MaNan : Moon Light

8. Feel Something

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Nandini could feel something warm on her neck and she knew that it was someone's breath. She is too tired to possibly open her eyes and so she just shifted and settled back against her friend. 

Against Mukti. 

It was so funny, she had been dreaming about her just a few minutes ago and now here she was; lying in the apartment room bed with her because she had finished working her stupid five-day-long binge and she was finally going to be back home in the den for a little while with her.

Her back brushed against her stomach and after a moment she felt an arm moving over Nandini's waist, palm pressing against her stomach to pull her in tighter. Her friend was so warm that she couldn't help but feel safe and secure and Nandini moved her head and pressed it against the pillow.

She could just stay like this for a very long time, forever if she could.

Nandini knew that pretty soon she would need to get up and leave their home because she would need to start running again. 

They were a few days behind because of all of the trouble with Suresh and so there would be a lot of clients to drop to. Nandini could very much believe that she would need to be working from morning to night and she couldn't even complain because she had had the last few days off working.

No, she would just need to jump on her bicycle and work as fast as she could even in the sweltering summer heat just to ensure that she kept the clients and dealers, and their boss happy. But regardless of this knowledge, she felt that she could stay just a little longer.

This hardly ever happened anymore, the younger hardly ever woke up in the bed with Mukti because the older was always gone for so long.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly and the faintest scent of something caught her attention, faded shampoo and cologne on the pillow. 

It didn't smell like Mukti at all. She had her friend's scent memorized perfectly for she never changed a single thing that she used. Her cologne was always Dior Eau Sauvage - woody and faintly bittersweet to her nose. 

Mukti's shampoo was always something milky like almonds, but this was different.

This was fresh in a way that seemed to be floral but she couldn't figure it out. That was strange. 

Mukti always used the same products over and over because she didn't seem to like change. It made her seem somewhat strangely reliable that she didn't flit from one thing to another like a bee sampling pollen. 

Not like Harshad. That dealer always smelled like different colognes every time that she saw him and Nandini just knew that he must have had dozens of shelves in his bathroom with all kinds of bottles on them.

The only thing that she could think of was that this wasn't their bed or even their shared apartment room and so she opened her eyes slowly. She saw a hint of a white pillow and so she turned her head slightly to look across the room.

Nandini saw a brick wall and a small window right up at the very top that was long and thin, that went along most of the length of it. This was most certainly not hers and Mukti's room, with its white walls and large window and desk. 

She only knew one such room like that and she shifted to lift her head off the pillow in sleepy confusion. 

As she did, she felt that her arm was tucked under the pillow and when she looked down she saw that she wasn't wearing Mukti's shirt, just in her cropped tee.