dream catcher inscribed ceilings glinting with designs inspiredby Vedic era. 

And then I turn to the most special part of the house, my eyes move to 'The dumpy cups and rainbow desserts', as my father called it. I don't know how my mother allowed it, but there was a baby blue coloured wall in the kitchen across the kitchen counter where my dad was so indulged in turning something on the pan that he didn't even hear us coming. The wall was painted with chef caps, rasgullas, jalebis, cakes, cream balls, and rainbow creams. And in that wall was a glass shelf full of Uncle Sam's cups and glasses which Kiyansh and I painted. He follows me to the shelf and picks one of them standing beside me.

Its icy blue, thecolor of sky on a cold winter morning, and on it is written with black, Iwill miss you. 

I close my eyes, the painful tug in my chest forcing pictures inside myhead. It goes to that day at the airport, waiting, willing and breaking. How Iwas standing there with a bag full of teared letters hanging on my back, how Ihad teared myself along the letters, how the meant to be sole receiver of theletters never received it, and how I was still waiting with tapes scrambled onthe sheets, broken pieces of heart glued together, hoping it will remain so,hoping that someone who can mend it with one glance would come and tell youthat they will mend the parts that you can't.

Hoping that I could find the gut to hand him those along with myself, if he would take them, but soon it was 12:20 and ten minutes later I had to start boarding on the flight.

And my heart was hammering inside my chest, breaking into so many pieces that I did not think I could ever mend it up. And then my mother's sigh like, a venom spilled inside my heart, "Its better if he does not come."

The call on announcement, and how I told myself again and again, 'It's better if he does not come,' how my eyes started to spill with the heart inside my chest, an already broken pipeline coming apart, spilling everything in all direction, and how I do not remember hugging my father or looking at my mother through the haze inside me. And then how I started walking, how suddenly the voice that haunted me every moment of my life shouted my name, and how I thought it was still a dream or worse a nightmare, because I was going away from him, and still imagining him.

But then, the voice was louder, the name screamed from the pit of stomach, the voice that somewhat breaks because it is too loud and too hoarse. And I turned, and there he was, running towards me, and at that moment I felt like those girls in movies, how the one person they love, can't live without, runs and stops them, tells them miraculously that they can't live without them too.

And then there he was, hugging me, picking me up from the ground. And at that moment, I did not care about anything else in the world. I wanted to stop that moment and live there forever. But life doesn't stop, time doesn't stop. And it's whether you move forward with time, or get dragged with it.

And then his arm left me, his hand clutched mine, his face drenched in tears too. I had never seen him cry like that, not since I had broken my leg and got admitted to hospital, not since that one painful night we lost Charlie and we both kept turning to each other and denied to leave each other for even a single minute for days after that. We both somehow knew when the other was breaking inside, "I thought I would miss you." He said and a single tear escaped his eyes and falling on my hand.

My heart ached and it took a single minute for me to rub the words away from my throat, "How can you ever miss, miss me?"

His head fell on mine and the world fell away again. And I imagined him telling me, "Don't go away so I won't miss you." And in that moment I didn't even care if he loved me or not. I just cared that he told me to stay and I would have.

But it doesn't happen that way, the picture is still clear in my head, it's sharp, poking like needles inside me, a balloon losing all the air, and I feel the tear escaping my eyes right now, hear him keeping the cup back on the shelf, and I feel his fingers on my face, wiping it away.

Past mingling with present,how I wish I could go back and change that day.

The way those hands left mine, the same hands that are now touching my face, and how lost I felt. How bereft, as if I had lost everything that I ever held, at that moment. And all I remember after that is his mother hugging me, soothing hands on my back, telling me it will all be okay and that they would come to visit me. All I remember in that moment is looking at Kiyansh again and again, searching for one word, 'Stay.' And how he handed me the same icy blue cup with the cursive big words, 'I will miss you.'

How I clutched thatcup in my hands for years, and wondered what he would have said if that daybefore walking down that path away from him, I would have told him, I miss you now, and I don't want to miss you at all.