Chaotic Hearts | ✓

27 | memories

A / N

I love, love writing this story because sometimes writing it is relaxing and sometimes it's overwhelming. It's the kind of story I had wanted to write from so long.

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27 | memories

THE AIR AROUND her suddenly felt toxic. She breathed heavily and yet, she couldn't drag enough air in her lungs. She cradled his hand in hers and kissed it. “I'll come see you soon, dad. I promise.” In the silence that ate away her hopes, it was promise made not to her father but to herself that she would not run away.

She got up and left the room, her mind made up on what she wanted to go but outside, to her very surprise, she saw him.

He was the gulp of air she took after drowning and drowning. He was every good sensation, every good that ran through her and seeing him, Anika felt like she could finally breathe.

“What are you doing here?” she asked even though a smile flitted across her face.

“Told you I'd be here when you need me.” He flashed a warm smile, intertwining their hands together. “C'mon, I have a day planned out for us.” He tugged her hand to move forward.

“Not today Shivaay.” She took a deep breath because as much as she tempted to spend the day with him–there was nothing more than this that she had wished for–today was simply not the day. “I have some things I need to do.” She looked on as his face turned into a frown but he nodded nonetheless. She reached out to and smoothened the creases between his eyebrows. “Buy we can always go tomorrow. Only if you are up for it, of course.”

He caught her wrist and pulled her to his chest. “For you any day, milday.” It was some luck that their was absolutely no one lurking in this part of the hospital or they would have been a witness to Anika getting flustered profusely. She snaked her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest, right over where his heart lay. She could feel it thunder beneath her as Shivaay tucked his chin on top of her head. She smiled. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Actually, yes.”

Things that we run away from always catch up to us–today or tomorrow. It's a lost cause, a race we can never win. And we have to face them some day. Anika decided it was time. She was done running. Or at least that's what she told herself. So taking a deep breath, Anika pressed the doorbell.

She waited with baited breath for somebody to open the door. She could deny it all she wanted but she knew, deep in her heart, she wanted somebody to tell her that the person she came to see was unavailable at the moment so she could prolong it a few days more. She heard shuffling on the other side and Anika hoped it wasn't her. A moment later the door swung open. And boy, was Anika surprised. She had expected Akshita to change, of course, but never had she imagined she would change so drastically. There stood Akshita Kundara, hair open, dolled up in a Indian suit with an adorable baby in her arms. Anika was too stunned to speak. She only waited for Akshita to notice her, not uttering a single word.

“Ayaan, babu, no.” She chided the child, who was barely a year and half old–as he tugged at her hair. “Sorry, he's just woken–” The sentence died on her friend's tongue as she finally took notice of who was at her doorstep.

If Anika was so surprised to Akshita, she could not even fathom what her best friend of ten years was thinking in those moments. A missing best friend turns up at her doorstep looking completely different? Not what Akshita would have been expecting.