Beyond Words

Can I trust you?

Did she forgive him?

Khushi lay awake, unable to sleep. She had reached home, helped Payal remove the make up and spent time with Lavanya before they all went to bed. It had been an exhausting day and by all accounts she should have been asleep by now. Sleep eluded her.

"Truly, Madly, Deeply."

The words swum in her head. Did she forgive him? There was no question. She had been hurt by his walking away. By his dismissal of her feelings. But she had never held it against him. This is how he was. He battled his demons by running away from anything that threatened the careful walls he had built around himself. She had seen past the exterior, beyond the carefully erected barriers. She had seen him at his vulnerable best and her heart had gone out to him. She felt a kinship with him that she could not explain. She pushed the covers back and went to the window. The moon was bright in the sky.

"Can I trust you again?" she whispered.

Arnav sat by the poolside, sleep evading him. He held the note in his hands. He turned it over a few times. He had hurt her far too many times. There was so little he knew about the girl who occupied so much of his waking thoughts. He thought back to the first few times they had met and wondered why he had felt that innate need to crush her spirit? Was it because she represented everything he loathed about the world. The hope, the optimism and the unshakable faith in God? Did he want to crush her to prove he was right? That power and money were the only immutable things in this world? That the world was a cold, hard place with no space for the warm fuzzy emotions she represented? What if he had been wrong?

A conversation from a long time back echoed in his years.

"I was eight when my parents died. I did not know what death was. For a long time, I waited for them to come back. What more? Even today I believe they have now become stars, and so I sleep with stars hanging over my bed. Even today I am scared of fast cars, of the dark, of sleeping alone. Even today I hope this is all a bad dream, and one day I will wake up and they will be back."

They had both been orphaned at a young age. He had become bitter and locked himself out while she hid her pain behind a mask of cheer. She had accepted and moved on believing her parents were watching her. Perhaps he had the same hopes, same aspirations but lacked the courage to let go of the past?

"Can I trust you? a voice echoed in his head. He looked up and trusting the voice within whispered back.

"Yes. you can."