The Scenic Life

Chapter 19

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“What is it?”

My voice is hostile around the quite dawn of the day, the soft crashing of water against the corner of the swimming pool downstairs, and the stare of his eyes drowning into mine like the silent cascade of a waterfall.

His shoulders are hunched, and he has black bags under his eyes. A telltale sign that he hasn’t had a blink of sleep. In his hands, I notice my luggage, clenched tightly around his fingers. I assume, all of the emotion he is feeling is being felt by my luggage.

He lets out a deep breath, his curls in the front of his forehead fly away, settling themselves in the side of his head.

“can I come in?”

He notices my hesitant expression and tries to redeem himself, “I just want to talk, I promise.”

I am hesitant at first, my first instinct of shooing and pushing him away risens, but I push it back inside. I nod my head at him, giving him permission to enter my room.

He locks the door behind him, my luggage trailing after him. He places them near the mirror, and has a seat on the chair in front of the mirror.
I sit on the corner of my bed, waiting for him to say something. His eyes are casted down on the handmade carpet covering the entire room, his fingers shaking and wiggling against themselves. Right now, he looks like the epitome of nervousness. I hadn’t ever thought I would see him nervous or better yet, guilty filled with regret. The 14 year old inside me, who loved the idea of revenge is loving this a little too much.

I clear my throat, hoping that he would take that as a hint to start speaking, but alas.
I sigh, my voice low.

“What is it, Vihaan?”

He finally looks up at me, and gulps. “I wanted to apologize,….for everything.”

I am stunned. Never in my life, had I imagined that Vihaan would apologise. When he knocked on my door now, I had been expecting him to say that he had told everything to everybody, or something a bit more selfish. Even if I do love him, I knew that an apology was something I wouldn’t ever receive from him. I am stunned, and I am glad.

“What?”

He sighs again, and then locks his eyes with me, his strong and bold expression makes me want to look away, but I don’t. I can’t.

“For everything, for not hearing your side of the story first, for not treating you well, for judging you. I am really sorry, you don’t know how guilty I feel right now for treating you like shit just because I heard some people gossip. I should’ve known better, I am sorry.”

I don’t say anything, like I said before, I am stunned into silence.

“I know you must be mad at me, and you have every right to be. I just wanted to ask you one question, if its alright?”

I nod my acceptance. I want to hear his question, I want answer whatever doubts he has .

“I know that the poducers threatened you and khan, about…various things, but why didn’t you go the police?”

I sigh. Somewhere in my mind I knew he would ask this.

“We wanted to complain about them, of course. But we didn’t have any proof against them, we had none of the yelling on video. Instead the producers had an edited footage of the strike, in which it seemed like I was heading something violent, that I orchestrated the whole campaign to rile up everyone against the firm. And even if we did have any proof it wouldn’t have mattered because the commissioner of the police is the brother of one of the producer. It would’ve been swept under a rug, so we didn’t take any chance as they had already threatened us with a  lot already.”

He looks shaken, like he cant believe somebody would go so low just because some people asked for equal pay. I had the same expression on my face for a few months after the incident.

He snakes his hand through his curls, and sighs. “That’s so fucked up.”

I nod. “I know.”

He doesn’t say anything more, neither do I. There is a warm silence enveloping us, the sun rises, its rays entering the room through the balcony towards the floor. It makes a beeline to our feet, right towards me and left towards him.

I break the silence. “Is that it?”

he shakes his head, “no, I have one more question.”

I sigh, “sure,”

“Why didn’t you and khan resign? Why didn’t you tell everybody the truth? I mean people would’ve-,”

“No, they wouldn’t have believed me.” I complete for him. “my image was tainted before I even got of the cabin, they made sure that I was projected as the villain and not them. And by forcing me to take the position of art director, they succeeded. Because in other's faces, I was just a greedy-money digger.”

He bows his head. I continue, “And the producers made sure that if we resigned , we wouldn’t get jobs elsewhere or the license to build up our own firm. So we had no choice.”

He shakes his head, like he was sure of something, like he knew the the answer to this entire problem, like he could get me out of this bloody quicksand that I had sacrificed myself into.

He rises his voice a little when he speaks, unafraid to break the silence that we had created in the dawn of the morning.
“you have a choice.”

I look up at him, incredulity clear on my face. Maybe he hadn’t heard me saying all of the things or he just wanted to be a hero.

“I have a plan, sara, and if everything goes right, and you decide to believe me, we can take them down.”

He watches the hesitance on my face, the regret and guilt that has built up under my eyes over time, he doesn’t just watch me. he stares me down, locks me up in a safe place with just his fiery expression.

His voice pops up, just as fiery as he looks, and he says, with a hint of promise and regret lacing it.

“I  promise.”