Edge Of Seventeen

5. Pleasant Or Unpleasant

"Krish, now don't go and tell mom..", Riya began in her familiar bargaining tone and hurriedly flipped the channel.

But Krish had already run out yelling, "MOOOOM! RIYA IS WATCHING YOU-KNOW-WHAT!"

Mishti and I burst into laughter again.

"What?", Riya snapped.

"Well, your brother is fast on the uptake", I said "I'm not surprised given that he's the smarter Dixit kid".

Riya glared at me before throwing the remote on my face which I managed to dodge.

"Not you as well", she said in exasperation.

"Come on let's go for lunch.."

Sunday evening turned out to be a torture. I sat with my phone on my lap, like a total chump, waiting for dad's call.

After half an hour of waiting, I knew I was wasting my time. But anyway, I tried to call him once but it went straight to voicemail.

I walked out and shook my head at mom who was sitting at the dining table shelling peas, when she raised her eyebrows at me.

Mom said nothing. But after dinner, she grabbed her phone, went into her room and shut the door.

I heard her leaving voice messages for dad, each one getting louder than the previous one.

Feeling defeated, I crept out of the house wanting to go take a stroll, but somewhere, subconsciously I knew I was going down looking for something else.

I sat down on one of the benches in the park. Even at this time, there were a couple of children playing on the see-saw.

I shifted my gaze from them after a few minutes and saw what I had wanted to see. A tall figure in a black jacket walking in through the hedges.

He finally saw me, "Hey Zoya".

"Hey", I said casually as if this wasn't exactly what I had been expecting. An art I had mastered from Riya.

But when he came closer, I forgot all about the art and flung my arms around him.

"Woah, I wasn't expecting this sort of a welcome", he said finally, hugging me back "What are you doing here?"

When I didn't answer that question, he asked another one. And it turned out to be way more difficult to answer.

"Your dad didn't call?"

"I haven't spoken to him almost for a week now", I said "This long of a sabbatical is hard".

"You want to walk?"

"Yeah", I said gratefully and we turned and followed the two kids who had finished their play, out of the park.

Rahul carried most of the talk as we made our way down the driveway. He and his band were practising in the event hall at the far end of the society and he had just come to have a break.

"So that's why you came to the park?"

"Yeah. But you still haven't told me, why you came there?" 

That's when I actually remembered.

"Oh no.. I'm not supposed to be here. I better hurry back upstairs...I don't want to run into another bad boy like Varun either".

"Varun is not the bad boy Zoya. I am", Rahul said and laughed looking at my face.

"But there are others around too", he added "So go back home before any of them come after you. They won't be so kind as me".

"Oh yeah", I said rolling my eyes "But if that happens, you can come and pretend to be my boyfriend again".

"Yeah I could...but why should I pretend anymore Zoya?", Rahul asked "Can't it be real?"