Soulmates ✓

10 | Under The Moonlight - 2

When someone dies, they leave behind a trail of broken souls.

In death, the loss is inevitable. Maybe, it's in their intimate family, a lover, or a friend, but it's there. They know there's nothing they can do to make the pain go away. They have to live through it anyway. The half-eaten box of cookies left behind will never make its way to the dead souls' belly. The smell on the fabric, once worn, will gradually fade away. Their incomplete chores will have to be done by others, and their dreams remain unachieved. It's cruel how you feel them skin to skin one moment, and they are too far to touch the next.

Every morning Shay woke with the same hope that all of it would turn out to be a cruel nightmare and cried herself with disappointment till the sun went down.

It wasn't a nightmare. It was real. Shay lost her best friend, her lover but most of all, the other half of her soul. And she didn't know how to live with that yet.

A week passed in a daze as if she was there but barely existing. The pain had made a permanent slot in her heart, and the identical boy to her lover only widened that gap. Shay could never look at Ryan and not miss Aarav's smile, his presence, and most of all, his love. Maybe that's why she turned away whenever he entered her ward. She didn't want to see the pain and longing in his eyes only to get reminded of what was the reason behind it.

Ryan didn't give up on her. He visited her every single day, sitting beside her bed with her, either pretending to be asleep or showing him her stubborn back. Ryan endured her indifference but stayed by her side nonetheless. Shay was almost ready to seek comfort he was offering, but she knew the solace he sought from her she was no more capable of giving.

On the day of her release, she sat there on her hospital bed, with her legs hanging off from the side, the right one encased in a cast while the left one didn't want to leave that room ever. Shay cursed internally over and over again for coming out of the coma. She took a glance at her mother, who was packing up for her release and sighed. Her mother looked overly enthusiastic. But did she want to go home? Could she walk past the Tripathi Villa without getting speared with the memories of Aarav?

Her fingers suddenly feathered over Aarav's bracelet around her wrist and then to the infinity ring around her ring finger. And just like that, the wailing started once again. Like a thunderous hailstorm pouring down the splitting sky, the pain shot through her veins, doubling her over. She fell on the floor, her bones giving away more liquid aches. She didn't hear the door bursting open, and the panicked voices of her parents as they shuffled towards her didn't contain the tears flowing down her cheek.

"Shay?" Her mother's arms came around her, and they stayed there the whole ride back home. She held Shay till her sobs turned into whimpers and then silence. As soon as their car hit the driveway, her eyes moved towards Tripathi Villa. And all the memories came rushing in. The boy with a beautiful sunshine smile and cranky mood swings ran out of the front porch of the villa and brushed past her. When she turned to chase him, he wasn't there anymore.

Someone was there - a boy who looked exactly like Aarav but wasn't him. He stood at the entrance, leaning against the marble pillar, his hair a black mess and his eyes a hollow pit. Shay wished to see Aarav in place of Ryan. She wanted to see her boyfriend. The devilishly handsome boy who could resemble any mythological character with that charm of his, the way he swaggered with that ripped body of his, the way his touch felt like burning passion, and the way he breathed new life in her every single time.

The problem was, he wasn't the one who she saw at that moment. It was a replica, a lookalike, a twin she wanted to replace with the one who had already turned into ashes. All she could see when she closed her eyes was the drifting black eyes as his life kept slipping away and the mangled, bloodied face looking at her with desperate hope. Hope was snatched from him and given to Shay and Ryan instead. She hated it.