4 | Midnight

180 22 11
                                    

अंधेरा - andhera

  dark, darkness, murk, blackness, night, midnight 

_________________________________________________ 

I could feel my heart tremble at the tips of my fingers.

In a world of silence and hushed breaths, of rolling waves and endless moonlight, my skin was alive with feelings that buzzed and trembled with Amit Samaroo's presence.  

He was silent. Had been silent for the past twenty minutes he sat down next to me but I didn't dare start a conversation, didn't even dare look at him. Even when I felt his gaze brush against my skin, linger on my gaze that searched an ocean drowned in moonlight, coaxing my eyes to his. Even when his stares would ignite flames and stutter breaths. Even then.

I could feel my heart tremble at the tips of my fingers.  

So, we sat in this silence that wasn't really silence in the darkness that wasn't truly darkness and all I could hear was the frantic flutter of my own heart thrumming in my ears and feel the subtle warmth that came from him.

It was mind crushing, that moment in time.

"Aap chaandanee mein sundar lag rahee ho." I heard him say to the moon.

I glanced over at him, curiosity for words unknown at the tip of my tongue, and all too soon I was latched onto molten browns. He seemed triumphant, proud to have captured the gaze of this quiet girl who would not look at him.

And in those moments we stared, we stared, we stared and the thought came to mind that this was the first time that my stares were returned. Could he hear the thrum of my heart, I wondered. Could he pick out the threads of love in my gaze?

I could feel my heart tremble at the tips of my fingers.  

 "You know," he began and I nearly choked on the lump in my throat. His voice was a calloused hand, rough and warm, against my skin and it took everything I had to stop from shivering. "You don't say much do you?"  

My lips parted. Closed. My gaze flickered back to the lapsing waves, eyes trained forward. "No, I say a lot."  I couldn't look at him for too long without feeling as if my heart was going to implode. "Just not to you, Amit Samaroo."  

He barked out a laugh, rich and luscious to my ears. "Ouch. That hurts, priy "

I shook my head, tendrils of brown falling into my gaze. I pushed the strands back, needing something to with my hands. "No, no. Its not that I haven't wanted to-"

"Then why haven't you?" He interrupted, his voice soft and riddled in curiosity and another emotion that lay beneath a surface to thick to distinguish.

"Did you want me to?" I asked in return. How had I managed to speak? I was breathless.

He talked with his eyes, this boy, spoke with the angles of his face and the movement of his lips but I wasn't diverse in Amit Samaroo so I couldn't decipher the glint of his eye but knew that it was gasoline to my flame.

There were enough pauses to fill a song of love, a song of heartbreak and an Indian poem before he said,"What if I said yes?" He said that to me but he was looking at the party behind us, shadows dancing on his features and drowning his eyes in darkness.

I turned my gaze to the light as well but my mind is on him, on his words, on the dream that was right then.

"I never had a chance." Was my reply, light on my lips but heavy in meaning.

"You always had a chance." He said.  

"Then if I did, then you did too, Amit Samaroo. Words work two ways, not one."

His gaze flickered back to me and there was a decision in his eyes. Instead of a reply he stood up and I thought that I had upset him, ruined the only chance of talking to him that I would ever have but he stretched out a hand to me, a large expanse of smooth open palm upturned and facing me.

There was a question in my eyes when I looked up at him.

"Let's remedy this. I've always had chances and you've always had chances but we just let them sit there, so let's make another chance. Come with me for awhile." His fingers had already wrapped around my own and I was already moving towards him, with him, to God knew where.

"Where?"

His voice was ringed with laughter and his eyes were alight with mirth when he said, "An adventure, priy."

There was no fight in me, no protest, as the flicker of flames receded behind us because I would have let this boy of mirth and hidden meanings carry me anywhere and everywhere. 

I could feel my heart tremble at the tips of my fingers.  




__________________________________________________





Lost In Love |✓Where stories live. Discover now