Marry Me

Chapter _1 Arguments

I have always wondered how it would feel like to be loved back.

The amount of films that I have made, the amount of scripts that I have written about love, there always comes a point in every one of them, where the heroine or the hero in the film feels helpless, lost, desperate, searching for the question if they are ever going to be loved back by the person they love the most in the world?

The films always end with a twist, sometimes they find that they are but they can't do anything about it because something worse is happening, other times it ends before they can because something worse has already happened.

I guess my life is the second type of movie.

There's this woman standing wearing a yellow Dior dress, and Bottega Veneta shoes in my apartment, the girlfriend of someone I love the most in the world.

What are you supposed to do when you love someone, and you have to take their love someone to a party arranged by them, so that they can finally end it all with one knee on the ground, the other up, hand holding out a ring box?

'There's going to be anannouncement.' he had said. And my heart had died down a little inside my chest.

"Shanvi, could you please help me with my hair?" She says, hand curling thoughtlessly through her thick raven black hair, her heart-shaped face turned in mild annoyance towards the mirror. The Times of India called it a 'face of the century.'

I stop my hands restlessly settling things right and left on top of my writing table, realising I have been doing it since the past five minutes, and she is annoyed by it."Yeah sure."

She opens her Coco flap bag, and takes the bottle of Jo Malone's Flowerbomb out, filling my nostrils with the sharp perfume. "Which hairstyle do you think will look good with this dress?" She asks thoughtlessly, waving the bottle in her hand in front of her hair, still looking at the mirror.

And my mind stubbornly goes there; his deep voice doesn't waste a drumbeat of a second in invading my head and puncturing my heart with a knife. Just let your hair open, he had said to me countless times in the past.

I don't want to give this to her, my heart whispers frantically, don't give this to her. But I remind myself there was nothing mine of him to hold on to, to not give it to his fiancé.

"I-I think you should just let it be open," I say hating myself, and hating the slight quiver in my tone.

Her caramel eyes dart to me, and then narrows, as if she couldn't decide if I was serious or joking. She decides to give in a laugh, and turns back to the mirror of the dressing table. "What? No please Shanvi, I think I shouldn't even have asked, you don't know anything about fashion," her eyes roll, "No offense."

"It's just that I think he would like it, especially if it's as important as the announcement day." My heart canters before I even realise what I just blabbered out.

"What announcement?" She turns like a falcon frowning at me. My chest starts thudding so hard; it stumbles around like a table with a broken leg, around and around and then falling into the ground and smashing into bits of pieces.

I give in an awkward laugh and stammer out, "Nothing."

She takes an unfaltering step towards me, her caramel eyes zooming down on mine, a cat's aim on a rat.

I know she won't let it go like this. Her narrowed eyes and my thumping heart are testament to that. I have never been good with lies. Dammit why did I have to go and spoil it at the last moment? I wait for her to step back and let it go, but she doesn't. So I take a giant gulp of breath, clear my throat valiantly, and try, "He....he...." the words stick inside my throat, burning like a hot scalding iron.