Rekindled | ✓

Chapter 39. Mess

🎶 Lovely - Billie Elish

Published on 06.03.2023

❝ oh, i hope someday i'll make it out of here,
even if it takes all night or a hundred years. ❞

🥀

The time in flight together was spent in utter quietness. Inaaya just laid her head on Ayansh's shoulders and closed her eyes giving an impression of being asleep to avoid any kind of conversation. Ayansh had caught her upon it but he didn't say anything; instead, just interlinked their arms and grazed her knuckles.

There was an uncanny calmness that had encompassed her and she didn't know if it was because of his presence or because there was atleast one person who knew her deepest pain and ugliest secret and still stayed contrary to her worst fears of abandonment. He didn't look at her with sympathy or gave her those pitiful glances and she could never express how grateful she was for that tiny gesture. She wanted to feel normal and that's exactly how she felt with Ayansh.

It will never cease to amaze her how easily they always seem to fall in a particular ordeal given the situations. They didn't even need long prophecies to get their point across each other and sound convincing. It was in the looks, it was in the actions, it was in the little moments they shared where they understood each other and acted upon their instincts. It was beautiful, it was them.

Inaaya was dropped off at the spare apartment her family owned in Mumbai after reaching at night. She had extra keys so she didn't have to disturb her Mom or brother. She didn't tell them that she was in the city until morning. It was hard to convince them that she was in the city because Ayansh had a meeting and he wanted to celebrate the deal they've just got with his employees here. That was also something that Ayansh had told her, the work he had here which Inaaya wasn't convinced the least bit. And then, she found herself giving the same reason to her Mom and to convince her, she had to add that things were better between her and Ayansh and that's why she had accompanied him.

It was a mess.

To say Inaaya was surprised to find the arrangements of a proper party at reaching IA would be an understatement.

"Where's Ayansh?" Kartik inquires in a whisper as one of the staff leads them inside.

"He said he'll be here soon," Inaaya answers.

She understood why Ayansh invited Kartik but she didn't understand why did he invite her mother. It was weird. He told he wanted to acknowledge her efforts for the NGO considering he himself visits it often and is quite impressed by it but she could sense it wasn't the absolute truth. It wasn't as plain as it looked on the surface. And Ayansh's absence was just making her doubts stronger.

When they were seated, her eyes took in her surrounding and she remembered how IA stood for Inaaya and Ayansh and the overwhelming rush of emotions were back. She could recognise the feeling she had when she visited the place for the first time, the feeling as if she had known the place for a longer time, the feeling of being familiar with it, of having an eerie connection without any tangible string attaching her to it.

The words he had spoken to her back in Cambridge in her room had also been echoing in her mind ever since. They had put her in a dilemma. A part of her wanted to come clean, be fair to herself, get justice for the manipulated, blackmailed child but another part of her looked at her mother and brother and saw how content they were oblivious to the truth. She didn't want to snatch it away.

The drinks were served and Inaaya was growing more impatient. She tried dialling Ayansh but he didn't pick up her call.

"Everything alright?" Her mother asks when she finds her daughter disturbed.