What's a soulmate? ~ MaNan

Chapter 9

some days,
it's hard to see,
if i was a fool
or you a thief;

made it through the maze
to find my one in a million,
and now you're just a page torn
from the story i'm living

and all i gave you is gone.

Manik

Massaging my temples gently, when I picked my head from the bundle of papers I had been reading since afternoon, the first thing that caught my eye had to be the framed picture of me and Nandini from our college days that I never had the courage to remove from my desk even over the years.

However, this time, it didn't make me feel the nostalgia or the emotions like it usually did. Instead, it made me take a sharp intake of breath and take my eyes away and out of the glass windows to my left to stare at the glimmering lights in the evening sky instead.

It had been a few days since our argument, and I had been an irresponsible person since. It was a Friday that day, but I couldn't bring myself to go to Nandini's after our talk to pick Mia up.

Mostly because I knew I wouldn't be able to look at my daughter and not think of Nandini instead. And that was one thing I had been consciously avoiding for the past two days.

At least until my eyes landed on this picture and I found myself spiralling back to our conversation. It could barely be called a conversation. To our fight.

Still breathing unevenly, I got up from the chair behind my desk and walked to the window, leaning behind the glass to stare at the pink skies better. Back at my desk, I could hear my phone vibrate.

It was probably the lawyer. The evening I returned home two days ago, I drowned myself in as much alcohol as my liver could take, and in that very drunken state of mind, also ended up calling the lawyer for the divorce papers that Nandini had wanted. Call it fate, luck or misfortune, he didn't answer the call then. But since the next morning, he's been calling me back and in the seven times he did, I couldn't find it in myself to pick the call even once to ask him to re-make the divorce papers.

Seemed much easier the first time.

Opening my pack of cigars, I picked one out and lighting it with the pocket lighter I'd began carrying everywhere, I placed the lit cigarette between my lips.

I felt the peace wash over me– or lack of it thereof– as I forced all those scattering thoughts out of my head, using the minute to calm down, at least until the office door went flying open and my best-friend walked in ignoring my judging eyes.

He, however, stared at the cigarette which was now between my finger tips instead until I put it in the bin. I huffed. "What?"

His eyebrows remained furrowed. "Since when did you start smoking?"

"Cabir." I gave him an obvious look, "How long have you known me for? I smoke since college days."

"Yes, but you'd quit smoking for all those years, hadn't you?" He answered in a question, then pausing as if interrupted by his own thoughts. "Oh, I forgot. Nandini was in your life for all those years."

There it was. That name again. The one name I had been trying to erase and forget for days now and the more I tried ignoring it, the more it somehow got popped up everywhere I looked. My life was surrounded by things connected to her, and I don't think I had realised how many of them until today.

"Cabir, your point being...?" I raised my eyebrows unamused.

"Right." He thankfully let it go. "I came to check in if you're ready to leave?"