Only you

Chapter 8

It was the day after my second date with Ivy, I didn't have work at the bar today but I do have to go do mehndi at a wedding today.

I don't have to go for another 3 hours so I decided to ask Isaac out for coffee. For the last 2ish weeks he's seemed a bit off so I wanted to see if maybe he'd like to talk about.

I walked to the coffee shop since it was only 5 minutes from my apartment. I got a hot chocolate and a chocolate chip muffin before sitting down at a table and waiting for Isaac. He's not the best at being on time.

About 10 minutes later he came bursting through the door, he was out of breath and looked as though he'd been running.

He sat down at our table and took a couple deep breaths before saying something, "Oh my gosh I'm so sorry I'm late I um accidentally slept in." He said, but his unsure tone made me think he was leaving something out.

"It's ok" I replied, deciding to let go of it for now.

"I'm just going to go order myself something to drink, I'll be right back." He said.

"Ok." I replied before he walked away.

He came back a couple minutes later with an ice coffee in hand."So what did you want to talk to me about." He asked.

"Well I uhm you've been acting a little off these last couple of weeks, I was just wondering if there was anything you wanted to talk about? And if it has anything to do with that guy your kind of talking to." I said.

"Yeah it um actually does, he's been coming to the bar for a little while, just like Ivana, we started talking a little bit but it was just me taking his order until we started flirting a bit, but it got annoying because sometimes he would flirt and other times he would just be so annoying, he'd barely say anything to me. I was so confused with him." He replied.

"You were so confused? Are you not confused anymore? Now I'm confused." I said.

"If anything I'm even more confused now." He replied before he sighed.

"Why?" I asked.

"Well I wasn't really planning on telling anyone but god I really need to tell someone, but basically yesterday I went to a different bar with some other friends you don't know and I saw him there with his friends. I tried not to think of him for the night but we kept catching each other's eyes, we both got like really drunk." He said.

"Please don't tell this is gonna go the way I think this is gonna go." I replied.

"We started flirting but like a lot since we were drunk and then we got more drunk and I don't remember much after that and I ended up waking up in his apartment naked this morning, I saw the time and saw that I was running late to see you so I hightailed it out of there as quick as I could before he woke up and ran all the way here." He said.

"But I thought you liked him? Why would you leave before he woke up?" I asked him.

"Because I just don't know if he feels the same, we were both so drunk, it felt like a mistake. I can't even remember what happened and for the past couple of weeks he's just been occupying my mind and I didn't think anyone could really see it but I guess it was obvious." He replied.

"I'm sorry, but I'm almost 100% sure he likes you back, maybe he's just scared? Maybe he's never been with a man before, I think you just need to talk to him. You should ask him to go for coffee with you or something." I said.

"Yeah your probably right, and it feels a lot better to just talk about it, thank you." He said before smiling softly.

"No problem, it's what I'm here for." I said while smiling back at him.

"Anyways enough about me, how was your date with Ivana?" He asked me.

"It was great, I really like her." I replied.

"That's good, I'm glad, you deserve to be happy after all the shit your family put you through." He said.

I didn't really know how to reply so I just smiled, we quickly change the topic and ended up sitting there talking for about an hour before we left.

It felt nice to catch up with him, besides Reyna he's my best friend. I went home and ate some food and watched tv before heading to the wedding.

I got there around 4:30ish to do the bride's mehndi before all the guests got there. At this point mehndi felt so easy to me. I started doing it as a way to get quick cash to pay rent after getting kicked out and now I just do it for fun.

The money is also a great part about it. All of the bride's mehndi took me about an hour and a half. But it was worth the cramped hands when I saw how happy she looked.

"Thank you so much, I love it." She squealed with a big smile on her face.

"It's no problem." I said while smiling back.

"Do you want anything to eat or drink? You must be a little thirsty at least after doing this for so long." She asked.

"Yeah some water would be nice, thank you." I replied.

"No problem." She said before moving towards the kitchen, I hope she gets someone else to pour the glass of water for her, I wouldn't want her to ruin her mehndi.

I cleaned up the table a little bit as more guests started to arrive. She gave me my water shortly after and started running around to say hi to everyone.

Slowly more people came to get their mehndi done, I had just finished a little girl's mehndi before I looked up to see who was next.

It felt like my whole life came crashing down when I saw who was standing there. All the memories of my teenage years came flooding back as my older sister Meera stood there. She looked as calm as ever, not even batting an eye when she saw me.

Her long black hair had been tied back in a braid, she wore a bright pink sharara (traditional North Indian wear), she had that insufferable judgy looking stare that she always had when we were younger.

Her gaze always felt so demeaning, like everything I was doing was wrong, all the anxiety that came with living in that house came crashing back. I had no idea what to do.

"I uhm wh-what design would you like?" I stammered, it was hard to not just burst into tears right there.

She looked through the book for a little while before pointing to one, "That one." She said. Her voice sounded mostly the same but there was this more mature sound to it.

I didn't know whether the sound of her voice made want to run away and curl in a ball and cry for hours or if I wanted her to give me a big hug and tell me that everything was going to be fine and that we were going to be fine.

"Ok." I said quietly before I started on the design, so many thoughts had been running through my mind but the main one was what if the rest of family was here?

I had already seen Ravi and now Meera, maybe I could handle seeing Aman and Khushi but not my parents, I can't bear the thought of seeing them again.

I was hoping we could just sit there in silence until I was done and then we'd just go our separate ways but she couldn't not say anything to me.

"You should know that this is Aman's wedding." She said.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

Hiiii! Ok so basically a sharara is like a shirt dress with tighter pants at the top but way looser at the bottom I'm like 95% sure, I haven't been to a wedding nor worn a suit of any kind in about 3 years so I don't remember much so please tell me if anything wedding related in this chapter is wrong. Also I don't think that's how you spell sharara but we're gonna go with it. At first I wanted to make this chapter kinda happy with her and Isaac and establishing how they're basically bffs then I just kind of turned it into this and I'm not that upset about it. I almost started crying tho when I made her talk about not knowing whether to run away or to hug her sister because yeah. I don't have much else to say so bye bye!
<3
Have a good day!