In Every Story of Mine (A Jassi-Hardik story)

Home again

The flight to USA nearing end-May was so liberating that Jassi was almost glad MI hadn't reached the finals. Then he would've had to endure an additional week of torture, and now that he had his home back, he couldn't imagine enduring that a minute more.

Everything was familiar and comforting.

Rohit bhaiya was snoozing in the gaps between when Virat bhaiya decided to poke him in the eye or rap his head, or Shubman and Yashasvi would succeed in pranking SKY and yelled with laughter so uproarious that Rohit bhaiya was forced to wake up and shout back at them. Jaddu bhaiya and Axar, next to Jassi, were grooving along to their favourite rowdy Gujarati songs on loop. Rishabh was clinging to Virat bhaiya's neck and badgering him with nonsensical questions to which the latter conjured up nonsensical answers readily when he wasn't trying to annoy Rohit bhaiya. Kuldeep and Yuzi had their heads together, talking nonstop—they were always extra-fond after the two months of IPL, where they'd been forced to play against each other. Yuzi's team had lost the Qualifier 2 just hours ago, but he didn't seem to mind much (just like Jassi didn't mind MI's dismal performance).

When you are back home, you could not care about anything but the fact that you were back home.

Hardik was sleeping in the aisle seat across from Jassi—had been sleeping continually from boarding time—and Jassi was feeling so exuberant when they were two hours from landing that he decided to pull off a Virat bhaiya and wake him with a violent tap on his head.

Hardik jerked awake. Jassi laughed.

"We're landing in two hours," he said.

"What?" asked Hardik blankly.

"We're—landing—in—the US—in—two hours—Harry!"

"And?"

Jassi was disappointed with the lack of excitement in his infinitely more-excitable friend.

"Where d'you want to go first?"

"To my room, to sleep," said Hardik without inflection.

He put his head down on his arms folded on the tray table and appeared to drift off immediately.

Jassi frowned as his head.

If Rohit bhaiya hadn't been sleeping himself, Jassi might have gone and demanded him to tell Hardik that he wasn't allowed to sleep when Jassi wanted to vent the happiness in his light heart after ages and ages. Instead, he chose to join in Jaddu bhaiya and Axar's off-tune singing.

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Since in the World Cup camp, Jassi was instantly all right—out of his shell and into his comfort zone—it took him a few days to register that Hardik was still all quiet and withdrawn like they both had been during IPL.

The first morning after their long jet-lagging sleep, Jassi went to breakfast late. The buffet was being cleared away already; he hastily threw whatever he could on his plate and went to join one of the tables occupied with his teammates. SKY was talking with great animation about the list of places they had to visit in New York.

"We're allowed to go sightseeing?" asked Jassi.

"Rahul bhai doesn't know, yet," admitted SKY.

"And Rohit bhaiya?"

"He's easy to convince, he'll join us," said Yashasvi with full confidence.

"Exactly," said SKY. "We have five days before our first warm-up match...we're definitely allowed to go out today. Logically."

"Or illogically," said Yuzi with an evil grin.

Jaddu bhaiya started off the laughter. Jassi was laughing, too—he found everything funny today—and realized he'd forgotten to get tea or milk. Across him, Hardik had a full glass of milk in front of him. Jassi made sure Hardik didn't have an eye on it—they always calculated stealing carefully, because they could anticipate each other's moves so well—and then shot out his arm to grab it and start drinking however much he could at top speed, till Hardik snatched it back.