Chapter 9

Blithe

@nancy56

Faded#9

You don't let somebody tell you the answers you have been looking for since forever, not because you are afraid of lies. You are afraid of the truth.

Shravan had a plan. After 2 hours of a rigorous workout, and then having a tiring boxing session he held himself close. He couldn't let himself loose, not when he had worked so hard to make up this facade of his. He looked inside the emptiness he has carried like his shadow, how content he was with all his achievements, and how weak his resolve was to stay away from his past.

'You have a thing for Captain Tiwari, don't you?' Bassi stood across him, with folded arms across his chest.

'Who?' Shravan squinted his eyes. 

'The girl you were packing up in your car yesterday as if running from a bank theft.' Bassi stated as a matter of fact.

'Captain Tiwari went a bit overboard with her drinking adventure. I was just helping.' Shravan looked everywhere but at his friend's face. 'You saw us? I thought you were with your girl.' Shravan flashed a smile, thinking that he has successfully changed the topic.

'I don't know if I was with my girl or not, but you were of course with yours. Just tell me.' Bassi pestered unhindered in his focus.

'You think helping someone is equal to loving them.' Shravan put up his guards.

'Not really. But helping her as if your life depended on it. I saw you both. She was drinking on her own admission. You were already bored and might have left in another five minutes after my disappearance. But you waited along with her, and with some wholesome authority of the alternate universe, you picked her up and decided to bear her whims. Explains everything!' Bassi presented his report.

Shravan heard him with utmost concentration, feeling weird that it really felt awkward when somebody else accounted for your actions. He was too right, and it was dangerous as well.

'In the grand scheme of things. She is an army officer, a lady, and someone who is a part of my team. I don't think that any extra reason is needed for me to save her from any social embarrassment.' Shravan thought that he had convinced Bassi until Bassi rolled his eyes and caught a fancy bun holder on Shravan's bedside stand. He didn't let him know what he has seen.

'You slept here yesterday?' Bassi walked about the room as Shravan just nodded in a yes.

He picked up the bun holder and kept it in the air for a few seconds. 'Nice accessories. I never knew you used it.' he reached Shravan's side, who for the time- was exploding with embarrassment and a bit of rage. He was helpless.

'Never lie to your friend.' Bassi whispered and finally put the bun holder in his shirt pocket, near his heart.

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When Suman was small, she thought her inners were like a working world. That her stomach might have miniature copies of people walking, tending to her food. That her legs might have some roller coasters, an amusement park. She imagined a hospital near her heart, nurses and doctors tending to it. She imagined her brain to be analogous to the infinite sky, with stars, the moon, and the sun. She had chided herself when she had really learned the real case. But right now, keeping aside all the logics, she felt a comet shower bombarding the grounds of her body. She was destroyed.

Personally, she never admitted this theory to anybody, but she recounted it to Shravan seven years back, when they were still silly. Evidently, he had laughed with her, but he had also appreciated her imagination. She missed it. The way he would always find a positive in her every act, the way he would try to make her smile no matter what. 

She couldn't have imagined that she had to announce her love for him in every breath, and still would get no response. It was a nightmare, fleshed in blood and skin.

Three doorbells ringed through her house. She never knew that she was crying. She was crying because Shravan had behaved as if she was a bad omen. The way he had banished her from his house. The way he had failed to see her effort, trauma, and agony. If he had lost his father, then she too had lost a family. She didn't bribe the media houses for an alternative trial, did she? What she scared the most was the fact that he might have fallen out of love, as early as he had fallen in. That he might have realized and labeled it as a silly teenage mistake. 

She went ahead to open the door and saw Vikram standing. He had bought a bunch of roses. he smelled of peach and unfinished wine apples. Did she tell him that she had an allergy from peach? He looked flush in blush, what was making him so happy?
She was in a fit, and he talked. He talked standing then and there. Suman felt his lips move in words, words fit in sentences. But she barely understood anything, till he went on his knees and offered her a ring. When she saw it, a singular thought crossed her mind- Shravan doesn't love me anymore. Loving him will make him upset. Suman, you can't be the reason for his sadness.

In a fleeting second of curse, she said yes. 'Yes!' she nodded her head, and she could feel and remember it so clearly now. As Vikram slipped the ring in her finger with a smile, she could feel herself pressed into Shravan's arms. She could feel him kiss her knuckles and kiss her collar bone. And then she was more miserable. The brain is a funny thing. Funny indeed.

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Karan Bassi wasn't a fan of social media, but he did check it for his friends. The wedding season was on. And there popped up another image of ringed pair of fingers. Vikram Raichand, his lawyer friend. He was such a sweet but lost cause. He was that guy who looked like a chocolate candy from the outside but was a bitter joke from the inn. 'Whose that unlucky girl?' Bassi mumbled under his breath. The next moment he was under another major discovery. Suman Tiwari was apparently engaged with the wrong guy.

Bassi, literally ran through a narrow corridor, looking like there had been an attack. He won't be sorry if somebody really thought so. He entered Shravan's chamber uncalled for and saw him talking on the landline, playing with a paperweight. He looked serious as he motioned him to sit across. Bassi was in dilemma. He was sure that Shravan did carry a torch for Suman, but was it the same from her side as well? He surely didn't know. But he had to reveal it. 

'Look!' he gained Shravan's attention as soon as he was free from his call. 'What? Did you just release a new book- 100 ways of interrogating your friend's arse.....' before Shravan could complete his joke, he felt reading through the post of some Vikram Raichand, who was ridiculed by Suman Tiwari last night, when she stood packed in his arms. He tightened his expressions and didn't know what to say and what to hide. 'Send her a box of sweets.' he commanded as a matter of fact. 

At this, there was a commotion on the door. 'May I come in sir?' Suman's voice jingled in his ears. He looked down at the stars and medal held on his uniform. There was an enormous strength in gazing at his valor's reward. Some special kind of inflation filled his chest. 'Come in!' he voiced his opinion. Suman came, forwarded some files, and held her hand. Her ring finger dazzled with his guilt or maybe rage. Why would he be guilty? 

Maybe, it all has been a mistake he thought you were mine, all this while.

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Part 10, Page 11