Hello Fam :)

Happy Reading...

Cabir was officially bored.

It was Sunday and the boys had all the house for themselves as Nyonika was out. Cabir lazed around till afternoon before Mr. Manik Malhotra dragged him down to the dining table and forced some food into his system. Mr. Manik Malhotra used to be adorable because he loved Cabir like his baby and cared for him. Cabir was too in love with Mr. Manik Malhotra until that dreadful moment when Mr. Manik Malhotra showed his true colors.

Mr. Manik Malhotra went through his notebooks and forced him to do his homework. Mr. Manik Malhotra didn't even listen when Cabir told him, he never listened to any class. Instead, Mr. Manik Malhotra gave him a few video lectures to refer and dumped his textbooks on Cabir's desk. The whole ordeal might or might not have something to do with Cabir accidentally picking on the ends of a really old novel of his brother and not letting him read his current novel.

For whatever be the reason, he lost any fondness over Mr. Manik Malhotra but the ideal brother that he was, he went and tried to listen to the lectures. By the time his head almost threatened to fall off from his neck, it was seven in the evening. Grabbing his keys, he went across the floor and found Mr. Manik Malhotra engrossed in his new novel without a care in the world. Betrayal. Cabir glared at the novel who was the reason behind the rift between his once-favorite brother and him and then he left without making a noise.

He had some clubbing to do after stuffing all those highly dangerous information inside his sensitive brain.

XXX

Cabir sipped his drink. It was boring. Even though it was Sunday and the club was a little bit crowded, he warmed his way through the bartender to get his drink within minutes using a casual wink and a few picky lines.

Skills. Skills.

All his friends from the city either already had their plans for the night or were finishing their pending works for the coming week. Damn. Kids nowadays don't have planning in life. Look at him, keeping the class and homework up to date. At that instant, Cabir halted his thought process because one more word and even his brain would realize him going overboard. He came to his initial thought.

It was boring.

He craned his neck casually to find something interesting and smirked when he found a girl sipping her drink, a few chairs away from them. Someone interesting. He sauntered towards her dodging the others on his way.

"May I have the privilege to buy a drink for this fallen angel?", he asked to gain the attention of his head girl.

Nandini rotated on her seat and frowned at him. "Don't you have any other work than constantly flirting with random girls?", she asked.

Cabir pouted. In his list of people who punctured his ego regularly, this girl would lose to his mom with a very negligible margin. He shuddered on a hypothetical thought of what would happen if they both would gang upon him. He prayed for himself and glanced up at the source of all his thoughts recently. She went back to sipping her drink and royally ignoring him. What the hell? He poked at her shoulder to gain her attention again. "You aren't some stranger", he told her and grinned. "In fact, you are way too special for me than I have initially assessed you to be."

Nandini snapped her head at him. "I won't think twice to kill you if you utter any nonsense from that garbage mouth of yours, Mr. Malhotra."

Cabir felt old at being referred to as Mr. Malhotra. He mentally apologized to Manik for having called him as one since the afternoon. "Am I not even allowed to share my happiness with you?", he asked. "Wait a minute. Why do you always think that I will propose to you or something? I have told you, I have a girlfriend."

"Because I don't trust you and you haven't been doing anything other than flirting with me since the time we have met", muttered Nandini.

Amidst the music, Cabir had to strain his ears to listen to her and raised an eyebrow at her words. "If I am not wrong, you must have been through numerous proposals already, aren't you?", he asked. In his large range of real-life experiences, he knew when a person's temper rose.

"Isn't that an art which your clan has mastered it for years? Pretend to be the best boy in the whole damn world, trap the girl and use her to satisfy your male chauvinism before leaving her alone", she screamed.

Cabir glared at her. "There are exceptions, Nandini. Every single boy doesn't reach your expectations."

"Of course, there are exceptions but you are not one of them."

"Woah! Woah!" Cabir looked around to see if they had gained any audience but everyone was in their world. He pulled his seat just beside her so that he could have a conversation without entertaining the crowd. "You know what? My confidence will commit suicide if I talk to you for another five minutes", he told her.

