Silent Hearts

23| Twenty-Three

You feel like home,

and everywhere I have never been,

all at once.

* * *

Nandini raised her head, her eyes glancing at the clock. The small hand touched the big, black 'three', in the noon. It was ten minutes past three, and since that time she had rushed back to her room, she hadn't moved an inch. Nandini remained sitting by the door, her hands shaking, oh, ever so little, light shivers ran down her skin, still feeling his touches, a mess of her curls rested on her chest, that lifted and lowered with the steady rhythm of her heartbeats.

She was still in a frenzy with the way Tushar had behaved, the way he had pulled her closer, the way he was in another realm, seemingly. Nandini couldn't believe what Tushar had meant, truly. She couldn't know why he was so distraught, or what had bothered him. She couldn't know a thing, for she hadn't ever tried to.

His burning touch nevertheless lingered by her soul.

And, after everything, Nandini couldn't blame Tushar for whatever transpired between them, just some mere hours back.

What had he done after she left? What about lunch? Had he prepared anything? Nandini could not comprehend, for she was too small of her own to face her fears. And, this certain time, her fear was not the silent man she had known to be as Tushar Chatterjee, but this time, her fear was the emotions he evoked inside her.

And she wasn't ready, at all, to face those. She wouldn't ever be.

Slowly, pulling her body to stand upright, Nandini padded towards her bed, soothing the little crease on her sheets, she barely sat down when she heard the soft chime of the doorbell.

Who could that be?

* * *

Confusion.

Pain.

Agony.

He felt it all, as he stood by the marble counter, his fingers curled into a fist, hands that fight the urge to shake with the beats of his breaking heart, urge to shatter something, anything, just the way his soul had been destroyed, eyes as blank as the new moon night, wild hazes of disdain and rage forming indication of his inner storm, the turmoil fighting against his own sane thoughts. Oh, he was naught but a sailor in his own sea of loneliness. A coward, he was when he couldn't accept how his heart felt that day, couldn't accept his love for that cheery little girl. A coward who couldn't pick up his own broken stories.

A pair of orangish-brown eyes glimmered before his sight, his sanity catching back those eyes, dull, yet full of mysteries that screamed to be heard, her honey skin, he had unintentionally, caught a glimpse of, flashed through the back of his mind, the softness he had felt when he grasped her like that, tears that filled her eyes, tears he might have given her, the turmoil he had noticed in her face. . . oh, he was responsible for all, the guilt of which swam into his senses.