A Coffee at Dawn

Chapter 26 : Missing pieces!

In the agony, I did not realise how far I had marched. Nishant's cold, blank face kept flashing in front of my eyes. Aryan had a point, Nishant had always kept Tanmay far from all the conversations, I had not made an attempt to push him either. I had not known anything about his existence. A complex puzzle was thrown in front of me, most of the eminent pieces missing. To liberate myself from this, I needed to complete the puzzle, I had to find the missing pieces myself and figure out things. I walked quite a long distance and stopped by a small bridge, panting. Varied thoughts made my head dizzy; anger, sorrow and anxiety made up my state.

Trying to digest the scene that happened a while ago, I stood there leaning against the bridge rewinding every small instance since the day I had had a fight with Aarti and her phone went switched off post that. Every memory seemed fresh, they were not gone off my system, they were way too safe in my closet. This did not help me figure out anything. In that scene, Tanmay was no where in the picture again nor was Nishant, how on earth would I solve this. I sensed my breath going heavier. The silence of the night contradicted to the chaos with in, the only thing that matched was the darkness.

The silence and the darkness was broken by a gust of wind, a beam of light and the screeching car brakes. I turned to my left to see Nishant getting down the car,rather furious. I was puzzled by his emotions.

Wasn't I supposed to be the one who should have been furious?

"What do you think of yourself?" Nishant shouted edging towards me. I fixed my gaze into his. Payal called out his name and came forward.

"Let me handle this," he stopped her and that was rather rude. She stood behind him spell bound awaiting to see the different shades of both of us.

He moved closer and gave a tight slap, my glasses went flying down and Payal rushed to my side to hold me.

"Leave him, he deserves this," he said picking my glasses up. I stood there holding my cheek.

"You can not expect him not to react, he has been masked with things. I had always warned you not to," Payal retorted.

I turned swiftly to her side. Everyone around me knew what happened that day, what changed my life, excpet me, who should have known it.

Lumps grew stronger with in. Battling them out and clearing my throat, I tried to talk when Payal again stopped me.

"There is a lot more that happened that day than just your fight with her," I held back my tears and gulped the lump to listen.

"Nishant, I am sorry, but he needs to know. I can not do this to him," I saw him go back and resting on the bonnet of the car, I could see tears in his eyes, for obvious reasons. The slap was very hard.

"I don't know how you will take it," she placed her hands on my shoulder. I leaned back to the bridge with my heartbeat almost audible outside.

"It was her birthday which you had missed to attend last year, and yes the black dress you had gifted her was beautiful, I must say," I went back a year, yes I had missed her birthday and I knew people here had taken care of things for her birthday.

"We had all met in the noon for the celebrations. It was her twenty fifth birthday and you know how intense it gets with time for a girl once she crosses twenty three. She knew you were going to fly down in a month or two to take things ahead, talk to her parents and get things fixed. She very well knew how hard you were trying to make the ends meet," she sighed.

"What went wrong? Her mom was for the relationship, it was just her brother, Aman who had opposition. Her father listened to his son usually," I spoke finally.