Just Friends

CHAPTER 34

"A friend is someone who helps you up when you're down, and if they can't, they lay down beside you and listen."

- WINNIE THE POOH

^^^

"Are you fine?" Harshad inquired, making Kiara deny it. He kneeled beside her. Maya was staring at them from a distance. She wasn't able to trust Harshad and yet could sense that Harshad held a special place in Kiara's life.

"What happened?" He softly cupped his cheek, his orbs softening as well.

"Walk away!" Kiara jerked his hand away. "I don't need you," she was scowling in anger. "You had walked away, right? Now, why are you back?"

"Kiara..." He again attempted to touch her, but she shoved his hand away.

"Don't touch me! Don't even dare to talk to me." She was blabbering, "I hate you all... you all are the same... all are going to leave me. Just go! Get lost!"

"I won't ever leave you, Sweetheart." Harshad softly muttered making Kiara raise her head and stare into his orbs. He nodded slightly in assurance. "I can't even if I want to..." Her scowl deepened on listening to the next half of his statement.

"So, you want to leave me as well?" She growled as Harshad had a slight smile.

"You don't want me to leave you?" He twisted the question back to her.

"Stop doing that!" Kiara sounded annoyed, "I had questioned you first so I get the answer."

"I need to think about it, so you answer first." He winked and received a punch from Kiara.

"Just get lost!" She groaned and Harshad chuckled in response. He was glad that she had stopped crying, it ached his heart to see those tears in her orbs.

"Never! I can't let you leave in peace so I am going to always annoy you."

Kiara's mood shifted at Harshad answer. "Dhruv used to say the same, he won't ever stop annoying me but maybe I had bothered him enough that he chose to break the friendship." Kiara's orbs were brimming with tears, and Harshad was staring at her in concern. "He just decided that we no longer could be friends," she wiped the emerging tears. "I know he did it to save his relationship with Aditi but it still hurts. It feels as if he never cared about my emotions. I can't peace out with the feeling that I didn't even deserve his friendship."

Harshad could no longer hold himself back, he pulled the broken Kiara in his arms. "You deserve the world, Kiara." He muttered in her hair. "You deserve the entire universe but that human didn't deserve a soul like you. He could never learn to value a treasure like you. He is at loss! Not you..." He was attempting to console her but Kiara's heart wasn't convinced.

"Then why it hurts me, Harshad? He simply uttered those words as if they held no importance. As if he didn't care about the consequence. He didn't even care about my opinion. Didn't I have the right to voice a word on it as well? I might have maintained the distance. I might have never attempted to call him. Why he had to break the friendship? He was my first friend, Harshad. The first person to understand me. It feels as if I lost a part of myself, why couldn't I hug him for the last time? Why he had provided me with the hope that he would keep things between us the same? Why he kept reassuring me about the future that he was going to shatter with his own hands?"

Kiara was sobbing in Harshad's arms. Expressing her misery. "I feel as if he didn't only break me but mended me, provided me with hope, made me believe that he cared, valued my existence, and yet always broke me into millions of pieces and I always believed in his fake promises. I believed in his lies... I believed that he cared... he didn't... he didn't..." Slowly the blabbers turned into murmurs, Harshad sat there allowing her to choose her route of escape from pain.