Broken (Wattys2016)

CHAPTER 15

Two and a half weeks passed after their hearing at court about the divorce and now was the time of the year that Aaliya loved the most, Christmas. In the last two weeks she had cleaned and decorated her entire house and backyard with fairy lights, bells, stars and paper angels. She also took out the big foldable Christmas tree from the store and put it up in the living room and decorated it with different things.

But that's not the only thing that happened in the two and a half weeks. The last time she spoke to Aarav was outside the court where they argued about the whole trial separation idea. Aaliya was still confused about why Aarav wanted to even try this out because he hadn't even tried to talk to Aaliya and sort out everything. Aaliya wasn't really hurt because she was already expecting this.

Aaliya started taking tuitions for little kids in her neighbourhood to pass some time. She missed getting up early and getting ready for school but she knew she would be doing injustice to her profession if she went to school in such a mental state. Teaching kids whose parents she knew ever since she was a kid seemed like a better option. Every evening she would teach those few kids and some college students and later Priyansh used to drop by and have dinner with her. He came home just to make sure that Aaliya was doing fine and mainly to check if she was harming herself. He also wanted to make sure that she didn't feel lonely and had her dinner on time. She even skyped with Brent twice a day and that was the only time she felt light and happy.

The only thing that was bothering her was hiding the whole divorce scene from the Dixit family who had brought her up after her family left her all alone in this world. She knew hiding such a major thing from them was wrong and even Riddhima, Rishab and Priyansh were asking her to tell them the truth but she didn't know of how to break the news to them. She had no idea of how she'd tell Jay everything. She was sure that if Priyansh could hit his own brother then Jay would surely kill Aarav for this without even caring about how he would ruin his relations with the Vinayak's.

Today, 25th December 2014, Aaliya's favourite day of the year. She jumped out of her bed and ran down to the living room where the Christmas tree was. This was the first thing she used to do every Christmas morning ever since she was two years old. She saw a gift kept under the Christmas tree and ran to pick it up. There was a tag on the gift that was wrapped with red wrapping paper that read – 'To my dearest still two year old Ally, I didn't forget your gift. Love, Santa.'

She carefully tore the wrapping paper and what she saw next brought an ear to ear smile on her face. There inside the box was an entire collection of Dan Brown's and Agatha ChristIe's books. Aaliya loved their books but had not read all of them as she never got enough time and now with the whole collection in front of her, she was not going to let this opportunity slip out of her hand. Who could this Santa be?

For half an hour she sat under the Christmas tree and read the blurb of all the books. It was around half past eight that she was through reading everything and decided to make breakfast. She danced while she made herself breakfast and sang Christmas carols. She soon took bath after having her breakfast and changed into a white pencil skirt with a frilly red blouse and a black coat, tying her hair into a bun. She drove all the way to the Church for the special prayers they had on Christmas. Over all these years she had met a lot of people at the Church and made friends. Her parents took her to Church ever since she was born and she continued the tradition even after they passed away. She made it sure to come to Church every Sunday. She went and took a seat next to a guy she knew very well. The first time they had met was in this very same Church and that's where their story began. It was Yash. She poked him with her elbow and he turned to look at her.

"Ally!" He whisper yelled and hugged her.

"Hey, how are you?" Aaliya asked hugging him back.