Rekindled | ✓

Chapter 6. Boyfriend

After sometime, Inaaya pulls back, wiping her face with the back of her palm and sniffing. "I'm sorry." She mumbles, not meeting their eyes. "I'm fine. I'm going in my room."

Maya grasps her wrist, stopping her. "You don't have to feel sorry. You can be vulnerable with us. It's fine. After all what are friends for?"

Inaaya looks at her with a guilty face and Maya understands her dilemma.

"It's okay if you don't want to share your story with us." She says in understanding. "We weren't even going to ask about it, trust me. But you don't have to suffer alone when you've us." She smiles and looks at Akira. "I'm just glad that she doesn't know more than me. Like I was actually worried about my position in Inaaya's life being lower than you. You don't know anything else, right?"

Akira glances between Inaaya and Maya. She contemplates and then slowly shakes her head.

Maya looks back at Inaaya and breathes out when she finds the same gloomy look on her face. "Okay. I'm sorry, that was a bad joke."

"I'll get changed and be back." Inaaya excuses herself and walks to her room.

When Inaaya returns, she narrates everything to them about her past, the lies, the love, the breakup, the foolishness because she felt she owed them the truth and asks them to not react. The last thing she wanted was any sort of reaction or verdict from them.

"So...... IA." Akira says in a deep thought.

"It's the Hindi word. Nothing more. The same thought process went into the name what he had predicted yesterday." Inaaya clears her doubt, staring at the hot coffee laid in front of her on the table and detested how she could see the moments spent with him and coffee floating in the liquid.

Akira chuckles, making both the girls look at her. "You believe that?"

"And you don't?"

"Don't tell me you think it stands for Inaaya and Ayansh." Maya huffs, shaking her head as if the thought itself was bizzare.

Inaaya grits her teeth on hearing her name taken with his in the same sentence.

"Idiots." Akira mutters under her breath but Inaaya heard it and it snapped the thread within her.

"Stop doing this!" She retorts, not hiding the resentment she felt at that moment and stands up from her chair. "Don't try to delude yourself or me by thinking something that's not possible. I've done that enough and I'm not going down that road."

Akira stares with a blank face and then states calmly. "You've to be a whole different species of dumb to believe that bullshit."

Inaaya let's out a sarcastic chuckle and rolls her eyes. "You don't know anything so it's better if you don't create some wishful assumptions."

"I don't know." Akira agrees. "I just know what you've said but it doesn't take a genius to put two and two together. And you need to stop lying to yourself."

"I'm not!" Inaaya shouts, defensively. "Why are you even arguing with me?"

"Am I the one arguing?" She raises an amused brow.

"You're pissing me off, Akira!" She yells, agitated. Both of them oblivious to how Maya was sitting with her elbows propped and head pushed into her palms tiredly. "What are you even doing here? Don't you've a kid to take care of?"

Maya's head whips up, her eyes so wide that they might just jump out at any instance.

Akira stares and Inaaya hates how she was getting affected with the calm demeanor she possessed and the way she was getting under her skin. "Very mature of you to say that." She mocks and Inaaya swallows, her eyes stinging due to the immense amount of helplessness she felt. "Next time, don't pretend as if it's okay when it's not." She stands up and steps in front of Inaaya. "Don't tell you've moved on when you're still stuck in the past as if everything just happened yesterday."