Forever And A Day || Completed

23. Scars and Silences

~The marks humans leave are too often scars~

The rooftop looked beautiful, decorated with fairy lights on all the walls, around the round dinner table and on the legs of white clothed wooden chairs. Lavender fragrance was filled in the air as scented candles were kept ready to light when lady of the hour arrived. The music system was ready, her favorite playlist snooped off from her cell phone, and Manik was not even surprised to see majority of soft romantic numbers, mixed with a few party numbers. The ambience was just the perfect right, the stars were in abundance, the breeze was just enough to play with her locks but not ruin her hairstyle. Every thing looked as he wanted, and he could not be happier. It was time he come to terms with his own feelings and accept it to the world, and no matter how cheesy it sounded, his world was only one stupid women, who was his legally wedded wife.

Manik checked his phone again. It was 6 pm. He had texted her the location and time a few hours back, and had asked her to reach by 6:30 pm. Her WhatsApp showed double ticks but no blue ticks yet, but that didn't worry Manik. He knew she was habituated to read her messages through the window box and not open the app. And even if she didn't reach by 6:30, he could always call her, couldn't he?

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Nandini walked along the shore, her hands crossed in her front, rubbing her arms lightly as the cold breeze wrapped her in its embrace. Her mind was not working, her meeting with Mukti had left her in splits. She had no sense of time, neither the fact that it was almost dusk. She was hardly managing to keep her tears at bay, she didn't want to go home and meet Manik at that moment.

" We were school kids when we met, and that's the best time to make friends, you know. So we clicked, for some reason Manik clicked with me the most. He was such a sensitive child, who wanted to have fun, but didn't know how to. It was mine and Kabir's forte, playing pranks and finding ways to have fun. We have some awesome memories of those days, it was like we could give up on our own lives for each other!".

" We remained great friends for ten years Nandini, we met when we were roughly eight, and until twelfth, there was nothing that could break us apart. Manik had always been our mother hen, there is no one in the whole world who could be a better friend than him, and we loved him for that. He always took care of all of us, a little more than required, would go over the top for one petty smile of us, irrespective of the fact that it might cost him things".

Nandini smiled at that memory of Mukti speaking, it was so Manik. For god sake that man had done everything to convince her to find love elsewhere, just because he thought he won't be able to keep her happy. If he could do that for her, it was no wonder he would have crossed seven oceans for them, without an ounce of hesitation.

" But then we joined college, and everything began to change. SPACE was known for it's lavish infrastructure, high class students and all night parties more than it's exquisite curriculum covering almost all subjects. Though having it on your CV was a big deal, so we all went ahead with that. The first dent came with our twelfth standard's percentages, Manik topped our batch and I and Alya scored above eighty, but Kabir and Dhruv were bordering seventies. I always thought they were grateful that Manik helped them score that much, but later I realized they were miffed that he taught them but scored much more than them".

A deep sigh left Nandini as she recalled those words. It wasn't anything unusual, she had seen cases like these before too, where the competition tears apart friendships, specially in the modern world. She considered the people who have 'best friends' really lucky. She wasn't one of those, but it seemed Manik had once, before life played games with him, snatching the solace from him.