LOVE BLOSSOMS(COMPLETED)

18. The Value Of A Heart

I forcefully turned my attention to my sketch. It was nothing very complex but somehow, my mind was making it complex. It felt like one of those scenes from movies/drama where you eneter a place and feel the presence of one person that really isn’t present there. Somehow, for the past few days, I felt so. Where ever I went I could relate and visualize it to Ria. My studio felt weird, vague and lifeless without her, the cafe’s that we generally visit, seems unsually cold to me, those long hours of window shopping, our Friday BFF ritual literally killed because she wasn’t here to continue that ritual, our constant jabber about the book or movie that we lately read, everything seems like just yesterday. But, I know what anybody who hears my mental whinning might think. I know, you, if you happen to be one of Ria’s serious ever-romantic reader or just a romantic person, you’d think that the fated thing happened, that I’m finally realizing my love for my best friend. No, sorry to prove your hopes 'wrong but Ria is literally like the sister I never had or just, let’s just put it in this manner, she has become a part of my life that none can replace. She definitely isn’t the person that I can look upto as my wife or lover but she certainly is like that only person in this world that can understand me, the only person that I can ever think of my well wisher.

Even, when Ria told me that she was going to get married, I never ever imagined that it’d affect me in such a way. We’ve always had these long hours of debate where she had told me that marriage was never going to change her. She’d still be the same, the same bossy as ever Best Friend of mine. I thought it’d be just the same where she’d keep tracks of fashion show deadline, shout her heads off, when she learns that I procrastinated again, but somehow everything changed. It hasn’t even been a week, yet I can feel the change in Ria. She isn’t like before. She does talk to me, but the durations are short, her words are measured and sometimes it feels like she’s no longer interested in my life.

I remember her telling me that she wants to find a best friend in her husband. Maybe, she has found that best friend in Sid that she has totally forgotten me? Sid, is really a great person and I have gotten to know that in the short span of time that I met him. He understands Ria in a way that I fail to understand. But my mind had made up that I needed to meet Ria sooner than possible.

To be frank, in a way I used this camp session as an excuse to meet up with Ria. I need a long, chat with her to clear my head of such feelings. I know I like Ria but I also know that I can never take care of her as Sid does .Eventhough I’ve known Sid only for a short span of time, I somehow can sense that Sid can read Ria like an open book while people like me, even her own parents, would be ready to pay thousands just to know what goes on in that pretty head of hers.

Right from the start I knew that Ria and I had no chance, eventhough she did consider that once thanks to our lovely peer pressure. The thing is that she is just this really hard-to-get-kind-of girl that perefectly knows how to show people there limits when it comes to her. She isn’t too emotionally attached with anyone nor is she totally aloof and uncaring of the people who surround her. She’d get super mad if I myself utter something that hurt her pride or ego or just offends her generally and later lecture me as how I must learn to not take liberty of my relationship as her best friend because she hates it when someone hurts her self-respect.

I still remember how proud I had been to meet such author as Ria. In her debut novel, she had taken up sensitive topic of Fashion world. Yey she had done justice to our industry and made people understand it’s not the way they think about fashion industry that exists. Her novel had made people realize that fashion designers do have stress, but that never means they’re immoral. It added a sense of understand of the lifestyle we designers generally lead. Her both protagonists were fashion designers and the novel followed their life story. That was what led me to become her friend.