Beyond the Beats

Chapter 2. Liked

Right leg forward, torso rotated back, hands come to the front faster and then smack back to the sides making a small X. Then swing slightly on heels, neck in opposite direction to the hip swing...

"I think I have got it," I said.

"Of course, you do," Arushi said in a disinterested tone.

I pulled a few strands of her hair, and she snarled at me. We were walking towards our classroom, and my friend had her head buried in a brick-sized book.

"Hi, Arushi," one of the guys from our accounts class greeted my friend.

"Hi," Arushi replied and continued walking.

I noticed the guy trying to converse with Arushi, but she avoided him and acted like she was really busy. Poor guy left, and I stared at Arushi with an accusing stare.

"Are you going to ignore the guys who are interested in you the whole life?" I asked.

She feigned ignorance. "He isn't interested in me. "Who will ever be?"

"You are the one who always keeps denying it."

Arushi shot me a knowing look, her eyes darting all over my face. "You think anyone would ever, like really, like me when I look like this?"

Her lips trembled a bit before she recomposed herself. Her rich brown skin glowed in the sunlight as the thick curly locks framed her round face. Her dark brown orbs behind her specs glimmered, and the only thing I could see was a girl who never needed to be insecure of the skin she was born in.

"Arushi, you are beautiful. And, you know it too, but you don't wanna accept it," I said.

"You say it only because you are my friend." She sighed.

We both knew where the conversation was heading, so we shook our heads and decided to get back to reality. Still, I wanted my friend to never have any insecurities about her physique.

Arushi was a few inches taller than me, but she had a curvy figure that I would die to have.

She was a bookworm; sometimes her obsession with books annoyed me because she wouldn't be paying me any attention, but her being a scholar worked in my favour.

Ninety percent of my notes were ditto of hers, with only ten percent being the contribution of my useless brain which worked only while dancing. I asked Arushi which novel she was reviewing for that week, and she told me to check out her bookstagram page once her review was up.

Unlike her shy persona, Arushi was really active on social media. She had thousands of followers on Instagram, while I had only around seventy. Most of them were my cousins and friends only.

If I have time to sulk, then I really need to work on my time management.

"Bhoomi, Arushi, wait up!"

Arushi and I stopped when we heard Akshay's voice. He joined us, his six foot tall figure looming over us. Before I asked him, he himself started narrating the yesterday night's events. I knew all the details already since he had arrived at my home before the sun rose and showed me our crew's dance sequences which Jiya had shot in the dance battle.

"Guys, you know who we will compete with if we got to the finals?" Akshay asked excitedly.

"Razor shots maybe?" I answered doubtfully.

I was well aware of the dance teams from my area, but the underground battle Akshay was taking part in was some high-level thing. A lot of known and unknown dancers had participated in it, and as I was busy since last month doing housekeeping, I couldn't keep up with their battle progress apart from helping them here and there in choreographies.