@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.
I shivered and hugged myself, rocking back and forth while the tears rolled and fell onto my lap. The drawings tugged at my soul, and I cried aloud for Ayesha, for Ary and the loss that still plagued him. He couldn’t be blaming himself for what happened, but I could see how he ended up holding himself responsible for his sister’s death. Vanya’s accusation must have sealed that night forever in his mind as a boy who had killed his sister. I felt a red hot rage ripple through my veins at that woman who called herself his mother. She couldn’t be his mother.
I sprang up off the bed, when I heard a sound from the bathroom and went to investigate. Even before the door opened, I knew without doubt, I would find Ary, but it did not prepare me for the sight in front of me – Aryan slumped against the tiles in the shower cubicle, fully clothed, clutching a bottle in his hand, his head rolled back. I didn’t know if the wetness on his face was from the tears or the water that had him soaking wet. He hadn’t seen me enter, and I stood there seeing him at his most vulnerable. I wiped my face clean of the tears before going to him.
“Ary,” I called softly, stepping into the sea blue shower cubicle.
“Pigtails…” he mumbled, smiling without turning to look at me. “I missed you…” he said, his eyes closing shut. “I’ve always missed you…”
“Ary, am right here…” I said, kneeling in front of him, but reeled back a bit as a strong smell of whiskey hit me.
“I missed you even when we were best friends, Pigtails…” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “You see…I couldn’t tell you that I had killed my sister. I was scared I would lose you…what if you had stopped looking at me the way you did,” he whispered, and this time I was sure the wetness on his cheeks were his tears.
“Ary…please look at me,” I pleaded, taking his hand into mine.
His hands were cold, and I started rubbing them. He slowly opened his eyes and turned his head towards me, his stare unfocussed.
“You are here,” he said looking at me with his bloodshot eyes. Oh God! How long has he been here crying? “You are my Pigtails,” he stated, lifting his hand and tugging at my hair.
I bit back a sob and nodded. “Let’s get you out of here Ary,” I said, trying to lift him off the wet floor, but he kept flopping back.
I looked at the bottle rolling on the floor beside him and cursed. “How much have you been drinking, Ary?” I asked, a bit miffed that he would turn to alcohol for relief.
He came close to me, and peered at me, trying to focus on my face. “Not enough, Pigtails, ‘cos it still hurts like a bitch here,” he whispered hoarsely, thumping his chest with his fist, and I bit my lip hard not to howl with the terrifying ache building in my chest.
“You don’t need the damn bottle for that, Ary. I’m here!” I said firmly, and wrapped my arms around him.
“You’ll stay?” He asked, pulling away from me.
“Yes, I will. Now just help me get you up, please…”
“How can you help me forget what she said to me, Div?” he asked, looking at me intently. His eyes were clearing up, and he had just called me Div instead of Pigtails.
“Ary…”
“My own mother thinks am a good for nothing murderer! Tell me, how you are going to fucking help me forget that!” he shouted, and I shrunk back at the fierceness in his eyes.
“Are you going to let me sink into you, Div, like I have wanted to from the day I saw you under that mango tree, looking up at me with those big beautiful eyes of yours?” His cold fingers cupped my wet cheeks.
“Ary please…you don’t know what you are saying….” I flushed.
“I know what am saying, damn it!” His thumb roughly rubbed against my lower lip. “You are mine, Div. You’ve always been mine. So why shouldn’t I want to make love to you?”
His words poured over me like molten lava, but I pulled back when he would have kissed me.
“Don’t kiss me out of anger, Ary,” I whispered.
His hands dropped from my cheeks, and I instantly felt the loss of his touch.
“You couldn’t wait to kiss me yesterday, Div. Infact your body literally begged me to make love to you. What’s changed now?” His eyes accused me of something I hadn’t done, and I tried in vain to understand.
“Nothing has changed, Ary. You’ve been sitting over there soaking wet for God knows how many hours. I just want you to get up from there and then we’ll talk,” I pleaded, close to tears.
“Don’t lie, Div. She told you about Ayesha, didn’t she? Now you know how I killed her…you think I’m not good enough for you,” he growled, his eyes squeezing shut, and my heart wept along with him.
“You’re not responsible for your sister’s death, Ary,” I said, but his eyes were glazed when he turned to look at me.
“She said she doesn’t love me, Div…has never loved me. I was just a frigging game to her, a means to get back at my philandering father. She hates me…” his voice cracked, and I couldn’t help but wrap my arms around him.
“She is the unluckiest person in the world, Ary, for not loving you. There is nothing to hate about you,” I said, gathering him close to me.
The wetness of his cloths seeped into mine as I rested my head on top of his. His hand clutched my arm tight, his cold digits digging into my soft skin. His breathing was shallow, and I felt his throat work itself into frenzy against my hand that rested against the back of his neck. I could feel him struggle to give words to how he felt, and it tore me apart. I gently massaged his neck and shoulders, egging him on to speak his angst out aloud. Minutes fled as his tears soaked the front of my plaid shirt and then I heard him mumble.
“Why did she hate me so much, Div? She couldn’t stand to see me fall in love with you; she hated me that much. She knew how I felt about you…and she made me leave. What a blind fool I was, Div. I never realized she wanted me away from you so badly.”
