2 DAYS LATER.
"Yayyyieeee! I wonn!!" Tia screams, her voice lighting up the room like a burst of excitement. It was game night, and we were all gathered together—Vyom, Varun, Tia, and me—playing Jenga.
Tia adored this game, especially since we had made the cubes ourselves, each one inscribed with our own silly dares. The atmosphere was thick with excitement, laughter bubbling around us.
I couldn't help but smile as she eagerly read the dare she had just pulled. "Okay, it says... 'Give a dare to the person sitting right to you!'" Her eyes sparkled mischievously as they landed on me.
"Me?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Tia looked deep in thought, a concentrated on the idea, until Vyom said.
"A hundred skipping?" he suggested, looking way too pleased with himself. I stared at him in shock.
One hundred?! At 43 years old? What did he think, I left for clinic every day and then I was training for the Olympics or something?
"What?" I stare back at him with a glance.
"Vyom?" Varun said, giving him a light jab on the arm, clearly sharing my disbelief.
"Shut up, Vyom!" Tia said, in more of a thinking way.
After a few moments, she finally said, "Okay, I've got it! I've never seen you and Papa do a couple dance, so the dare is... you have to dance with him, on a light music that I'll play, just like you used to in your younger days!"
The air in the room shifted, and my heart sank just a little.
Oh, no.
Varun and I exchanged glances—this was innocent enough, but little did she know the heaviness that lingered between us. Though, the air between us did feel a little easier after his gesture of buying me those shoes and noticing that I liked them, yet it felt a little awkward with a weird kind of stress to do a couple dance. Like, after that day, we didn't talk much, just about kids and stuff here and there. But what we really had to talk about; was pending.
We both froze, feeling the tension knot in the air as we thought... that this one thing could open old wounds, something which we eren't sure was healing or breaking. Neither of us stood up, or even move, thinking about what to do now.
Tia urged in her excitement, "Mumma, Papa, fast!!" She clapped her hands together, "Vyom, get the speaker!"
How do we? Howwww? Tia your wish is justified at its place but mumma papa can't. They have issues, which are unsolved, things they haven't talked about. Now what? They can't just stand up and start dancing and pretending like they love each other, when they know it's left to resolve!
It had been ages, plus we just can't do it. You get me, right?
Tia was unaware of the issues we had been holding, but we were- very well. Just because we didn't get time to address them doesn't mean that it made things easier or normal.
"Mumma? Papa? What are you guys waiting for? Go, it's a dare! Mumma!" she yelled now. And by the rules of the game, I had to do whatever she told me to do. We both knew that if we avoided it this time, that won't look much great to the kids. So we just looked into each other's eyes, as if telling each other- let's-do-it, for kids. Or maybe, we wanted to...?
As I stood up from the chair, the familiar sensation of anxiety twisted in my stomach. It had been ages, how will we do it? Let's just sit down Aarushi. Yet, deep down, there was a flicker of...longing. I did want to do it, because it gave me a chance to maybe...just maybe get my Varun back, even for a moment, even for some time, but I did. I wanted to relive those carefree days when Varun was just a college guy with big dreams, and we were two kids lost in love. No tension, no worry, just two young adults, wanting to love each other.
YOU ARE READING
TILL INFINITIES END
General Fictionour little infinity part 3 Along with being a gynecologist, aarushi is nurturing two young minds at her home. Like any other working woman she is trying to balance work and children. But when it comes to her personal life, especially her marital lif...