Marry Me

Chapter-10 MESS

We are sitting upstairs inside my condo. Ramkrishna (his guard duty ends at 8:00 p.m.) and Ayan, both. I don't know what happened to me but I am spilling my guts to both of them. The long story of how it started, where it went, to how it came back, of course even though I missed some parts, it was story going on for years.

By the time I am finished, after drinking five glasses of water, taking two pee breaks, it's 9:18, I am hardly breathing, and Ayan's and Ramkrishna's eyes are so wide with apprehension that it somehow resembles the plethora of dinner plates my father owns.

"This is too much and I say this when I am an actor and have done less dramatic films than what you told us." Ayan says, his eyes wide but friendly.

Ramkrishna nods his head in agreement. "Yes madamji, it is too much." His eyes brighten suddenly, he half gets up in excitement from the gray Louisa chair. "Does it mean you are going to marry Kiyansh sir madamji?"

Ayan sighs from the chaise lounge, I notice for the first time since evening that he is wearing a white crew neck t-shirt and black chinos, and how soft and prepared he looks for the date he was thinking to go on with me, not the bad boy media called him out to be, not the person I thought I could never consider as a friend, and how I have dragged him into this horrible mess and how he deserved endless list of apologies from me.

I turn towards Ramkrishna, but Ayan beats me to it, "It doesn't work that way Ramkrishna, we will have to..."

But before Ayan could complete his sentence, a buzz from the door startle us out from the discussion.

Who could that be? I get up from the lounge, my eyes roll back in my head when I peek into the door hole to find Kiyansh standing on the other side of the door.

My breath stops and I think I might get another panic attack when Kiyansh buzzes the door once again.

Thankfully and horribly, Ayan gets up from the lounge and literally shakes me out of the daze. "Who is it?" I turn my head to find Ramkrishna looking suspiciously at the door as if we are some psychological convicts threatened to be raided by RAW. Honestly I feel like that, this moment.

"Kiyansh." I say through the stubborn blockage in my throat. What am I going to say to him? What is he going to think when he sees Ayan and Ramkrishna up in the condo? I am not ready for this.

My phone on the table starts to blast up with I've been everywhere, by Johnny Cash.

This time Kiyansh bangs on the door, "I can hear your phone ringing, open up the door Shanvi." His voice is somewhat distant, muffled, but it reaches straight to my stomach.

I hyperventilate so hard that I look with wide eyes towards Ayan and Ramkrishna, then open the door without any thought.

Kiyansh's face even though stuck inside my head twenty four hours still sends shock so hard in my body that I feel goose bumps raise on my arms and legs and every single corner and centre of my body.

His face holds the same expression of shock. But when I look at the angle of his eyes, I turn my head to find it fixated behind me, on Ayan with Ramkrishna nowhere on sight.

I see the change of expression from shock to hurt to impassive so fast, it's like a tide of wave on the shore of the sea.

His eyes turn to me again, like the clouds gurgling in the night sky it strikes so hard that I feel it to my chest like a lash, my mind goes back to the day when Kiyansh bought me a power ranger kit on my birthday the day I turned seven, how we got on our skateboards and played with fake power ranger's walkie-talkie phone all afternoon. I slipped and broke my leg that day, Kiyansh found me on the pavement and started crying when I was taken to hospital refusing to leave my side for days helping me walk through crunches, until my leg got well.