Hi. Anya here. So, for some reason, the other two numb nuts told me to tell you about this part, although I'm nowhere included in it, but anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. So here it is.
-x- Anya -x-
Neatly combed hair, the Ultimate Spiderman bag pack on his back, thick fat black-framed glasses seated on his nose, a stiff white ironed shirt tucked in his pants, and his two rabbit teeth sticking out of his mouth. 15-year-old, Aaryan Gupta is all set for his first day of the last week of his sophomore year at high school (10th standard).
Although he is a bit nervous about it, he knows that today is THE DAY. He is going to finally do it. He will finally propose to the one that he dreams of. His 'only' true love, his 'actual' soulmate, and his 'partner for life'. Disha Soni awaits his proposal. She waits for him to ask so that she can say yes. And then they could be together, forever.
"ANYA!!!" Disha screams from the background.
Okay, probably I'm overexaggerating. *giggles* But so was Aaryan back then. A complete doter. And he was really madly in love with her.
There was only one thing that he feared. Rejection. And the probable loss of a really good friendship. He considered her to be his best friend. And she liked him too. After all, who would she depend on when she needed those last-minute homework submissions done, or help in some Physics or Chemistry assignment that was still pending.
But he didn't mind that, because he just wanted to spend time with her.
That day he walked along with Farhan, through the corridor, and into his classroom only to be greeted with a loud BANG!
It was Daksh and Akshat. Again. They had been pranking him since the beginning of high school. They had this stupid prank-o-meter where their goal was to prank Aaryan a thousand times before the end of high school.
"What happened Gupta? Lost your balance!!", Daksh shouted as he laughed at Aaryan who had fallen on the ground due to the sudden loud noise. "What does that add up to?" he asked Akshat.
"Eight hundred and nine I guess" Akshat replied as he was laughing along with him.
"Well, a hundred and ninety-one to go before the year ends" Daksh continued laughing as they headed towards the canteen.
Aaryan cursed them as he got up and fixed his glasses.
"You good Gupta?" Disha asked as she was entering the class.
Time froze. Aaryan's eyes failed to blink as he stared at the beautiful face of Disha Soni. Oh, how he loved that look. She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, and he regained his lost senses. "Lost somewhere?" she laughed.
"Oh, Disha, Hey!! Hi!! Hello!!" Aaryan nervously rambled, Farhan looked at him with a disappointed face.
"Umm okay," Disha smiled, "Hello, Mr. Gupta!"
"Hey Disha..." he smiled nervously, "You're fine, how am I?", he squeaked as Farhan put his palm on his forehead and shook his head.
Disha laughed, "Are you fine though?", she asked him, as Aaryan looked at the ground embarrassingly. "Anyway, did you do the IT assignment that Ms. Barkha had given us?"
"Uhh yeah, it's in my bag", Aaryan replied as he removed the code that he had been writing for three days, "It's a bit tough, it took like a lot of time to..." he hesitated.
"That's fine, I'll just take it down, she doesn't validate the code anyway", Disha interrupted as she put her hand forward.
"Umm", Aaryan scratched the back of his head as he was wondering what to do and looked at Farhan who was still shaking his head, "Okay... here you go"
"Thanks, Gupta!! You're a savior!!" she told him as she took the notebook and put it in her bag.
He started to blush and a smile lined upon his face.
"Anyway... I gotta rush, my volleyball practice is beginning in like five minutes, catch you later!" Disha said as she put Aaryan's book in her bag and stormed towards the school grounds.
Aaryan and Farhan entered the classroom and kept their bags aside.
"OK DON'T!!", Aaryan told Farhan as they seated themselves.
"Did I even speak a word?", Farhan replied calmly.
"Listen ok! I can see your reactions, don't give me that look!", Aaryan told him back squinting his eyes.
"Look Aaryan, I mean if you're liking it this way, perpetually advancing on a one-way street, then I won't stop you. I mean I know I really don't like what is going on here, but you make your own choices. The only thing I don't understand is what are you getting out of this parasitic relationship? I mean this is such a biased distribution of efforts that is completely skewed towards you! I don't know when you would realize this and do something about it"
"Today is the day, my friend. Today this parasitic bond will become a symbiotic one, and this skewed distribution will transform to a normal one", Aaryan told Farhan as a smile lined upon his face, "Today is the day I. Will. Make. It. Happen!"
