The Sparks Of Love| ✓

Chapter - 18

• phonecalls •

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Maithili was blindly sitting in the dark room, with her sleep gone, eyes staring at nowhere in particular and ears ringing with his chuckles. It was nostalgic in a way. Nikshit used to be such a vivacious personality around her before, it feels like a long lost memory now.

Perhaps he's outgrowing his own self and evolving like a Pokemon. Her charmander has become a charmeleon.

"I still want to know. What was in dinner today?" He asked again.

Nikshit has been too busy over there. Living alone is not easy. When he goes back home, there's no one waiting for him, be it early in the evening or late at night. If he'd kept or thrown something somewhere it stayed there, unmoved. The bedroom which used to be squeaky clean thanks to Maithili, was always a mess now, so was the house.

There's no precooked food on the dining table waiting for him when he goes home, the fridge is stocked with too much vegetables and ingredients and most of them are probably decaying inside. He's not encouraged enough to cook all his meals either, it's too boring, too empty and too lonely.

"Kathal ke kofte." Maithili chipped in a low voice. Nikshit loves it. Neelam had repeatedly said today how much Nikshit loves to eat the dish. But he wasn't there on the dining table with them to enjoy the delicacy.

"I'm jealous."

A silence followed after his response. Nikshit leaned back on the chair, now looking at the white ceiling which looked like a blank sheet of paper, just like his life these days. He could imagine his whole family sitting together for dinner, chatting with each other, laughing and making random plans about how to celebrate the arrival of the little ones soon.

"You wouldn't have been if you were here." Maithili's words were always like sharp paper cuts. Small enough to be negligible but too painful to touch. Nikshit had a self mocking smile on his face, his eyes closing on its own, feeling too heavy to stay open.

"Tell me more? I miss home." He said after another minute of silence. For someone who has never lived alone, always been around family and friends, waking up to an empty house is traumatizing.

If being alone meant focusing on himself and his goals, it also came with that biting loneliness that left him yearning for a company.

There were many more such reasons why Nikshit hasn't been going home every day but keeps a few pairs of change of clothes in the cabin itself and sleeps in the small room that's built inside of it.

"I went to the shopping mall today, with Ma. We bought a lot of stuff for the twins. Fluffy blankets, a lot of clothes and I also bought two pairs of cotton shoes. They're like five centimeters long? It's really adorable."

"You have a picture of it?" Nikshit interrupted, as if seeing it would make him feel more involved. A picture came soon on his phone and a wide grin appeared on his face looking at the tiny little shoes kept over her palm.

"What else? Tell me. How's bhabhi? How's everyone else? How're you?" Nikshit urged again on hearing nothing from her side. Maithili felt her eyes burning out of nowhere. It wasn't hard to guess that he was in despair. So, she started talking, again.