Deserving | ✔

Chapter 15

I take it out of the cover and hold it in my hand, feeling the weight of it.

Yes, it is a real gun.

I know that because I have used guns before. I'm trained in shooting. By a college summer camp program in which I chose shooting because I thought it was cool. The teacher thought I was really good at it and gave me few personal training sessions with real guns while the camp used fake ones.

And the weight is just as much as the one I was trained with. I check the rifle and I see that it's loaded fully. There are six bullets inside and a pack of ten in a pouch inside the package.

I grab the note again and scrutinize it. The note says nothing else but the three words 'You'll need this'.

Who sent it? Who could have possibly sent me a loaded gun in an anonymous mail?

Before I could go deep into my thoughts, I hear the front door unlock and I immediately shove the package in my bedroom drawer.

When I come back, I see Trisha.

"Hey, what's up?" She asks.

"Nothing. Where were you?" I ask, trying to turn the attention towards her.

"I told you. I was going shopping. You do need groceries and I need some new NY clothes."

She had told me that she was going shopping. Now how can you divert her? She'll find the gun in two seconds if you let her see your anxiety.

Straight face, Phil, straight face.

"What's with the wierd expression?" She asks and I say, "Nothing. I'm fine."

She looks at me curiously and says, "I didn't ask you that... Anyways, today is February 11th."

"Yeah. So?"

"Bhai, today is 11th of February."

Oh. The 11th of February? Already? And that means..

"Tomorrow is..."

"Stephanie's 24th birthday," she completes.

The day I had arranged 24 events for her.

The day in which I was gonna spend 24 hours with her.

The day I was gonna propose to her.

The day she would have become my lovely fiancée.

The day I never imagined I would be alone. Without her.

"I figured we could go visit her in her... grave..." Trisha says, breaking me out of my thoughts.

I wisp my head in her direction.

"She's not there. She's anywhere but there, Tri. She is NOT present in that godforsaken piece of stone with her name engraved in it. She's here, in this house, in my heart, in your heart... everywhere EXCEPT there."

She looks at me, her eyes letting a drop of tear out. "Bhai..."

"I mean it, Tri," I say and walk over to her, wiping her tears away.

"It's okay. I'm alright," she says and straightens up after a deep breath.

"So... no graveyard. What shall we do then?" She asks, her usual confident self returning, burying her vulnerability under.

"For one day, just that one day, I want to pretend she's here and do all the things I was gonna do for her; for us," I say.

Trisha squeezes my hand in approval. "And so it shall be, Bhai. So it shall be."