"I didn't beg you to talk to me", she said and sipped her drink.

"No. I was desperate to talk to you", said Cabir and rolled his eyes. "Listen, I just want to thank you. Could you go for ten minutes without snapping at me?"

She scrunched her eyebrows. "Thank me?"

Cabir nodded. "Can we go away from this music?"

Nandini scrunched her nose. Is the scary head girl doubting his intentions? She sighed and nodded before gulping her drink all at once.

"Slow down, lady hulk", commented Cabir. "How many drinks can you handle without getting drunk?"

"That's none of your business", she snapped and walked away from the bar.

Cabir rolled his eyes and followed her.

XXX

They found an abandoned bench at a far corner of the premises of the club. Cabir tried to frame the sentences inside his head but they were jumbled up and suddenly he felt the scarcity of the alphabets in the English language. He fared well in front of the Nyonika Malhotra, Nandini wasn't scarier than her, he motivated himself. But Nandini is as close to Nyonika, conspired a part of his brain.

Cabir sat beside her, bouncing his knees in nervousness. The head girl stiffened in her place. It was subtle and Cabir wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't explicitly searching for the signs of parental domination or abuse. He waited for her to relax.

"Do you want to sit here all night?", she asked.

He chuckled. "I am sorry. I don't know how to start?"

The head girl looked astonished. "You said sorry? I thought you only 'apologized'. Isn't it a Malhotra trait?"

Cabir gasped, covering his mouth with his hands. He gave his best serious face and pinched his throat. "I swear that's just my weird brother. Who the hell even uses such complicated words instead of a simple sorry? He has so many other weird habits too like reading books and visiting libraries and bookstores."

"I never thought you would be bitching about your precious brother", she teased.

"He is a bit different from me but he is mine. He is my", he trailed off defending his brother as Manik's face resurfaced in his mind. He was upset with Manik and sneaked off without informing him about coming to the club. It's not a compulsion but he was deliberately ignoring his Manik, the boy who only knew how to love him and care for him. Suddenly, he wanted to hug his brother and erase the last grey feeling, however small it was.

"My?", prompted Nandini.

"He is my everything and I would do anything for him", he told her. He was surprised to find a smile on Nandini. It was soft and unlike anything he had seen on the head girl's face. He realized it wasn't an expression on a person who would want to take his brother away from him. Nandini wasn't that. So, he blurted the words he wanted to tell her since he first saw her that evening. "Nandini, I love Manik the most in my life."

Nandini shrugged. "I guess even a blind person can see it."

"It's not that. We were already close, maybe because we just have 4 minutes difference between us but Manik had filled up some of the important voids in my life. In a way, he was my reason for survival. There were days, if not for him, I would have ended up in some prison or hospital long ago. He is selfless and isn't exposed to the world yet. I wanted to protect him from any kind of hurt. That's the least I could do for him and I have clearly gone overboard. I had never realized I was becoming my mother and stopping him from growing up as a person.

"If you hadn't put some sense into my brain on that day, I would have continued making the same mistake for years and Manik is too clueless to question anything. He would just accept anything anyone says", he explained.

"Cabir, I am glad you agree with me. I never gave it a thought before but after meeting you and talking to you on that day in the Dhaba, I saw the love between you two, and yet you both were poles apart", she said. "Doesn't your brother look exactly like your mother?"

Cabir raised an eyebrow but nodded in agreement. Great! She knows what his mom looks like too.

"Yet, I didn't know he was a Malhotra until the boy told me himself. I am not saying he is dumb. He is book smart but that would never help him survive in the real world especially if he has to take over your company someday. Or is it you who is the heir of Malhotra Industries, the next CEO?", she asked.

Cabir was taken aback by the bluntness in her voice. True, people approached him always because of his status but the question coming from Nandini was different. It felt as if she knew what she was talking about. "I am not interested in business. I am more into wildlife photography", he told and waited for her reaction. Generally, at this point, people didn't want anything to do with him and he crossed his fingers. He didn't want his Manik's first friend to be calculative while being friends with him.

