MaNan : Aching Smiles|| COMPLETED

15. Rectifying The Past!

"Sometimes you search for love in words, and ignore the gestures, forgetting the fact that 'I love you' isn't always love".

Nandini sat on her bed, her head tilted back at an awkward angle, as she gazed outside the window, her eyes fixed on the moon. A deep and painful sigh escaped her lips.

"Why can't we have an alarm button to know what action of ours is going to hurt someone dear?", She whispered to the moon, but didn't get an answer. Her welled up eyes started leaking, and tears rolled off her cubby cheeks, falling down her chin.

"How could I be that selfish? Why didn't I know I will fall for the man I had been wounding that badly? Why is destiny so complicated?", She sobbed, but, alas, some questions didn't have an answer.

She clutched the hem of her skirt in her fists, resting her head on her bent knees, weeping lowly so that no sound escaped the vicinity of her room. The pale face of Manik, when he had spoken to her in the office, his pain, his weakness, everything was eating her inside. She didn't know for how long she wept, maybe until her heart felt light enough to just pump blood and not mess with her emotions, and Nandini drifted to sleep, the moonlight enhancing the beauty of her pretty face.

Manik woke up sometime later at night, thirsty. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, but was disappointed to find the side jug empty. He stood up, and walked down, filling the jug from the kitchen, and gulped a glass of water quenching his thirst. He was about to keep the empty bottle back in fridge when his eyes fell on a bar of crackle kept inside. Manik frowned. It had been so long that he had have chocolates at home, especially tucked in fridge like that. His mind travelled back into his memories, a decade back.

A grumpy seventeen year old Manik was sitting on Nandini's bed, while a seventeen year old Nandini was giggling looking at him.

" Why the hell are you laughing?", He snapped at her, watching her walk towards the mini fridge kept in her room.

"Well, there are a variety of reasons, but mainly because you love my laugh", she winked, and he fought his urge to smile back at her. Nandini then walked back to him, holding a bar of crackle in front of his eyes, and as soon as he saw it, he snatched the choclate munching on it with a happy glinter in his eyes. All the anger, and the grumpiness flew away of her large window.

" It's so easy to make you smile Manik", Nandini laughed but Manik paid no heed until he finished the bar.

"Thats because I don't want you to do extra hard work in pleasing me", he teased her and Nandini threw her barbie pillow at him.

"I don't want to please you anyway", she retorted, and Manik laughed harder.

"Yeah right. Whether helps you sleep better", he smirked before lying down on her bed, and drifting off to sleep in a matter of a few minutes.

Nandini sighed when he slept. She knew it was bothering him, watching his father standing out of their school every weekened. God knew whom did he came to pick up, without sparing a glance at his own son! Nandini cringed at the thought, and walked up to sit beside him, running her fingers in his meesy hairs. Manik relaxed a little more and hugged the pillow tighter in his sleep.

Nandini took out her phone to place an online order of a carton full of crackle bars. Manik had a lot of weird habits, and she had been the one to tease the hell out of him for them. She knew a bar of crackle helped him sleep better, especially at night. And that day onwards, she made sure to slip a few of them into his fridge everyday so that he could have them when he went for his midnight snacks, and sleep better.

They never talked about those chocolates and Nandini always presumed that Manik thought they were from his mother. But Manik had always known it was her, right since the day he had seen her 'my orders' list in her amazon account.