Book #1 of Bounded series
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──
Sign the papers! She said
I'm not into child marriage Miss Mishra! Shaadi karke mujhe jail bhejne ka irada hai? His tone dripped with sarcasm.
"Can't you be serious with me at least for once Avyan?!!"
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅...
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If someone had told me this morning that by night I'd be sitting inside a blanket fort, face covered in some suspiciously pink face mask, holding a strawberry milkshake like it was my emotional support system... I would've laughed. Not a cute laugh. The kind that sounds slightly unhinged.
And yet, here I was. Curled up inside a crooked, slightly collapsing fort made out of bedsheets and cushions, fairy lights glowing softly like we had somehow recreated a piece of our childhood and forced it to exist in the present.
The room smelled like strawberries and expensive skincare, and somewhere in the background, a man on TV was probably confessing his love like his life depended on it. I didn't care.
I should've been thinking about him. About the hallway. About the way everything inside me had shattered and then... stupidly, pathetically... stitched itself back together the moment I got all the flashbacks.
But I wasn't. Or maybe I was. Just... differently.
Because right now, Smridhi was lying next to me, kicking her legs in the air like she always used to, scrolling through reels like the world wasn't capable of breaking apart at any moment.
Kritika was aggressively applying cream to her face like she was preparing for war, and Lily—God help her—was watching the movie like it was the last piece of hope left in humanity.
And me? I was sitting here pretending everything was normal.
"Shut up," Lily suddenly said, sitting up halfway, her eyes glued to the screen. "He's about to confess. This is the best part." I didn't even look.
I took a slow sip of my milkshake, letting the cold sweetness settle on my tongue before I spoke, my voice coming out softer than I expected. "Best part tab hota jab woh pehle confess karta. Teen baar breakup ke baad nahi."
Kritika let out a small approving sound, not even looking up as she blended something into her cheek with unnecessary dedication.
"Exactly," she muttered. "Yeh romance nahi hai. Yeh stupidity hai." Smridhi chuckled under her breath, still staring at her phone, completely unbothered. "Valid point," she said simply.
Lily slowly turned toward us, her expression somewhere between disbelief and betrayal, like we had personally offended her ancestors. "Tum logon mein feelings naam ki cheez hai bhi ya nahi?" she demanded, placing her milkshake down dramatically.
I leaned back slightly, resting against the pillows, my eyes drifting toward the ceiling of the fort. The fabric above moved just slightly, probably because one of us had shifted. "Feelings hain," I said quietly. "Bas... hum unhe itna glorify nahi karte." There was a pause.
A small one. But enough. Because I could feel it. That shift. That thing inside me that refused to stay quiet. Before it could grow, before it could take over— Smridhi saved me. Like she always did.
