Rekindled | ✓

Chapter 21. A Step Forward

🎶 Saawali Si Raat

Published on 02.12.2022

❝ barfi ke tukde sa, chanda dekho aadha hai,
dheere dheere chakhna zara,
hansne-rulane ka aadha-pauna vaada hai,
kankhi se takna zara. ❞

🥀

"Hey!" She spoke softly into the speaker. "I miss you."

A deep sigh was heard from the other side. "I miss you too, a lot."

"I know," she chuckles sadly, picking up a cushion and walking up to the couch before sitting on it with her legs tucked beneath her knees. "Your phone came busy when I tried to call you sometime back. Who were you talking to? Niki?" She could imagine her brother squinting his eyes at her right now.

"No." The answer was stern. "And for your kind information, I'm a busy man and I've other people too in my life with whom I talk on phone."

"Touché." She teased and heard him scoff.

After a moment, he spoke solemnly with despair lacing his voice. "She misses you too. Keeps asking me about you because she thinks you talk to me regularly and I've to disappoint her always because the truth is you talk to me as often as you talk to your friends, which is like two times a month?"

Inaaya stared out of the glass window, the barrier that shielded her from the chilling winds. Unlike that night where the sky was empty and void stretched to the distance, today, a star glittered, alone in the spacious blanket of black accompanied by the moon who stayed near to it. She smiled at the sight. "This is the third
time I'm talking to you this month." She says childishly and then sighs. "I miss her too."

"Then come back. Atleast for some days."

Silence coaxed them for the next few brief seconds.

"Is she mad at me?" She asks in a murmur, letting her guards down, drawing circles on the cushion with her finger. "I'm a terrible friend. After coming to Cambridge, I just cut everyone off; you, Mom, Alisha, Niki, everyone. I've been so disappointing."

"You wanna hear the truth?" Kartik inquires gently.

Inaaya hums in response.

"Yeah, we all are mad and we've every right to be. But we aren't disappointed in you, we could never be. We're upset with you not because you're a terrible friend or sister or daughter but because you chose to deal with your troubles all by yourself even after our promises to be a part of your joys and sorrows. We want to be a part of your life through all your highs and lows and we want you to be a part of ours. We're simply worried for you because we love you." And even though what her brother spoke were nothing but mere words that transcended boundaries over a phone call, the affection and earnestness behind them felt like a hand wrapping around hers to remind her that she wasn't lonely. Just like the lone star, she had someone who could take the place of the moon in her dark sky if not the moon itself.

In the quiet of the night, she admitted for the first time in a whisper, "I- I want to be back too. I miss y'all a lot." She bit her lip when emotions made her heart constrict. No matter how many times she kept telling others and herself that she never wants to return, in the deepest crevices of her being, her soul still ached to be in the company of the people whom she could call hers. She missed getting pampered by her brother, she missed pulling Nikita's leg, she missed bantering with Alisha and she missed her Mom like a child would.

"Then what's stopping you to be back?" Kartik questions in a mellow tone.

"I- ," Inaaya shakes her head when she realises she doesn't have any answer and she couldn't afford to tell the truth. The scars were too harsh and the fears were too daunting. "You must be knowing about the conference that's being held in Pune, right? I've been selected to attend it alongwith two others."