Mahika and Amoli can't stand each other, but that's not the only thing they have in common.
Mahika treats Amoli like she's childish. Amoli thinks Mahika is a stuck-up prude. But Mahika's best friend and Amoli's brother are getting married, so they c...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
˗ˏˋ stalling caresses and looming anguish'ˎ˗
➷
The closer they get to the cottage, the faster Amoli's nervousness grows.
Mahika's head not only weighs over her shoulder but also her heart, and she's convinced that she hasn't breathed properly the whole time they have been driving. But honestly? That's the least of her worries.
Every time, every time she inhales, she feels the mild scent of Mahika's hair - roses mixed with mint - invade her senses and slowly cloud her thoughts, until it's the only thing she can think about.
Amoli has never been this overwhelmed in her life.
To make matters worse, she can feel Naina's eyes skating over them from the rearview mirror every few minutes, unintentionally swallowing in stress every time she notices it. With her hands wrung together in her lap, Amoli doesn't dare meet her eyes.
Even though it's just something as simple as Mahika falling asleep with her head on her shoulder, Amoli feels like the ambience around them shifts to something distinct every time they're put in the same space; something that makes it obvious that Mahika and Amoli have never been friends, and if there was a possibility of them being anything together, it would never be just friends.
Because she doesn't know where else to look, she fixes her eyes outside the window instead, trying to ignore the way that the escaped hair from Mahika's bun tickles the side of her neck and instead trying to focus on the orange glow of the setting sun. The sky is pretty, of course, with the orange bleeding into the blue. It always is. But with the scramble inside Amoli's head, it looks like nothing but a blur.
When she gives up and turns her face with a soft sigh, she makes the mistake of meeting Naina's eyes in the mirror, and then another mistake of quickly looking away when her breath hitches in her throat.
She wasn't in the right head-space to conceal her expression on time, but she presses her lips together and internally beats herself up over the moment of weakness anyway.
Against her better judgment, she ends up looking back in the direction of the rear-view mirror, meeting Naina's eyes after a moment yet again. Amoli isn't sure what the expression on her own face looks like, but Naina definitely sees the hint of desperation in her eyes because her expression softens only seconds before she passes her a little smile.
Amoli lets out a shaky breath, but keeps the eye-contact intact until Naina gives her the tiniest of nods, a subtle, tender sign of assurance that calms the storm inside Amoli's chest in the blink of an eye.
Unable to help herself from not looking away this time, Amoli blinks quickly when she begins to get teary-eyed.
Of course, she thinks, shaking her head at the realization that Naina has given her the acceptance that she hadn't been able to ask out loud for. The acceptance she had been begging for without letting the words actually leave her lips. Just from one person. Just one. To begin. To be able to acknowledge that she doesn't have to stomp over her own feelings until they're buried at the deepest pits of her heart.
