Talk of the Town

20 //

It's after seven in the evening. Miraya is on her bed, a bowl of lasagna licked clean sitting on her bedside table. She is trying to sleep but she is mentally incapable of it.

Miraya pulls out her phone. The light flashes on her face, making her squint and distance the phone away from herself. She clicks on Shray's contact and the keyboard pops up. Her fingers hover over those twenty six letters, trying to find the best combination of them to start the conversation.

Hey.

Backspace.

You awake?

Backspace.

Can we talk?

Pause. A deep breath. Send.

Miraya chews on her lips as she waits for Shray to respond. Staring at her phone, waiting for texts and refreshing her notification box every minute is something she hasn't done in years. It's a strange and foreign feeling to keep waiting on someone, praying the message turns 'read' as soon as possible. But she does it anyway.

Three minutes pass but for Miraya it feels like three hours. The three dots appear on his side of the chat and her ankles cross in anticipation.

Yes.

One word. He typed those three letters for such a long time.

Can we meet? She sends.

Now?

Yes.

Where?

Miraya thinks. Shray can't be seen in obvious places and they need some peace and quiet to untangle the mess of feelings. A place comes to her mind.

The ground we used to go for our morning practice?

Okay. Be there in twenty. Fine with you?

The conversation is so formal and awkward that Miraya wants to run away.

Yes.

Just as she is about to exit the messaging app, her eyes pause on Shray's profile picture. It's an image of him and his brother Vidyuth against the backdrop of lush green tea estates. Shray has Vidyuth in a headlock and his brother looks at him from below. Both of them have wide grins plastered on their faces. Miraya zooms in on Shray's face. There is light in his eyes. Something that wasn't there when she last met him.

Shaking her head as if that will dissolve all the conflicted thoughts inside her brain, she puts on her sweater, exchanges her shorts for her jeans and walks out of her room with her car keys. Dakshina isn't home yet so she locks the door and runs to her car.

The public ground that they were meeting in was the ground Shray and Miraya had practised in every morning. Sometimes Vidyuth joined them during their morning runs. Suriya was a lazy bum so he wasn't very consistent with his practice. He would show up once in a while. Most of the time it was only them. It was the place where Miraya and Shray used to talk a lot. They talked about their class and their families, discussed secrets, vented out to each other, cracked jokes and made a lot of memories. She remembers the time Shray tried to do a push up with her sitting on him. He'd managed three before he had cursed and pushed her off him.

No one would be there at this time of the day so it was a safe place to talk their feelings out without being self-conscious.

She parks the car and walks up to the steps to wait for him there. When the chilly air greets her with a generous welcome, she shivers. The sweater won't do it. It's not enough, she thinks. She should have worn the black jacket. Huffing and blowing on her hands, she sits on the cement steps, hoping her butt won't freeze off.