Back to You

Reconciliation or Separation

"Two broken people can't make a whole. We need to heal and love ourselves before we can love each other the way we deserve."

Karan's POV:

I walk away from the vanity and the past twenty minutes don't feel real. I walked in there thinking we'd be getting our relationship back on track but now I don't even know if it should be. The fact that she wanted to know what happened isn't what hurt me but it's the fact that she believed other people's stories over mine. That all of a sudden she bought into their narratives and let other people's opinion into our relationship.

I don't even know what to do from here. I'm mad, hurt, sad, confused and have no clue what to say. Trust is the foundation of any relationship and what is there left if we don't even have that. I said I was done chasing after her but still all I want to do is go back and hold her. How do you let go of the one thing that's felt right. I force myself to stop thinking about this because I have to shoot my final scenes with Teja soon.

I have no idea how we'll manage that after everything that happened but all I focus on in the moment is memorizing my lines. I hear her voice as she comes on set and turn to look at her. Our eyes meet and we both immediately look away. We start shooting and the energy between us is so fraught as if we're both holding on by a thread. Still we shoot our scenes well and considering they're meant to be emotional scenes I'm able to use that to excuse the emotions written all over my face.

There's one last scene where we confess our love just as everything's falling apart around us. I start the scene by holding her face which reminds me of everything that just happened. With tears in my eyes, which I'm not sure are real or for the camera, I tell her "It's you. It's always been you. Despite how unorthodox our starting may have been, it's ours and I'll never regret it for it led me to you. I don't know what our future holds but in case I don't get to tell you again, I love you. Always have. Always will."

We're both staring at each other with tears in our eyes when we're suddenly broken out of our reverie by the director yelling "Cut. Karan you got some of the words wrong but you both nailed the emotion. Read your lines again and then we'll do another take."

As the director is speaking both of us back away from each other and wipe away the tears with the help of a tissue from the assistants. I choke down some water and force myself to just stare at the script. I don't know what came over me to say that but I guess subconsciously there were things I wish I could have said. After that little break the rest of the scene goes off without a hitch and as soon as we're done I see her go toward her vanity frantically wiping away at her cheeks. I get up to follow her but stop myself. She's the one pushing me away so if that's what she wants I'll give her that. It hurts to know she's in pain and I will never be able to stop caring for her, but I stay put.

I stay on set filming a few other scenes then sit near the back just waiting until my last scene for the day is announced. A little while later that's where Riya finds me.

"I've been looking for you everywhere. I assumed you were in Teja's vanity with her."

I lift up our script and say "No just practicing my lines."

"That's actually what I wanted to discuss with you. We think we can finish the filming today."

"How? There's so much left."

"Well not all the filming but we can finish your scenes tonight. It's just that your pack up today would be around midnight."

My mouth falls open. "You have got to be kidding. I've been here since 7 am."

"I know. I know and we'll give you breaks but there's a scene we need to do outside late at night so that's either going to be today or tomorrow. But on Sunday we think the rest of the scenes will be done by 3 so everyone will need to come back for those few scenes at night."