Did You Know Me? (Shubman Gill x Ishan Kishan)

'Guest'

Shubman barged straight into Nisha's house, said hasty good afternoons to her parents and knocked on her room.

"You were right, Nisha."

"About what?" asked Nisha without looking around from her laptop where she was probably attending another meeting.

"About...Ishan."

Now Nisha turned and studied him. Then she covered her mouth.

"Oh, God. What did you do?" she asked. "What stupid thing have you done now?"

"Is it so obvious that I've done something stupid?"

"From your expression and from what I know of you, yeah, it's obvious," said Nisha.

Shubman nodded. "Well, that's great. I'm building the greatest reputation with my best friends this year."

Nisha did a most surprising thing. She exited the meeting and invited him to sit.

"Tell me what you did, maybe?"

"To cut the long horror story short, Ishan might never speak to me again and I'll have nothing to defend myself with."

"That's not the long horror story in short. That is just the ending," said Nisha. "To tell a story in short, you have to include something from the start and the middle."

"See!" said Shubman. "See, we....we both take everything as a joke....and we, okay, we need to stop this. It's your fault I take everything as a joke. You've done the same since we were kids!"

Nisha looked concerned with his sanity.

"Okay, so you took his feelings as a joke," she decided. "Wow, Shubman, that's a new low."

"Obviously I didn't realise it wasn't a joke! If I'd realized, obviously I wouldn't have taken it as a joke!"

"All right, all right," said Nisha. "Deep breaths. Deep breaths."

Shubman glared at her, but to be honest he was wishing he could glare at himself in the mirror.

"What's the scene now?" asked Nisha, when he'd calmed down a bit.

"He won't talk to me," said Shubman. "He would hardly even look at me."

"I guess it could have been worse," said Nisha. "He could have set mean little birds on you to bite and scratch your skin."

"Come again?"

"That's what Hermione did to Ron. You know, in Harry Potter." Nisha must have read Shubman's look correctly. "Okay, no taking stuff as a joke. We grew up wrong, Shub."

"I know."

"If it helps, Ron and Hermione did end up together."

"What does ending up together mean?" demanded Shubman. "We have been best friends for years. We can't just....be anything other than best friends."

"Right, let's focus on getting him to talk to you again," said Nisha. "I guess he's not replying to texts, picking up calls, the usual?"

Shubman nodded. "Do you think I should mail him?"

"No," said Nisha firmly. "That's a classic creep move."

A creep.

"Just go over to his place, then, I guess," suggested Nisha.

"His place....is fifteen hundred kilometres away," said Shubman.

"You earn in millions...and since you know the exact distance, you've been considering it, I'm guessing?" said Nisha.