"Why do I feel like you're avoiding me on purpose?" Aarav corners me, just a week before our finals. Farewell is right around the corner, too. I always thought that I'd be going to the farewell all dolled up, hand-in-hand with my suited up best friend, that we'd take shit ton of pictures and that we'd be having fun every minute. Now, I'm dreading the day.
Weeks have gone by with me pretending to be busy with my work and school and being anxious about finals. Aarav didn't intervene much, but with every moment I see him with Laya, talking and laughing about something that now is their tradition is getting to me. Because Aarav only ever had traditions with me. And now it's someone else, someone who doesn't know him for as long as I did, but it seems to me that she knows him more than I do.
I see them eating lunch together, meeting outside after school at the shops we used to go to, talking about books and studying together. I see them walking hand-in-hand and only recently did Aarav confess his feelings for Laya to me. I congratulated him on their relationship, them getting together, though it's making me want to go blind rather than looking at how he looks at her.
Varsh and I can hold small talk now because we're the only ones holed up in the classroom and the library together, mostly to avoid the same couple.
I avoid Aarav's eyes. "Why would I avoid you?"
"How about you answer that, hm?" He comes after me as I arrange books back into the library shelves. "Since when do you study?"
"Since the day you started," I clip because we both weren't the type to, yet here we are, studying, but not together. Maybe because we aren't the type of friends who would study together, maybe because I do not bring out his best or his potential out like Laya does.
He narrows his eyes. "What's this about?"
"What?"
He holds me straight by my shoulders and I'm forced to look into his trouble stirring eyes because if I look down, he'd put two and two together, now that he's smarter, hanging out with someone who's just as smart. "What's wrong with you, Swara?"
"We are gone at the moment "What's wrong?" became "what's wrong with you?", don't you think?" My eyes turn into slits. All the emotions I held back pour down my cheeks.
His eyes soften, but mine narrow. "Done with your questions, Dixit?"
He lets go of me, and just as I turn around, trying to come up with something to do, I find Varsh coming towards me.
He stops in front of me, scratching his ears awkwardly. "Would you like to go to the farewell party together?"
If only he had asked this question a couple of months ago, I would've been the happiest person. I mean, at the start of this year and throughout and just till a couple of months ago, Varsh was my crush, my first crush. I nod my head with a smile. "Okay, I'll go."