Ruin In Royals (Royal #1: Book 2) | ✔

7

-• an awkward situation •-

"I put us in a really awkward situation, didn't I?" I ask, looking outside the glass doors, unable to meet his eyes. I'm embarrassed and stuck, having nowhere to go unless my brother and his latest quest disappears all of a sudden. But that's not happening anytime soon. So I had no choice but to occupy the chair again, in his room that he isn't happy sharing with me. Honestly, if I was in his place, I'd have felt the same irritation.

"Is that chair comfortable?" Instead of agreeing with me and making me more ashamed of myself, he changes the topic.

I shift slightly to look at him and plaster a forced smile on my face. "It is."

"It doesn't look like." He shrugs from the bed.

"Shourya, have you ever sat for hours in those metallic hospital chairs?" I tilt my head curiously.

"No." He replies.

"I have." I murmur. "My mother was a nurse. I'm sure you know that already. She used to take night shifts whenever she could. On those nights, she couldn't afford a babysitter for her six year old daughter at home. She needed to save money. So she used to pick me from my school at three, and from then to six in the morning, I used to sleep on those chairs. There were rare times when I got the beds in some empty wards or duty rooms, but during those nights, I wasn't able to sleep."

"Why?" He sits straighter.

"I couldn't see my mother. Without her wasn't the place I wanted to grow familiar with. When I used to sit on those chairs while she was running around with that notepad clutched to her chest, I'd wave at her and she'd smile back at me. Sometimes she'd stop by and give me kisses. Knowing that my mother is just somewhere around, glancing at me, would put me at ease. I felt safer out in the open than in the closed four walled rooms." I murmur fondly, the memories flooding back, and there was never a moment in those days that I felt unwanted. It began when I grew up and started to take care of myself better than she did when I realised I was neglected as a child.

It never made me resent my mother though. It just made me regret being born. My mother was doing double shifts just so I can sleep full stomach, so I can have good education, a better lifestyle. My woman exhausted her young life, worked day and night, for me. And what did she get in return? Cancer, last stage.

I had so many dreams.

So many ambitions.

And she was in all of them, I had them all for her.

"What are you thinking?"

"Huh?" I come out of the daze.

"You were thinking something. What is it?"

I interlace my fingers together, twisting and knotting them to keep myself distracted from tearing up. "I had a future planned with her. Once I finish my university and get a well paying job, I'd buy her the most expensive perfume, would take her out for a fancy dinner, we'd have so much fun and we'd travel the world. She went so early."

"I'd never imagine my future with anyone. People are temporary."

My hands pause and I spare him a long glance. "We never love with the idea of forever, Shourya. We love with the hope of it. Everyone knows the reality. I knew my mother's presence in my life is short-lived, and I had to accept that when she was diagnosed with cancer. But that didn't stop me from loving her. And that didn't stop me from having the hope of forever. The painful months before she left me, hope was what kept me moving."

"So you feel with intensity, despite knowing it has a brutal end?"

"I never knew I can control what I feel." I shake my head. "You never allow yourself to feel, Shourya, you feel, and you allow yourself to either accept it or deny it. That's in your power. Nothing else." I whisper. "And it's only brutal when we think of it as brutal. Life is not a war. It's not either a marvelous victory, or a bloody defeat. It's not a game. It's not a race. It's not a plan."