I felt like a thousand fists had knocked me down as I fell next to him, rocking him against my chest. I clutched him so tight, I felt him wince, but I couldn’t control my need to wrap myself around him, hide him away from her, from all the hurt. It took a while for his words to sink in, and despite everything, I felt the world tilting on its axis, righting itself once again.
He had fallen in love with me all those years ago.
I couldn’t breathe as I tried to sit up but kept flopping down. I looked at Aryan who was sobbing in my arms, and I gave up, letting my heart break on his behalf, on our behalf. I now realized how much we both had lost that night because of that woman.
“I should have never trusted her even though she was my mother. I was so blind Div. Look what’s happened now, it’s too late,” I heard him mumble.
“Too late for what?” I asked confused and let him move out of my hug.
“I lost my chance with you…” he said defeated. “Now that you know, you don’t even want to kiss me anymore.” He refused to look at me.
Oh, the idiot! The water must have soaked his brains too!
“No, you drunken fool, but you might if you don’t move your ass off the wet floor or at least help me do it.” I got up and tugged at his arm.
Aryan was blinking up at me, a huge frown hanging on to his forehead. I frowned back until I saw his face turn pale. In a blink of an eye, he shook my hand off his arm, rushed out of the shower cubicle on slippery feet, and stuck his head into the commode, ungraciously chucking up the contents of his stomach for a full five minutes. He slumped back against the tiled wall, breathing hard, looking at me through half-hooded eyes as I handed him a glass of water to drink.
Guzzling down the entire glass of water, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, before looking at me with a goofy grin on his face. I fumed, narrowing my eyes at him. Stupid fool, drinking a bottle of whiskey instead of eating chocolate bars or just plain cuddling with those fluffed up cushions on his bed and bawling his eyes out!
“I should have had the full bottle!” he exclaimed, shaking his head.
“What?” I frowned.
“Full bottle….” He pointed to the whiskey bottle rolling directionless on the floor. “I had only half – I always throw up when I have only half,” he explained illogically.
“You drunken idiot! What kind of logic is that?”
“I’m not drunk. I’m just….” He sighed. “Conversation with my mother can be draining. She said a lot of things….” The hurt was back in his eyes, and I kneeled in front of him.
“Hey, Ary…” I called softly, taking his hands into mine. “She doesn’t deserve you. And what she said…is her foolishness and her loss. She did what she did, Ary. It’s over and done with. You are here now, and it’s all that truly matters,” I said wholeheartedly.
His eyes grew wide, and he lifted his hand to gently place it against my cheek.
“I’m sorry, Div…for everything I unknowingly put you through. Forgive me?” he pleaded, with a look of desperation writ large on his face.
“Ary…just get up, please…” I said, standing up and trying to lift him up.
“Please…” I heard him say.
“I’m not saying a word till I get you out of those clothes…” I said sternly, and his eyes twinkled instantly.
I rolled my eyes. “Very funny! Now get up!”
“Yes, m’am!” He threw a mock salute and stood up, wobbling slightly.
I held him as I guided him out of the room. He stood in the center of the room, waiting, as I looked around for a fresh set of clothes.
“Aren’t you getting me out of these wet clothes?” he asked with exaggerated innocence.
I bit back a smile before turning around.
“Nope. I’m sure you can manage just fine.”
“But… I’m drunk, and a fool, and an idiot…” he continued, straight-faced, and I sighed.
“I agree. You are a fool and an idiot. But, you said you weren’t drunk,” I replied, looking through the drawers for a T-shirt and his shorts.
Knowing Annie, I was sure she had left a few of his clothes in his old room.
“I’m drunk…drunk on lo…lots of whiskey,” he said, and I swiftly turned around to look at him curiously.
He stood with his lower lip rolled into his mouth childishly, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides and looking very much like the fourteen year old Ary I had met for the first time. Our eyes met - his eyes glowing with an undefined emotion that warmed my heart, and I blushed without reason. I quietly laid out a fresh change on his bed.
“I’ll be outside while you change,” I said.
I bent my head, moving past him to the door, when his hand wrapped around my wrist. Would an electrifying charge always accompany his touch, I wondered, as this one shot sparkles along my arm.
I looked at him, questioningly, but his eyes were downcast as he mumbled one word – “Stay!”
“You need to change,” I reminded.
He nodded. “After that – stay?”
“You need sleep,” I excused myself.
“I’ll sleep better with you beside me.” He wasn’t telling me or asking me. It was merely a statement of fact.
His weary eyes were torn between hope and desperation. I reassured him with a smile and a nod. His face lit up instantly with a smile, and he loosened his hand around my wrist.
I stepped out of the room and collapsed against the wall, sliding down to sit cross-legged against it. My stomach churned with the knowledge of Vanya’s hatred towards her own child. I wasn’t going to forget the haunted look in Aryan’s eyes when he relayed his mother’s words to me. He truly hadn’t seen through that woman in so many years. A woman whose heart had no place for her own son would do anything, and I was prepared to dig through her past, present, and future to thwart any harm she had cooked up for us.