Divya's birthday fell in the mid of August, hence as soon as the last week of July fell in Nandini and Natasha had a huge surprise for her. Each day they would share a meme made on her life, with the ugliest photos that were available with them. At times she would think that maybe this would be it, but they would once again surprise her with yet another meme and photo.

This had created a buzz and almost everyone around them knew that it was Divya's birthday soon. A few had come into her DM telling her how irritating it had become now, while others had been questioning about the buzz over the crush meme. It was all silly, but cute. None had taken so much effort to do so much for Divya, by the time she could have celebrated huge birthdays with her friends they had shifted to other places that had left her with her, celebrating her birthday on her own.

However now, with the kind of things that Nandini and Natasha were doing, Divya had begun to wish for things. She wished that her friends would come to her home to give her a surprise, she wished that her family would give her something, she wished for a good gift, something that she could cherish for a long time to come.

On the day before her birthday, Divya somehow was quite upset for she realized how stupid her wish was. It was practically impossible for her friends to come here all the way from Bombay, there were travelling restrictions and on top of that they weren't really that good friends to have all of them coming here.

But it was around 4 in the evening when she got a call from her junior who as well stayed in borivali. He asked her if she could come down, as there was something that he wanted to give her. Divya was so excited, she knew that Nandini was preparing a gift for her, but to receive it a day before her birthday was really something.

She walked down in her pajamas and waited for him to come; however, it wasn't just him, rather Nandini as well. The Moment she saw her, Divya sprinted off towards her and hugged her tightly. At that moment she thought that she would almost cry.

"How come ? I mean ..shit this is such a wonderful surprise!!" Divya said. She could feel that bright smile on her face, she wanted to dance about and scream out to everyone how her best friend had come here to wish her birthday.

"Your gift, and the mug cake." Nandini handed her a box along with a mug that had her famous mug cake in it. For about an hour or so the group stood there downstairs talking about, taking pictures and making fun of each other. Soon Nandini's parents asked her that they should leave because it was getting quite late.

Divya bid an almost tearful bye to Nandini and walked back home to check all the contents of the box.

The box had a pair of jhumkas, the one that Divya had loved and Nandini had asked her to choose for herself, turns out it was for Divya. Then there was a scented candle, a couple of bookmarks, a scented soap, a dreamcatcher keychain, chocolates, and the most important thing a book.

Divya picked it up and opened it and was shocked to see her photos, her pictures with her family, and then a message from her dad, her mom , her sister, her brother. Then on the next page there was a message from her friends Adhiti, Sakshi, Priyanka, it was so overwhelming.

Sakshi and Priyanka had time and again been vocal about their feelings and how they missed her, but receiving a message from Adhiti was something. She was so happy to read that, however the more she read it, she realized that the asshole had merged two to three messages from google and clubbed them into one. Other than one statement with her teasing her about her crushes nothing was original. But she didn't expect much from her...this was more than enough- at least from Adhiti.

Nandini had then divided the book into sections with friends, starting off with Dia whose message was so huge that Divya decided to read it a bit later on for she knew it would take some time to process and accept it. Then there were a couple of pictures and then came all her friends from their group starting off with Nandini followed by Natasha, Simran,Rohit, Geet, Rohan, a few of her juniors. There was than again a break with loads of pictures all in groups with the boys. And the moment Divya turned the page her heart stopped beating. More than the message it was picture that was standing out.

On the left page were two images of her and Madhav, one was the candid one which they had taken at Mussoorie, and the other was that of theirs in the train that Nadini had taken without their notice. Divya was busy eating ice cream and smiling as Madhav was whispering something to her.

The two of them looked so cute, alas the truth was something else. The rest of the pages had Aman, Atharva, Manav, and a few friends of hers from Milange and their professors.

The messages that they had written seemed as if they were talking about someone else. Divya had never thought that she could be an inspiration, she could be a great friend, that someone would think that she is obnoxious and only to know how different she is from what she seems like on the first meeting. Most of the letters from her classmates were the same, them telling her how they thought that she was a studious and a serious girl only to later on know how fun loving, crazy and adventurous she could be as well.

