Rekindled | ✓

Chapter 17. Elevator

🎶 Pyar Ho (Redux)

Published on 10.11.2022

❝ lakeeron se juda karke,
haath kyu choda;
socha nahi tha samandar ko dhokha,
de dega ye saahil. ❞

🥀

"You look eerily calm after that rough showdown and that's very..... uncharacteristic of you," Maya says cautiously as she sat with her back against the headboard, her legs stretched in front of her.

Beside her, Inaaya laid on her stomach, her face pressed against the pillow, not looking at Maya. "I'm fine." She mumbles.

"That's not the question I asked..... "

Inaaya sighs. "I just remembered something and then, I couldn't help but think about it the whole time I was on my way back."

"What?"

"Years back, I'd met someone who said a very beautiful thing to me." She turns around, gazing at Maya with an impassive face in the shadow of the dim lamp light. "He had said to me something on the lines of about how there are people who are going through the same thing as us, who might be suffering equally as us or maybe worse but they're still holding on, clinging onto the hope that things will get better." She snuggles more into the comforter, a soft smile turning the corner of her lips up.

Maya let's out a small chuckle of amusement. "That's.... very optimistic."

"His words were the thing that picked me up when I was at my lowest." She confesses in a small voice, looking up at the ceiling as her heart squeezes at the memory.

"Sweet," Maya comments, "I would actually like to meet this mysterious guy."

"Me too, even if I know it's impossible. Me too." She adds.

An eccentric silence falls over them as Maya lies down, trying to sleep and Inaaya struggles to sleep.

"Maybe tomorrow, there will be stars and the moon too. Maybe tomorrow, you can see the light and the hope too. Maybe tomorrow, the despair would fade away."

If a stranger's words of hope were nothing but comforting, like a warm hug absorbing all your stress then Ayansh's words having an undertone of wishful dreams and frail promises were like a hand outstretched towards you, begging you to hold it, wanting to lead you to a beautiful place, so inviting yet so perilous.

"He said he loves me." Inaaya says, demanding Maya's attention.

"Yeah, you told me." She responds. "You- you trust him?"

"No." She replies after a beat.

Maya didn't judge Inaaya for not trusting Ayansh. But she would be damned if she accepted that there was no truth behind his words. "I think he cares for you. He does."

Inaaya stays silent; empty mind, steadily beating heart, the natural cold nibbing at her skin being curbed the heater.

"He wouldn't have called me to check upon you if he didn't care. He wouldn't have had that crestfallen look on his face seeing you with Josh if there was not even a tinge of truth behind his words. He wouldn't have given you chocolates, saved you only to be nursing a broken wrist if you weren't important to him." Maya breathes out.

Inaaya allows the words to sink into her as if they hadn't crossed her mind. "Two years and eight months," her voice comes out strained, longing and pain laced together. "I had nothing to do with him this whole time and suddenly he shows up and says he's sorry and he- he- ," her voice breaks and she purses her lips before whispering, "he loves me. Am I really suppose to believe that? Every day, I've spent convincing myself that he was a freaking liar who never loved me, who just used me for a selfish reason, played with my emotions and now, he's asking me to undo everything?" She questions as a lone tear slips from the corner of her eyes.