UNRAVELLING

Part 1

AN: Will be updating this like HTFOoLi10ES. It's just drafts erratically updated when I have time. Will edit them in the far future.

"A prostitute! That's what your mother was! Do you want Gauri to be like her mother too?"

Her fingers strummed the sitar slowly, carefully, as she hummed the tune to herself, making the words from the morning slowly fade into a whisper in the back of her mind.

As she reached the last notes of her song, loud claps boomed through the auditorium.

Gauri opened her eyes, focussing on the man sitting in the front seat of the empty auditorium, clapping his heart out as he sported a cheesy grin. She tried to hide her grin as she shook her head finishing the last note a little shakily.

"Don't bother with apologies." She sang as she kept the sitar down, bending to place her head on the instrument muttering a prayer to Saraswati Mata.

"I am really sorry for not coming sooner."

"You sure are!"

"I'll make it up to you, I promise."

She sighed as she descended the stairs after keeping her sitar in the music room backstage. "So, what do you want to do?"

Nikhil grinned as he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "Let's go eat Dosas."

Gauri rolled her eyes. "You can just say that you want to meet Di. No need to go about it the long way. To think, I almost believed your apologies."

"You're so smart, saali sahiba."

"I can't be your saali until you propose. Tell me now, if you don't have plans for that. I'll slap you until you come to your senses and realise just what you could loose if you wait too long."

"You and your obsession with slaps!" Nikhil exclaimed with a laugh avoiding the dreaded proposal talk as he steered Gauri towards his bike. He stopped in his steps when a girl around Gauri's age, decked in sunglasses (yes, plural) and bracelets clicked to a stop in front of them.

Gauri tried not to roll her eyes. But that was a gone case when the person in front of her was Riddhima Raheja.

"I heard you had another no show at the event. Just admit that no one is interested in your musicals and stop wasting college funds."

Gauri let her head fall down on Nikhil's shoulder. This was going to be a long fight. Gauri knew because she and Riddhima fought almost every other day when the dance queen actually made the effort to come to the college and not stalk that Oberoi heir that she loved to call hers.

"Your daddy's not going to go bankrupt by paying for the repairs of a single sitar. So, why don't you focus on something better, you know like actually choreographing a song and not just ripping off routines from online tutorials?"

"How would you know what dance means?" Riddhima raised a brow before faking a realisation as she continued with malice. "Oh right. Your mother was a dancer, wasn't she? I mean dancer is the polite term for call girl but eh, I don't think I need to tell you the difference if you're already hanging onto a man's arm and following your mother's footsteps."

Gauri tried to blow her anger with a long breath but as usual, it didn't work. She lifted her head from Nikhil's shoulder, jerking her head towards the bike to signal for him to go ahead. "I'll take the local and meet you there. I just remembered I have stuff to take care of."

Nikhil took one look at the two cats glaring at each other, gave Gauri a concerned look but then traced his steps to the bike when Gauri glared back.

Riddhima scoffed, ready to open her mouth to spread more garbage when Gauri turned to her, her eyes narrowed and her fists tightened at her sides. "My mother was still better than a plagiarist who neither has the creativity to create nor the tact to at least gift wrap what she so obviously stole."