We Are A Match [COMPLETED]

Chapter : Thirty One

Chapter : 31

Rishav's POV

Walking into our hostel room, I pulled out my luggage bag and rummaged through it while Ananya silently settled over the bed, eyeing me curiously. She seemed really hungry and her face said it in big bold letters, no matter how much she denied it.

"What are you doing in there?" she asked.

"Patience, Hungry Queen." I said as I looked into the bag.

"I'm not a... oh, never mind." She gave up, too tired to argue.

I smirked at her surrender. I felt the familiar fabric in the bag and pulled it out to reveal a white little bag which I passed over to her and settled down beside her on the bed.

"What is it?" she asked as she unwrapped the packing.

"Even I'm not sure. All that I know is that it is something edible that mom stuffed into my bag in the last minute saying I should be prepared for every situation." I said.

She smiled at my mom's comment and pulled out the tiffin to reveal sandwiches. I couldn't help but notice the happiness that radiated from her when she took the first bite.

Only after finishing half of the food did she realize that she was eating away like a piglet. She threw me a sideways glance filled with embarrassment.

I grinned and gestured for her to carry on eating. She gulped the food down her throat and pushed the box of sandwiches to me and shook her head a no to tell me she was full.

I pulled out a piece and nibbled on it. I wanted to talk and ask her if she was okay now and what words of mine had hurt her, but I didn't know how to ask her.

"You're mom must be an awesome chef." Ananya broke the ice.

"Yeah, she loves experimenting with recipes." I agreed.

"Must be fun to have something new on the table every week," she spoke, glancing at me with those bright brown hues.

I scrunched my nose as I recalled the 'fun' things which we had had on the table on certain occasion. "Eh, not always. You may say she has too many failures and we are the ones who become the mice for her experiments," I said and shrugged.

"I'm sure it's not that bad," Ananya tried, sounding amused.

"Believe me, you don't know. That's exactly how she blew up the microwave twice in a month. Dad literally put a fire extinguisher in our kitchen after the first blow up and it proved handy on the second one." I said.

She giggled at that.

"Your mom sounds so sweet," Ananya mumbled, peering down at the bed covers, her fingers fidgeting with the fabrics absent-mindedly.

Something in her voice told me she had turned sad and it struck me like a bolt of lightning when I recalled how Ravi had broke down in my arms when we were in the eighth grade and his mom had passed away. I felt bad for bringing up my mom too much into the conversation. Wish I had remembered.

"I'm sure you know about my mom," Ananya said in a meek little voice.

"Yeah," I said and nodded, putting the sandwich down.

"I was very much shaken by her death...you know. I knew she would be leaving soon since the doctors had already told us that there is close to no hope for her... but it still hurt to know that no matter how many times I called out to her, looking at her lifeless body in that hospital bed, she would not open her eyes and smile the way she used to..." Ananya stopped short on her words, as if her emotions overwhelmed her.. I felt her eyes turn glossy with unshed tears as she kept her eyes trained on her lap.

I frowned. I never knew she had so much bottled up inside her. Did Ravi never talk to her? But he's her brother for God's sake. He should have known.

"Dad has been silently trying to cope with her absence. Never once has he shed tears in front of me and my brother...not even at the funeral," Ananya continued when she was better composed, "I guess he's just trying to shield us away from the feelings of loss and grief but, in doing so, he is harming Ravi... My brother turned so ignorant of the little gestures he receives now just because he had no emotional interaction with dad while I was away for studies. He ends up hurting people without realizing it.  He has forgotten about all that mom had taught us."

That minute breaking of her voice at the end of her words caused a heavy quilt of silence drape over the air around us. 

Never in my life had I ever comforted a crying girl but in that moment, I don't know how the actions happened. I scooted close to her and pulled her into a hug. It was awkward at first but as she cried low sobs and sank into me, I felt like what I did was a right move. I rubbed her back as she kept sobbing.

I gave her all the time she needed. A while later, she pulled away. I still kept my arms around her, not completely convinced that she was okay.

"Rishav?" Ananya asked in a low whisper, her eyes lowered to my chest.

"Yeah, I'm right here," I murmured, trying to sound comforting.

"Thank you." Ananya raised her brown eyes to meet mine.

I smiled and rubbed away the last stray tear that had escaped out of her eye, down her cheek.

"You know why I love studying economics so much?" she asked out of the blue.

"Um...you like the subject?" I guessed as I released her from my arms.

"Mom used to picture me as a leading economist of India... She would jump up on my bed and hold her spatula like a mic. She would then say 'Give a huge round of applause for Ananya Sharma! The best in the world.'..." Ananya said, looking somewhere behind me. She was lost in the past memories.

I felt heavy guilt build up inside me for all the times I had picked on her for reading that book. She wasn't a nerd. She was just trying to keep her mom alive inside her.

"I'm sorry." I said, looking down at her little hands.

Her head whipped towards me as if my words surprised her. Hell, even I was surprised to some extent. This was the first time I apologized for something I had done.

"What?" she asked, not believing her ears.

I looked up at her.

"I'm sorry for all the times I have hurt you, Ananya. If only I knew-" I was saying when she put a hand over my ones. Her touch seemed to have a different kind of effect.

"Exactly. If only you knew. You didn't; so I don't blame you for that," she said.

At that moment I knew one thing.

Ananya Sharma was not just different to me. She was special to me.