Nothing In This World

Prologue

"Date your Best Friend," they said.

"It will be fun," they said.

But when your best friend turns out to be the complete opposite of what you thought, a relationship can get tricky.

Eighteen-year-old Arya was reading an Instagram post that leads to an article that says "Falling in love with your best friend," as she sipped on her morning drink.

Her mind instantly started playing with the weird things that were going on with her boy best friend Ishaan. A sudden surge of hormones and color tints emerged on her perception glasses.

Arya met Ishaan through a common friend when they were in high school. Since the beginning, they connected really well though they are as different as chalk and cheese. In friendship, nothing matters as long you can accept each other.

Arya is type A. Ishaan is type B. She is always in a hurry, he's laid back. She has a temper of a fiery ball, and he is a snowball. He's a speaker, she's his listener. He knows exactly how to get under her skin and drive her mad until she loses her mind and she knows exactly how to calm him, and propel him to get his shits together. Together they were a perfect match. As friends.

Nothing in the world is more difficult than adulting but with a friend by your side that can be fun too. The transition from high school to college is a journey often filled with stones and thorns of heartbreak, betrayal, fake friends, and a change of heart, and having best friends along is like wearing Hola Bondi 7. There will be moments of rain and shine, there will be pain and pleasure, love and ache. One should buckle up and prepare themselves before one begins the ride.

Arya and Ishaan were a step ahead. They planned it all in the lockdown or destiny did it for them. After a lot of changes in place, and a change of streams they end up going to the same university. 

Going to college with your best friend sounds like a great idea. It's not your school or home, where you know everyone and they know you. It's not a place you have your way with everyone, or get everything you want in the snap of your finger. But having your best friend by your side makes things easier. 'Cause, it's going to be new: you go to a new place, meet new people, develop a new point of view, and might catch new feelings.

And that's what happened.

It was all ordinary banter until she begins to enjoy it a little too much for her own good. Nowadays it is hard for her to concentrate on things when she's with him. It's not like what one sees in movies or TV shows. There is no magnetic temptation or uncomfortable silence. But it's a little more than the joy of being together. There was this unusual enthusiasm... A certain longing.

She finds him attractive and sometimes stares at him longer than she has to. Whenever Ishaan annoys her, she couldn't focus just on getting mad at him, or is it that recently discovered handsomeness getting in her way? She couldn't hold his hand without feeling those occasional tingles all over her body. Is it the sun or have his eyes acquired impressive pigments?

She's not your typical main character who spends an eternity discovering her feelings but she is that stereotypical girl who never accepts or even tries to run away from them. Reading this article one such attempt to neglect all these tiny butterflies she's holding hostage in her stomach. But everything in the text contradicts her preconceived conclusion.

Her eyes scan through the article faster than she turns the page of Stephen King's novel, reaching the latest comment. That comment says,

Dating your best friend is the best thing that could happen to you. To find love in your best friend, and a soulmate in your partner in crime is the biggest fortune a heart can possess. But when things get tricky you'll not only lose your love, you'll lose your best friend too. Losing your lover and best friend at the same time is the worst thing one goes through.

But who's gonna tell her?

Nothing in the world is...