Ecstacy

. ♡ . 10 . ♡ .

It had been a week since Mallika sent the letter....

While her heart did feel a little light, there was still some guilt in it which was making it heavy. Each day her father urged her to go and chase her heart, and each day she denied him citing his health. Unlike earlier, she wasn't helpless this time. She had an option. Yet, she chose not to take it.

Every evening since she sent the letter, Mallika came to sit at the railway station, and admire the beautiful sunset. There were many other places in her village from where the scene looked even more majestic, but her heart liked to drag her here. Because along with the sunset, the station also had the train heading for Mumbai. The train would come in just when the sun disappeared, empty the passengers, and then head back for the city half and hour later. And deep down somewhere, her hoped that she'd hop on the train one day.

She didn't in the last six days. And neither did she look to do so today.

Angry with her own heart for making her go through all this, she didn't even wait for the train to leave. She just got up and started walking back. Little did she know that life had other plans for her today.

"Where do you think you're going Miss?" A voice called out.

Mallika didn't need to turn around to know who it was. She recognized that voice perfectly well. It was the voice she had gotten used to hear day and night for the last four years. It was the voice she had been missing severely since the farewell party.

"Sumedh...," she turned around, breathing a sigh of relief.

A face with an almost similar expression stared back at her. Both of them had planned this meeting in their heads a several times. They had decided what to say and what not to say. They had framed the answers to the expected questions and also the getaways from the unwanted ones. And yet, when the moment finally arrived, they just lost themselves in the sound of silence.

It was just a fool's façade though. For only the tongues were hushed, but the eyes were shouting, and those hearts, they were as loud as they would ever be.
A blaze was lit in both the hearts, and so they did the best thing they could think of doing to calm it down; they hugged. That feeling of having the other's hand wrapped protectively around them was worth treasuring for ages.

When they eventually broke the embrace, they once again stared into the other's eyes. There was a smile in those eyes which slowly found itself form around their lips too.

"I missed you," both blurted at the same time.

Thinking that the other had said it before them, both replied at the same time too,

"Me too!"

The platform was empty as such, but those half a dozen people present there saw the couple dive in the other's embrace once again. They weren't the Sumedh and Mallika they were a couple of weeks ago. They weren't the same friends they had been these four years.

No, they weren't just friends anymore, they were something more. And for the first time in many days, Sumedh didn't need a spoken confession of it. He knew it. And so did Mallika.

"Why can't we always be like this?" Sumedh asked, still not leaving the hug.

"Because, we are us," Mallika exclaimed.

She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him.

"We've laughed, we've cried, we've fought, and we have strived. We have changed every other moment Sumedh. And maybe, that's what has kept us friends forever. That's what has kept us together. And we will always be together. Won't we, Sumedh?"