"Well... then god be with you because I know I won't!", Farhan replied raising his eyebrows, "I want no part of this failed and messed up love story", he said as he removed his math notebook and turned to the page that was specified on the whiteboard.
"WHAT! You're such a pessimist, Farhan. It will be good. It will all be good. She knows me since like ten years, and we're like best friends, I think... no I KNOW that we are. It will all be good", Aaryan reaffirmed himself.
"Keep thinking that Gupta! Fake it till you make it brother" Farhan smiled as he uncapped his pen and started writing. Aaryan continued to look at him with squinting eyes.
Later that day, after all the classes had finished and everyone was back in the class packing up for the day to leave for home, he finally did it.
"I'm doing it", Aaryan told Farhan as Farhan was zipping his bag up.
"Well, I don't want to see you make a fool of yourself so I'm leaving", Farhan said, "I have some actual work to do"
"DUDE!!!! Come on, why are you being annoying! Don't friends support each other in everything!", Aaryan squeaked.
"Ok first of all," Farhan faced Aaryan and looked him in the eye, "That is so not true, I am not going to support you in this sure-to-fail quest because I know what is going to happen and secondly, I mean come on, why do you even want to propose? Can't you just keep it the way it is and enjoy being exploited by her"
"You, my friend, are hopeless. I know I will succeed in wooing Disha. And you can leave if you want..." Aaryan said with an attitude as he folded his hands before his chest.
"And I am...", Farhan replied as he swung his bag pack around his back and headed for the door.
"SHUT UP!" Aaryan pulled his bag and pulled Farhan back, "You're staying here and that's it! I would need someone to bring me back to my catatonic state from my manic", Aaryan told him.
"Ugh... FINE. I hope you know that the probability of that event occurring is quite slim. Anyway, make this quick! I have my IIT coaching classes at four", Farhan rolled his eyes.
"GREAT, I LOVE YOU MAN. Anyway, here I go", Aaryan said as he removed a rose from his bag.
"Oh god... this is gonna be a pain to watch", Farhan claimed shaking his head as he saw the rose.
"SHUT UP, now let me go", Aaryan told him as he looked at Disha who was busy speaking to her other friends.
He tried to move ahead but for some reason, his feet seem to be glued to the floor. His heartbeat started to race, his face started to sweat, his pupils started to dilate.
"JUST GO!!!", Farhan yelled as he pushed him.
"Dude, you should've seen Ariana", Aisha told the rest of the girls surrounding her.
"Hey!! I wasn't that bad. At least, I could make it up to him unlike you", Maddison replied squinting her eyes.
"Oohhhhh", all the girls hooted and laughed.
'There she is', Aaryan thought as he advanced ahead, 'How is everything she does so perfect? Her smile, so symmetric, so precise. Her lips, the shape of a beautiful sine wave. And her eyes, oh... her eyes, I can see the depths of the deepest oceans reflect through them. Why is she so perfect?' Aaryan daydreamed.
"ANYA!!! STOP MAKING UP CRINGY STUFF. I did not THINK any of that!" Aaryan yells from behind as Anya continues to giggle.
"Disha", he called out, as Disha looked at him and so did the rest of the girls. The sudden attention sparked sudden anxiety in him.
Disha looked at the rose and then in his eyes, she knew what was about to happen as her laugh faded away.
She knew this was going to hurt him, and she didn't want that.
She knew this was going to be cruel. She rose from her seat and tried to stop it.
"Aaryan, I don't think this is the right...", she started.
He went down on one knee, and now the entire class seemed to notice this. Disha stumbled, she knew she was going to be villainized for this. Eyebrows started to raise and a pin drop silence followed. Farhan had already started shaking his head in utter embarrassment.
"Aaryan", Disha whispered, "What do you think you're doing?
"I... I... I...", Aaryan started to hesitate as he looked around him and saw the others looking at him and whispering. His anxiety started to go crazy. His stomach started to churn. His mouth started to go dry. He closed his eyes hard and focussed on what he wanted to say. He had to say it today. He was too far into this to back out now.
"I really like you; YOU'RE ALL THAT I WANT and I really, really want to go out with you. Please would you go out with me?" he blurted out in the flick of a moment with his eyes closed tight and then opened them to see the different reactions that everybody wore.
Some were smiling, on the verge, of laughing out loud, some were disgusted, and some which included Disha in particular were just taken aback by what was going on.
Disha couldn't react.
"Disha?" Aaryan called out to her, as he couldn't read the situation properly.
