Eklavya

Chapter XXXVIII

With a soft look on her face and eyes adorned with love, she gazed at him as he secured the helmet on her head.

Anamika had a silly smile plastered on her face all the way back home. Throughout the ride, she couldn't stop grinning to herself. A different sense of tranquillity transcended upon her and she basked in the warmth of it.

Eklavya's words cast away the guilty clouds from her mind. And she realized how wrong she was to assume everything on her own. He's right when he said that they were no mind-readers. To understand each other, to know each other better they'll have to talk.

And there was absolutely no other way around.

She smiled shyly upon recalling how her face had dabbed red when she recited the words written on that flimsy paper addressed only to him. She dared not look at him till she finished and had only lifted her lashes after summoning up some courage.

She looked at him, memorizing every feature of his striking countenance in her mind. Because she was sure he himself wasn't aware of how he looked at that exact moment.

Although his face was impasse it was those two charcoal pools, so alluring, so deep, that told her the inexplicable and unbridled sense of contentment and happiness he was experiencing at that moment.

And Anamika wanted to be so selfish. She wished to capture this moment. Wished that he'd always look the same. She wished, she prayed to her ishta to wash away all the hurt, anger, betrayal, and longing from the life of the boy who was slowly becoming her life now.

And grant him new beginnings. Happy beginnings.

It was all she wanted. Nothing more.

Soon they reached their usual place before they parted their ways. Anamika for the first time didn't wish to leave. She wanted to be with him, by his side. She wanted to hold hands with their head on each other's shoulders, gazing wordlessly at the sky twinkling back at them.

"Anamika." He called to her and she hummed back.

Realizing that what she wished for was not possible and sooner or later she'd have to walk on the road that led to her home, Anamika half-heartedly got off the bike.

She pouted at him when he removed her helmet and brushed her baby hair back. "What are your plans for tomorrow?" she asked.

"Nothing much. I was thinking of finishing some work that I left pending before the Olympiad." He told her as he put the spare helmet on the fuel tank of his Royal Enfield.

"I was right. I knew you weren't going to come tomorrow." She said, slightly incensed that her hypothesis proved correct.

"You know Anamika, I don't like all this drama that they do on stage. It's too much bullshit for me to handle." He told her honestly.

"I'm well aware. But a person can always hope, you know." Anamika smiled, shrugging her shoulders at him, her eyes wandering behind him, alert for anything that looked remotely close to a human being.

"You keep hoping. Who knows, maybe one day I might show up." He offered charmingly. "Now go before someone spots you here with me."

Anamika gasped at him playfully, "You make it sounds like it's solely my problem."

"Of course, because frankly, I've got no qualms being seen with you if you ask me." He replied naughtily in somewhat a suave manner.

"Shameless." She derided, but her playful smile said it all.

"You want me to show you exactly how shameless I am?" he suggested deviously, his eyes shining bright with mischief and his lips curled up in an allusive smirk.