The Irony Of Fate

Part 23

It was a Sunday, so neither Khushi nor Tara had much to do, they were just seated in the house watching some random show and eating popcorns.

"So you dint tell me, how was your date last night?" Khushi asked Tara.

"Wasn't a date, apparently he's in love with someone but he is in denial." Tara giggled.

"And how did you find that out in just one meeting?"

"I just know. Like I have this ability, when I look at a person, I somehow just know what problem they have." She smirked proudly.

"Oh Come on, I don't believe that."

"You will." Tara smirked as she turned to look at Khushi, she stared at her with her eyes wide open for a moment as if she was really studying her.

After a while, her facial expressions kept changing slowly, Khushi just looked away feeling awkward, there was no possible way she could know stuff about people's lives just by looking at them.

"You my dear, suffer from unrequited love." She said in a deep voice, you know the kind of voice those people that claim to read the future use? Yeah that voice.

"Rubbish." Khushi giggled as she stood up and walked away trying to hide the sadness that had just shown up on her face. It might be just a random guess but she guessed it right.

Since childhood, she had loved only one person, Arnav and he never loved back, not even after they got married and lived together.

"Shit, I'm sorry Khushi, it was a stupid guess, I was just kidding, I dint know it was true." Tara walked towards her as she hugged her from behind.

"It's okay, I'm fine." Khushi turned to look at her with a smile.

"Are you sure? Do you want to talk about it?" Tara asked worriedly.

"No, I'll be fine. Excuse me." Khushi shrugged as she walked towards her room. In all this months, she thought that she would forget about him one day and just move on, but with every passing day it just seemed harder.

He was the only guy she had loved since childhood, she had never looked at any other guy that way, how could she just move on from that?

"I invited him over tonight. He sounded pretty lonely earlier when we were chatting, so I thought I'd invite him, cook dinner and just hangout, I hope you don't mind." Tara said.

"It's okay Tara, you live here too, you can invite your friends." Khushi smiled faintly and the headed inside as she grabbed her stuff and left to see Rohan.

In the past months, whenever anything about Arnav would bother her, she would go see Rohan, he always helped her distract her mind, also Rohan was the one that suggested that anytime she felt like the thoughts were disturbing her, she should call him or pay him a visit, so that's what she always did, and it did help.

*****

Since Anjali left, it had become difficult for Arnav to even sleep, he would just toss and turn around his bed thinking about a lot of stuff. Sometimes he would stay awake the entire night because no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't sleep.

It was like one moment he had a small family, Khushi and Anjali and the next moment they both were gone leaving him all alone. He dint even have a friend to talk to, he had no one to share his problems with.

Now was when he understood why Anjali always wanted him to get married before anything happened to her, she just wanted for him to have someone to talk to, because right now, all this was driving him crazy.

He would fall asleep at random times because he couldn't sleep at night, and right now he was asleep in the hall on the sofa, he fell asleep while watching TV trying to pass his time.

But that sleep dint last long, around twenty minutes into the sleep, he started hearing random voices, mostly they were moans, they kept getting louder and louder and in no time, he was wide awake.

He sat up and stared at the TV in front of him blankly, this had been happening for a while now, he would fall asleep and then those random moans would come up and wake him up.

He stood up and started pacing around, trying to relax himself but he couldn't, all this loneliness and overthinking was just too painful.

"Why Khushi? Why did you have to do it?" He questioned as he continued pacing around the room, remembering the night, that night that ruined his life.

Flashbacks.

Anjali had sang him a lullaby as usual and left when he was asleep, after his mother passed away, Anjali would always stay with him until he fell asleep just to make sure he was okay, she did that for years, in fact she never stopped until he got married.

To her, he was always her little brother whom she cared about more than anything else.

That night she did the same, she sat in his room as they talked about things for a while and then sang him a lullaby and once he was asleep, she too headed to sleep in her room, but a few minutes into his sleep, he was woken up by loud moans, it sounded like a girl's voice and the only girl in the house was Anjali, whose room was quite far from his.

He sat up and tried to listen carefully, realizing it was coming from the room beside his which belonged to his father, he just sighed and stood up as he headed out of his room, in the previous years, he had somehow gotten used to this, his father would bring random women to his room and he couldn't sleep because of those moans, so he would just head out and sleep in the hall.

That night he did the same thing, he headed downstairs to the hall and tried to sleep there, all this had been happening for so long now, he had just learnt how to live with it, it had like become a routine.

He lied down on the sofa, and covered himself with a blanket and fell asleep until he was woken up by a nightmare. Those too had been happening for a long time, he kept having strange nightmares every now and then.

He sat up and tried to inhale deep breaths trying to calm himself from the nightmare he had just had, the moans that had been coming out of his father's room too had stopped so he grabbed his blanket and decided to head back to his room.

Once he was back in his room, he threw the blanket on the bed and just when he was about to get to bed, he heard the sound of the door opening, so he opened his door slowly and peeped out and that was when he met with the shocking sight.

It was Khushi, he was seeing her after ages, he remembered one day she just disappeared and he never saw her, not even when her mother used to come visit his dad like before, but now after years she was here, he wanted to feel happy about seeing her after years but with that, the realization dawned upon him.

She was walking out of his father's room, at the middle of the night and in no moment she was gone. Did this mean what he was thinking? Did she actually sleep with his father?

He slowly peep toed out of his room and headed to his dad's room, he pushed the door open slightly and looked around, no one else was in the room apart from his father who was deep asleep, so it did mean that, all those moans he heard, and then Khushi sneaking out, what else could it mean? She had finally become just like her mother.

Right now he hated his father so much, he hated that stupid Garima and now he hated Khushi too, more than anything in the world.

They had been really good friends as kids, but she ruined everything for him, everything.

Flashback Ends.

"I could have forgiven you for the childhood Khushi, you dint know a thing, but when you decided to sleep with him, you knew better, and that night haunts me, it will haunt me forever." Arnav said as he fell down on his knees and broke down into tears.

Since the day he got married to her, all he could see was the girl that slept with his father, trying to act all innocent, a part of him always wanted to believe her, a part of him always questioned a lot of things, but then it always came back to that night.

Those moans, those sounds and then him seeing her sneak out. It wasn't that he dint give her the benefit of the doubt, he did, and that was why he went inside the room to make sure there wasn't someone else there, and when he found no one there, it had to mean only one thing, the thing that would haunt him forever, no matter how hard he'd try to come to terms with it.