You're okay!

PART II - A

Okay, here's the next chapter. This begins after a leap of four years. Parth is in college and is twenty.

This is college Part 1.

PART II - MEGHA

Four years later

Parth Verma was an unusual person.

He was smart, not just regular smart but smartness that lingered on the level of geniusness. But he never raised his hand when their teachers asked questions, unlike all the others in their year who wanted to show off. Not that Megha blamed them really. It was not an easy feat getting into IIT-D and everyone wanted to prove that they were the smartest there.

But not Parth, never Parth, when in fact it was clear that he was indeed the smartest. It hurt her ego to admit it, but he was light years ahead of the rest of them. But the only proof of that was the ridiculously high scores that appeared next to his name on the notice board after every exam. More often than not, he had a hundred percent.

He had one friend, Hemant Oberoi who was in chemical engineering. Of course everyone knew him. His father was Anil Oberoi, the CEO of ObTech, the tech giant.  Hemant, however, was the opposite of Parth. The poster child of one’s expectation of a rich, spoilt only child of a billionaire. He was loud, outgoing and had an air of charm around him that was seemed effortlessly casual. Megha doesn’t go to a lot of parties, but she’d seen him at every party she did go to, usually surrounded by a flock of people who hung off his every word. In contact, the only place Megha saw parth outside of their classroom was the cafteria, and the one time she saw him at the mall with Hemant and a skinny girl with curly hair and olive skin, who didn't go to their college. It made zero sense that the two of them were friends.

But they were. No matter how hard Hemant partied and how many people wanted to be friends with him, he always stuck with Parth. Parth who completely clashed with the you-only-live-once ideal that Hemant clearly had. It wasn’t like Parth was moping or depressed, he wasn’t. But he felt different, he was more.. subdued, the way he held himself was yards away from other people of their age.

Megha had noticed Parth right away at orientation. He looked awkward, and hadn't moved from his seat next to Hemant through the whole process. She had thought that he looked cute and hoped that he was also in biochemical engineering, like her. She had even tried talking to him, but the most she got back was a shy smile and two syllable words.

Megha had been offended. That was borderline rude. But that was before, before she knew that Parth was just that way. He was shy and awkward and he kept to himself. But he never meant to be rude. He was kind and generous. He had tutored Abhishek Sharma after the teachers had told him that there was no way he would pass second semester. He did pass. Abhishek had almost cried after the results, offering Parth anything he would want. Parth had smiled and said that it was just the right thing to do.

That was what drew Megha to him again after their disastrous introduction. She started watching him and discovered the little things. She found that he loved sweets but for some reason never ate gulab jamuns or galaxy bars, he always bit the left side of his lip when he was concentrating, he loved chemistry more than the biology part of their biochemical engineering degree, he had three musical notes tattooed on the wrist of his left hand  and when he smiled there was always something there, something she couldn’t quite figure out. 

Hemant had noticed her looking at him a lot of the times. The first time, he had raised his brows and Megha had blushed, deflecting her gaze. He had caught her again a hundred times after that and now he just smirked at her, looking amused. It was embarrassing, but yeah, she had a crush. Sue her, she was just twenty. Parth never noticed her watching though, content in his bubble with his books and his laptop and his one friend. But Hemant knew and the smirk he threw at her every time he saw her, unnerved her and made her want to bolt.