Better Together

16 | communication

Chapter 16 : Communication

They had reached the destination three minutes earlier than the estimated arrival time predicted by the navigation system. Ruhaani never felt happier with something as insignificant as that. Thankfully, his car's audio system had Bluetooth support she could play some songs of her preference for the last half an hour of the journey.

His aunt stayed in a flat in a housing estate that had multiple residential towers. The approach of the apartment from the road wasn't that impressive but once one drove inside it felt like an altogether different world.

"You like old bollywood songs?" He spoke up as the made their way to the lift. 

Ruhaani turned to look at him surprised. The man had just asked her a question and that too a pretty unnecessary one. Her shock was justified. "Yes, some of them," she answered giving a clipped response, as she entered the lift. She felt particularly at peace for giving him a taste of his own medicine.

"There's a small leaf on your hair," he said and then turned to press the button that read '5'.

Ruhaani ran a hand over her hair but found nothing. She turned behind hoping there was a mirror but there wasn't any. She tilted her head to the extreme right and then to the extreme left, then looked around her feet to see if the leaf had fallen.

Aadarsh who had been watching her with some amusement, stepped forward to help her. "Wait," Saying that he stretched his arm, his two fingers gently picking the tiny brown leaf stuck in her hair. He dropped the leaf and stepped back from her. "Clear."

She stared at the leaf on the ground wondering where it came from. She then looked up at him. The lift opened on the third floor and some teenagers entered in. She watched him as he stared at the changing numbers on the small screen. 

He wore a black sweater on a white shirt whose collar was set neatly over the neckline of the sweater. He had paired that with black denim trousers. If she had to ever pick a color that defined him it would most definitely be black. She looked down at her own sweater that was a deep red with horizontal stripes of white and royal blue and her denim trousers a light gray. They were on two extremes of a scale. The more color she preferred in her outfit an equal amount of black he preferred in his. 

They stepped out and she followed him towards the door. He glanced at her before ringing the bell. Ruhaani took a deep breath staring at the dark wooden door. At the top of the door frame, hung an ornamental door hanging made of pearl like beads and tiny pink flowers, traditionally called toran or bandhanwar.

"Surprise!" A man's voice was heard as the door opened. In front of Aadarsh stood his cousin Rohan. 

Aadarsh smiled at him warmly, "most definitely surprised!" The man who was almost as tall, perhaps an inch or so shorter than Aadarsh, and more broad-shouldered than him took him into an embrace. 

The moment Ruhaani had had a full view of the man's face, her jaw dropped. She hadn't expected to see that man ever again. Usually people forgot faces they saw almost a decade ago. But they usually didn't, if they ever crushed on that face. 

Rohan Desai. Her crush from back when she was about eighteen or so, stood before her. He had changed drastically. He was muscular now. His soft boy cheeks now had the ruggedness of manly charm. When she last saw him, his hair locks used to fall onto his forehead in a manner that the female population would call cute. However, now they were set back. 

Oh boy! Cute boys definitely made gorgeous men.

She shut her open mouth when he looked at her. He smiled politely and then looked beyond them, with searching eyes. "Where's the army, commander?" He asked looking at Aadarsh.