First Kiss & Broken Promises

Chapter 39 - He had fallen in love with me?

@thewolfandthemoon - Your reactions to the story as you read the chapters have brightened my days. Thank you for being an amazing support for FKBP :)

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For the second time in years, I entered the Shiv Shankar household through the main door. It had been three hours since I had left Aryan at the door facing his mother; one hour of trying in vain to reach him on his phone had me worried about him. What if I hadn’t been right in assuming he needed time alone with Vanya? Should I have stayed by his side? I hadn’t because I knew it in my heart that he had a strong reason for not confiding in me about his sister. It hurt that he hadn’t; he needn’t have gone through the trauma alone.

I searched the sprawling bungalow, floor by floor, room by room and he wasn’t anywhere. No one stayed in the second floor anymore, but my feet climbed up the winding stairs of their own accord in search of his old room. My heart thudded painfully as I neared the door, remembering the last time I had been inside. It was the day after Aryan had left four years ago, and I had climbed up to his room to seek comfort in his embrace – to let him know my sister had eloped. I recalled breaking down in the middle of his room after repeatedly calling out to him. The room had stayed eerily silent, the room that had always responded to my every wish before then. It had been as much my room as his, since we spent long hours simply staring out the window or at the ceiling, comfortable in our shared silence. The walls of the room had been witness to our laughter, our fights, our pranks and our plotting. The seeds of our friendship were sown in this room, and it had blossomed into a bond unlike any other.

Now, as I stood in front of the door, my trembling hand grasping the knob, an unknown force beckoned me inside to forget the disastrous last visit and instead remember the days of our bond. Taking a deep breath, I twisted the knob and stepped inside, pushing the door open with a steady hand. The first rays of sunset greeted me through the open French windows, the sheer white curtains billowing in the evening breeze. I smiled despite the melancholy that hung in the air. This place was dear to me, and I hugged myself, letting Ary’s room envelop me in its warmth. I could feel his presence nearby, and my eyes searched the room, unable to find him anywhere. The bed was made, the pristine white mattress resting untouched. The nightstand held a fresh set of flowers even though I knew Aryan did not use this room.  I smiled realizing it must have been Annie’s handy work keeping this room as neat and lived in as it had been when Aryan had stayed here.

I noticed a few papers swirling in the corner of the room and walked towards it. I crouched and picked up the all too familiar sketchpads - Aryan’s charcoal drawings of his sister. It had been ages since I had seen Aryan sketch, and I absently flipped through the pages wondering why they were strewn carelessly in a corner. As I flipped rapidly, the images began to change from the face of a smiling girl to the face with the red tears streaming down the girl’s cheeks. She came alive through the drawings and my breath caught. I quickly scanned through the other sketchpads eager to learn the story behind Aryan’s mysterious sister, Ayesha.

Every sketchpad started with the drawing of a happy, bubbly, and wild-spirited girl but ended with her lifeless body in splatters of blood. I felt my throat choke with grief as I felt the emotions Aryan must have experienced sketching each one from memory. After the fourth one, my knees buckled, and I fell back on the bed. I sat still for a long time, my eyes burning with the tears I held back forcibly. Compelled to share Aryan’s loss, my hands shook uncontrollably as I reached for the fifth one – the last one. I had let him suffer alone for way too long.

Touching the edges of the fifth sketchpad, I steeled myself for what I was about to see. I flipped it at a pace that would reveal the painful event before my eyes. The scenes changed from a young Ary walking into a small candle lit room, his eyes wide with shock as he spotted the rope braided out of bedsheets hanging down the balcony to the street below, his sister’s tear-streaked, scared face looking up at him, his mouth open wide shouting NO!, and his hands tugging the cloth, possibly to stop his sister from dropping down so many floors. My hands halted as I ran out of breath, and I couldn’t stop the sob that broke out of my throat as I knew what I was about to see if I turned those last few pages. I didn’t want to, but I had to, for Ary’s sake. So I flicked them to reveal the girl’s eyes widen with fear as her hands slid off the cloth, and she fell a long way down to her death. The last page was horrific with thick black sketch of a girl lying in her pool of blood, the street light throwing an eerie spotlight on her pale lifeless face.