She rolled his eyes beyond his rulebook. "Of course, Jungli", she muttered and took a deep breath. "Listen, Cabir. Manik needs to grow up and now that you have realized what's wrong, I guess you could help him."

"I will", he told. "But tell me. Are you interested in business?", he asked Nandini and explained further when she frowned. "I was wondering how do you know that Manik looks exactly like my mother?"

She rolled her eyes again. "The whole world knows how Nyonika Malhotra looks like and I am a Murthy. Of course, I am into business. I keep tabs on everyday updates." She stood up from her place. "Can I leave now?"

"NO, wait", he screamed. "I need to tell you something else too."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"I guess your words got stuck inside my head and I blurted them in front of my mother", he told.

Nandini cursed under her breath and sat beside him again. "Shit, Cabir. Is everything fine at your place? I have an idea of how controlling your mother can be?"

Cabir was surprised. This was unexpected. "Who told you that?"

"Come on, Cabir. After meeting Manik, is it that difficult to guess?", she asked.

Cabir sighed and stared at a distance. "I misunderstood my mom all these years."

"What?" He felt, more than saw, Nandini snapping her head towards him.

"My mom was scared about Manik, that the world would take advantage of his innocence. While I kept him close, she hid him away from the world", he explained and saw the wheels running in her head.

"Did you just believe her in an instant? I know, it's your family matter but children are supposed to be innocent. Just because Manik was innocent when he was a child, she doesn't have to hide him from the world. If you are suffering from something, say lung cancer, you try to get some treatment for it instead of hiding it and wait for it to go away. Nyonika Malhotra is smarter than that..."

Nandini was in a rant and Cabir tuned her out. Lung cancer. The evil that took his father away from him.

Nandini must have noticed something wrong because she was shaking him to reality. "Are you okay?", she asked him.

Cabir managed a smile. "Yes, I am", he said and took a few deep breaths. It's not the time to grieve about his father. He needs to get his remaining family together. "Nandini, I thought my mom hated me since I was 14 when she scolded me in front of the whole office staff. I didn't accept that it was my recklessness that she was scared about. Our misunderstandings had cost us so many years. I am not saying I erased everything with a conversation of a few minutes. She might have manipulated the truth but she isn't evil."

Nandini winced. "Cabir, I don't know your mother but I know the businesswoman who runs the Malhotra Industries single-handedly. She is one of the women I admire the most in my life and I know she can't be evil", she explained and rubbed her hands across her face. "I have never met someone like Manik. Maybe he brings the instinct to protect him in people and combined that with a few people in my life, I hated your mom a bit. I am sorry."

He patted her hand. "I don't know what are all the secrets there are for me to find out but your words gave me my mother back and I will be forever grateful for you."

"Unlike some, you are lucky to get her back", she muttered and Cabir couldn't help but connect the link to those few people who were the reason behind Nandini hating his mom. "Cabir, I really need to go. I am happy for you and your family."

She forwarded her hand but Cabir went for a hug. The way she stiffened first and the awkward pat she gave on his shoulder made him curious. He didn't know if it was because she didn't trust people in general or if she was uncomfortable with the opposite gender like Manik. Whatever be the reason, he wanted to go to the bottom of the truth because even if she considered him no more than a stranger, she elevated herself in his eyes.

She broke the hug first. "Good night, Cabir."

"Thank you for listening to me today. I needed a friend real bad. You will always be special to me, Nandini. Good night."

As he watched her leave, he recalled the way she proved herself as a very good friend, who would listen and offer a shoulder to lean on during one's bad day. He understood why his brother, although unconsciously, might be smitten by her. Because behind the mask of a tough head girl, she wasn't too different from his Manik whose heart readily offered love to whoever was in need. 

Some more thoughts on Nyonika. Nandini doesn't fully trust the woman she admires. Do you? :P

Manik in the next chapter.