It was nice to receive so much dopamine for a day. Later one when Divya's aunt called her and she showed all her gifts to them like that of a little kid, she was that happy. It was after dinner when she was once again having a look at her box that her mom took it from her and kept in the cupboard saying if it were upto Divya she might actually sleep with it beside her.

And Divya was as guilty as she could be, for she might have actually done that.

By 11pm her cousins had called her, Parth was at her place once again lodging in the leaving room while they all chatted on the call, and as soon as it was 12 everyone began yelling Happy Birthday, as her phone rang as well.

To her utter surprise it was Madhav. She was so thrilled and nervous, on one side was her family who were waiting for an hour to wish her and then there was Madhav. She let her phone ring and as soon as the call with her cousins got over, she was about to call Madhav when she received his call once again.

The moment the call was connected, Madhav began singing Happy birthday to her. It was so sweet and Divya could feel all the butterflies in her stomach, she yelled subconsciously at Madhav to not be so sweet alas she couldn't wish for anything more than this it seemed.

The two talked for a while as Parth came knocking on the door,

"Divya, Come Nadnini is about to call and we need to discuss something." Divya glared at him for disturbing her however she nodded her head and went back to her call.

"I think I -"

"Yeah sure." Madhav said at once, " Go ahead, I will give you a call later on maybe. Have a nice day, Happy Birthday Divya!" getting off the call with Madhav, Divya went off to take the next call of the night. The smile on her face was as bright as a shining star.

*****

"So you mean to say that Madhav called you at 12 am last night, and then he posted a story for you with a long ass message...that's cute but what the hell why is he giving you mixed signals again?" Sakshi yelled on the video call.

It was the afternoon of her birthday, she was not to get out of her room and was hence seated there with her little cousin brother talking on the video call with Adhiti and Saakshi. It had been quite a while that the three of them would have sat and chatted about things here and there.

"Well, it did feel good to me, but I know, I know that it's nothing more than being a friend, and he did write such long ass messages for all his friends."

"But dude still, I am not happy with the way he behaved, he could have been a little more decent, any which ways are you okay after all that fiasco?" Saakshi complained.

"I am, I am completely fine, in fact we did have a video call as well after that and it went well, I mean what's the use of holding up a grudge against them, what good is it going to do to me?" Divya explained. However she couldnt forget the painful days when she had to get over that episode and forgive them.

"That's true, but still I am not able to digest that you have moved on from Abhinav now and thought the guy rejected you, you do like someone else..." Adhiti said while Divya smiled back at her. She could understand her well. For years Divya had had feelings for Abhinav, and then to finally come and tell them and accept the fact that she likes someone else now was something new.

"Don't worry you will come along." Divya said and was suddenly pushed aside as her cousin brought his head right towards the screen.

"Even I want to talk to them." He called out.

"Alright sit here on my lap, don't put your head on the screen." Divya scolded.

"Divya, why are you scolding the poor kid?" Aditi and Saakshi chided her.

"He is no kid, you should see the condition of my room and our living room, we have already cleaned it twice." The four of them kept on talking while the others got the decorations done. In the evening, Divya got dressed into a pretty black coloured dress much to her mom's dislike, while the others got dressed in blue and white coloured outfits as per the theme.

Divya had two more surprises as there were cakes from her favourite cake shop, her aunt had sent her favourite chocolate overload cake, her dad got her a new phone, her uncle from her mom's side gave her a set of tops. A gift that she received each year without fail, irrespective of if she celebrated her birthday or not.

Her 22nd birthday had gone in the best way one could have wished for. Her friends took such great initiative, her family was together after such a long time, Parth had finally got close to his dad after the heart to heart talk with him..everything seemed perfect, all that was left was now for her to get graduated and start looking for that perfect job.

However there was so much left to her story, how was it possible that things would come to end just like that?