Two pieces of a whole.

Colours.

Her eyes searched all the nearby benches surrounding the moonlit lake, and she stood still when she saw him, sitting while holding two plates of mawa jalebi. She checked the time, it was 7:50 pm, she was ten minutes early  but Shravan was already waiting for her. The scent in the air, his cheeky smile, his terrible but cute pick up lines, her smile , the bike rides to come here, the fear of being caught, every single memory she held onto for the past seven years came back rushing to her. "Does he think about this too? Does he still hold on to our memories?", she thought while walking towards him. He saw her approaching, smiling softly as he set the plates aside and stood up using a little support and in obvious pain. "Hi.", he said. "Hi.", she replied, breathless because of her nervousness. Weirdly, this nervousness didn't feel like her anxiety, it felt giddy, like fresh air finally entering a suffocating room, like weird rush of slight excitement that made her heart beat a bit faster.

He walked back to his bench, when his wallet fell down, open. She bent to pick it up, when her eyes fell on the picture. It was their picture. Picture of her father with his arms around Shravan and Suman, beaming with a proud smile on his face. The one who clicked this photograph was her mother. Her eyes brimmed with tears while recounting the memory. She returned the wallet to him, her curiosity now more than before and sat down on the bench, a little away from him.

She stared at the ground for while, her shoes digging deeper into the wet mud, she looked at the soft waves gently overlapping each other, glistening under the soft light of the moon. A serene scenery, and her eyes found her way to him. He turned to see her, his soft gaze making her heart flutter, but she noticed how he looked so different now. His eyes had dark circles around them, his arms looked stronger, his posture stiff, his smile,.. missing. He looked so tired, his eyes, earlier were like clear water, reflecting his feelings, now they were cloudy, hard to read, it had developed a new depth, a shield that prevented her from reading his eyes. It made her believe that he wasn't all okay like he was pretending to be. She waited for him to say something but he looked away. Whether he was hesitating or conflicted, she didn't know.

After a while she cleared her throat and said, "You told me, there is something important that you had to tell me, Shravan." His name on her lips, after years, felt so familiar yet so new, like an old song whose lyrics finally escaped her lips, after being stuck in her head for so long. His head shot up and his lips curved into a smile, as he heard her say his name. "Yeah.", he said, now looking a bit grim, his smile fading. He handed her a plate of mawa jalebi, pulled out his phone and placed it between them. "I have a message, .......", he hesitated. "From my father", he said, his eyes now staring into hers. Suman stared back and swallowed her spit, and nodded her head, her heart racing. She felt a tug in her stomach, she didn't know how to react. Devraj was her father's bestfriend, Shravan's father, but he was also the man whose negligence was responsible for her father's death.

Shravan's eyes scanned her face for reaction but Suman just stared at the ground feeling empty and anxious.
He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his phone. He clicked the play button of the audio message. She gulped, her heart racing.
"Suman beta.", Devraj started. His voice now oddly feeble and heavy with pain. "I'm so sorry.", he said.  She felt her heart sink, like a heavy weight in her stomach, pulling her down, she inhaled freah air, yet she felt suffocated. "All these years, I kept telling myself, that it's not my fault, that it's your family's stubbornness that they kept accusing me.", he confessed. Each breathe felt heavy, weighted, hard to take. "I hated you.", he confessed, the pain and guilt clear in his voice. "I thought you were just determined to frame me. I hated you. I shouldn't have, my fears of going back to the jail, the suffocating atmosphere, did something to me." , he said his voice breaking. "But when the final verdict came out and I got to know that how my negligence was responsible for my best friend's death, I have started hating myself now." "I don't have the courage to face you Suman, but I also know, I cant heal your wounds or bring back your father, but I have to apologize, it's my fault." She rummaged her pocket for chewing gum, her anxiety was at it's peak, chewing helps the doc had said, she picked up the mawa jalebi, forced it down her throat and chewed. "Every second of my life goes into regretting how if only I had been careful, everything all would have been alright. How I would have still had my best friend , you would have had your father and Shravan would have had his mentor." "I couldn't even see my bestfriend for the last time—", he said his voice now breaking. She chewed her mawa jalebi, it helped her relax a little, but now she was done eating and she felt her breath slowing, hard to take, she bit into her tongue but she didn't flinch, she was numb, her heart and her mind were racing.