"Huh?" she said as she broke from her lost state of mind.
"Would you go out on a date with me?", Aaryan asked her with a broken smile as he looked her right in the eye.
There was a moment of silent awkwardness.
"No...", Disha whispered.
Almost instantaneously the class started to fill with hoots and silent 'oohhhhhs'.
Aaryan's broken smile faded away and his eyebrows raised as well. He didn't know what to do now. He had been warned, but he never imagined the situation where he would be rejected. How could he? He just stayed there, on his one knee, staring at Disha, almost silently begging her to change her answer.
"I mean I do like you, but not in the way that you do. I... I... I really like you as a friend."
That did it. The sword was now completely in his heart.
"I'm so sorry Gupta, but that is all", Disha replied embarrassingly as she swung her bag on her back and exited the class in a jiffy.
Aaryan stayed there on his one knee before being bombarded with the hoots and the disgusted looks by the other classmates. He was still in a state of utter shock. Farhan knew he had to help his friend out of this situation and so he took Aaryan's bag and took Aaryan to the Physics lab (which was kind of like their adda).
Tears started to fill Aaryan's eyes as he covered his face with both his palms and started to sob in them.
"It's ok Gupta", Farhan said in a calming voice, trying to console him.
"ITS NOT!!!", he wailed, "How could she do this! That too in front of everyone!"
"Well... I mean, you were the one who put her on the spot like that, so..."
"SO THAT MEANS IT WAS ALL MY FAULT!!!", Aaryan continued to wail.
"No, I don't mean that," Farhan told him, although he did know that it was technically all Aaryan's fault.
"Let me put it like this. Probably this situation and these circumstances weren't the ideal ones to create an equilibrium. If you get what I mean... You should build-up to the proposal. And you should only propose when you are a hundred percent sure, that the other person likes you as much as you like them. I mean, you could get away with a situation where the other person accepts you but doesn't like you in a romantic way. But I don't think that would be an ideal relationship... just like an ideal equilibrium. I believe Aaryan, you should never just give in to your feeling of love. You should always be certain about it, and if there is even a little uncertainty in your mind of where this would lead you towards, you should just stop right there."
Aaryan looked up. He was still sobbing. But he listened to what Farhan told him.
"Here", Farhan said as he handed him a tissue.
"Maybe you're right," Aaryan said as he cleaned his nose.
"Also, I don't think right now was the best time for you to start a relationship. I mean you have your Board examinations this year and I know for sure that you have other more important priorities to see to"
"Um-hmm", Aaryan squeaked as he nodded his head.
"I think the only problem you might face now, would be Daksh and Akshat. I mean, I'm sure the rest of the class is going to forget about this in a week or so, but those two idiots...", Farhan paused, "Yeah, they are going to exploit the hell out of whatever just happened", he added as he could imagine Aaryan getting beaten up for being rejected in the most embarrassing way possible.
"And they aren't going to let that go easily", he warned him.
"I mean that's only for another five months, besides, I just realized I'm not gonna be here next year anyway", Aaryan casually told him while he wiped his face and zipped his bag. He had assumed Farhan already knew what he was talking about. "Ready to go?" he asked the shocked Farhan.
"Hold up. What are you saying?", Farhan asked him with raised eyebrows and a confused state of mind.
"Didn't I tell you? My dad and I are shifting to the US" Aaryan said as he got up and started to leave.
"WHAT?!", Farhan yelled.
"Yeah... Farhan was pretty mad about how I brought that up", Aaryan reminisces.
"No shit Sherlock! He was your best friend for like eight years, and you casually tell him that you are going to leave the country like you were telling him about some good food that you ate!" Disha scolds him.
"Dude Chill!!! He still is my best friend. In fact, we skype like every weekend. He's pretty sorted with his life at IIT Bombay. Besides every time I visit India, I always make sure to spend a lot of time with him" Aaryan tells them.
"Anyway, so that was it. And then Aaryan came to the states and joined the University of South Niagaton, and after some time I came into his life and he came into mine" Anya adds as she looks at him and smiles.
"Oh no no no, my friend", Aaryan claims, "Well, you did, but I think the most screwed up part was when this numb nut returned", he strikes Disha's head.
"Oww!!!!! THAT HURT!!!!", Disha tells him as she hits him back.
"Ok now we're even! Disha STOP! Anya STOP her!! DON'T JOIN IN TOO!!!" he shrieked as both the girls continue to hit him and laugh.