Broken (Wattys2016)

CHAPTER 11

Aaliya had booked a cab for four in the morning. She knew that if Aarav came to know about her travelling alone at four in the morning through a cab, he would kill her nonetheless. Delhi wasn't a safe city at all and there already had been a lot of cases of sexual abuse against women travelling alone in buses and cabs. Aaliya was a little scared too about travelling alone at such an odd hour, but she had to explore herself and she'd go to any extent for that. In the cab, she was alert although she played 2048 on her phone to divert her mind. She was there at the Departures of the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi in half an hour as the roads were empty. Aaliya got down from the cab and went to get her bags from the back of the car but before she could do that, the cab driver took them out for her.

"Thank you so much." Aaliya said as she paid him the fare.

"Not a problem ma'am. I hope you enjoy your trip." The cab driver said and Aaliya smiled and nodded at him.

She walked towards the Departures feeling a little lost. She saw that families were there to bid goodbye to their relatives. There were kisses, hugs and promises to stay in touch and seeing them Aaliya felt sad that she had no one to say goodbye to. She was sure that Aarav would call up his mother and tell her everything once he found the letter and she knew that she'd get a long nice lecture from the Vinayak's once she would return home. She wanted to tell Riddhima, Rishab and Priyansh about the trip but then they would have stayed in touch with her for the entire trip and the purpose of the trip would have been lost.

Her flight was scheduled at quarter to seven. She got through the passport check and security check and got her boarding pass as she waited to board her flight. All this while she thought about Aarav and if she was making the right move but once she boarded the Air India flight, she was sort of sure. It was a twelve hour fifty minutes long flight and she slept for most of the time. She met an old man who had a seat next to her and spent some time talking to him and reading Someone Like You by Durjoy Datta and Nikita Singh. She also thought about the novel that she was writing about couldn't think of what to write. She had way too many plot ideas for her story but none of them seemed right to her.

As soon as the plane landed at the Sydney International Airport she got out fast and went to the baggage counter to get her stuff. There was a shop within the airport from where she got a local sim and pushed it into the second sim slot of her phone. As she continued to walk, she ran into something and fell flat on her bum.

"Ouch." She said as she looked to see what she had run into. Turns out she had run into a rock hard chest of a man who was sitting on his bum as well now and patting the dust off of from his pants.

"I'm sorry." Aaliya said and then her brown eyes met a pair of green emerald eyes that softened on seeing her.

"Hey, I'm sorry." He said as he got up and held out a hand for Aaliya. Aaliya looked up at him a little confused but when he pushed his hand forward a little she took it and he pulled her onto her feet.

Aaliya was too captivated by his charms to react to anything. The green emerald like eyes, dirty blond hair, sharp jaw line that could slice an apple with luscious lips on white tanned skin. He was almost 6'3ish which made him taller than Aarav, had a muscular built just like Priyansh to which she assumed that he was a gym addict or something; she could clearly trace his abs through his peach tee shirt that hugged his upper body.

"Here." He said as he picked up the handle of Aaliya's two big strollers. It was then Aaliya woke up from her dream world and looked at her strollers. She looked back up at him and he smirked. So he had caught her ogling him. Her cheeks turned red as his smirk deepened. This was a first; Aaliya was never a blushy person. Had she been the old Aaliya she would have said something to wipe that smirk off his face but all she could do right now was blush.