Parth And Niti (PaNi FF): Professionals At Work

Chapter Fifteen: Pellucid Mist

No matter how many times he had knocked, I wasn't going to melt down. It had been so many hours, particularly two days since my anger and disappointment had actually gone up a notch but he didn't care. The only person who cared about Niti Taylor was Niti Taylor herself and she knew what had to be done. Just, for once, get to know that she was finally done with her co star and his mood disrupting ways. I was not going to keep any expectations from him, and honestly it didn't hurt this time as much, but the expectations that I kept from him went down in just a few seconds so it wasn't like it didn't pique at all. It did. But it took me a pretty good amount of courage before I could finally tell myself that I had succeeded in completely moving on from him.

I had cried, angered myself , spent my precious emotions for someone who gave a damn to my feelings and instead was just probably thinking of ways to living upto his girlfriend's expectations. And I really thought he was going to change ! Funny of me to think something that was never gonna happen. Because the person I was talking about was hopeless. That's right. He could do whatever he wanted to with his girlfriend and say whatever he wanted to because I had moved on . Totally. There was someone better , waiting for me and it wasn't him.

Two minutes later , the knocking on my vanity door stopped, making me actually think that he wasn't there, so I decided to go there and check for myself. As it is, I had to go for shoot .

He wasn't there.

Where was he if not outside my vanity door ?

And then I saw him. Talking to Charlie, since god knows how long. He didn't even look at me and then went towards the set. Then, it all came tumbling to me.

He wasn't knocking . I was imagining stuff. If he was talking to Charlie then there was no reason as to why he would be knocking on my door. Well, at least I liked believing in that because Parth knocking was something that I could never even imagine.

But I did.

Maybe I wanted him to talk to me and clear all this , all for once.

But then, who was I really kidding ? I was no one to him. I had said this to myself over and over again . He never took a stand for me and let our so called friendship wane thanks to his girlfriend. That was it. It was over. Any hope of reaching a settlement between the two of us was over, and I decided to let it go, no matter how tough it was.

--

It had been a long week of shoot and we were not even in the city anymore . We were actually at the outskirts shooting for this Soha's farmhouse sequence, and that was the day many things changed.

Just when I was coming to terms with the 'letting go' thing, life decided to troll me in such a manner that I couldn't come to terms with my feelings that were probably like an electrocardiogram . He was behaving nicely.

Or, maybe that was just for the interview.

But he was behaving nicely. No matter what the situation was, he was being normal. He didn't actually look at me the entire time when we gave the interview but he did behave in a way that for some time made me think he had gone back to the way he was before everything messed up. It kinda felt good, internally because , for a change his behavior didn't seem showy, even if it was.

I felt it was pretty situational because he didn't make any effort to come and talk to me after that interview was done with until that one day. Towards the end of January. It was the day we shot for Manik and Nandini's first date that I actually became a little soft towards him and probably stumbled upon this realization that he had actually changed.

I don't know what it was but the entire sequence of Manik and Nandini's first date had made me develop some feelings for him, that were probably buried deep within, once again. It was queer, but I couldn't really not admit that every time I looked into his eyes, I saw something that I hardly ever saw, Manik's undying love for Nandini, the love, the care, the satisfaction of seeing her so happy with her fireflies. It was undeniably the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in anyone's eyes, or felt. Maybe it was undeniably the most amazing feeling I had ever felt, having his eyes constantly over me and knowing that they held nothing but utmost love for the character I played.

I don't know how but something magical condensed into the moment between Manik and I . Something so short, but something so euphoric.

If that was not it, the time he hugged me followed soon after. We were both dressed in white and as soon as we got the cue we were almost pushed towards each other as if there was a weird force gravitating in the middle and as soon as contacted , he wrapped his arms around me, slowly stroking my back.

The scene was completed and we had to move to the next location for doing the follow up scene, where Manik actually gets his guitar and plays a tune for Nandini, without the bandage around his fist. The particular scene had a tiny bit of something that was popularly known as the trust exercise and we were asked to do it. Before we could go ahead with it, we were asked if we wanted to practice, and what really followed was a series of some kind of an eye contact . Maybe he just wanted to say something like 'one practice would never be enough . I won't be able to hold you any way. ' or , there was a 1% chance that he was asking me to trust him. God knows what got into me and I just mumbled no out of nowhere and he said no as well.

When we started acting , I walked ahead in those huge heels, I heard Manik say "zyaada dur nahi jaa paaogi, waapas mere paas hi aaogi."

My heartbeats raced as I stood at one position after hearing his words and took a deep breath. I closed my eyes and let myself feel really loose . Having absolutely no control over my equilibrium, but only and only trust over someone who had broken my heart into a million times over and over , I let myself fall. I was prepared to land on the hard floor that we were standing on but that didn't really happen.

He caught hold of me, when I was least expecting him to. He did not need practice doing that with me because he knew he wouldn't let me fall. I did not need practice doing that with him because I knew he wouldn't let me fall. My eyes opened as a reflex, when I felt myself landing on his arms and I looked deep into his eyes.

Could I really get over him ? Maybe no. Not today, not as long as he was in front of me. Doing miraculously weird things to my hormones. Maybe, it was futile, trying to get over him because no matter what really happened, no matter how he behaved I was always going to get back to square one of feeling at least something that was not hatred, for him. Something little more than mere liking. Also, it struck to me that it was futile waiting for a reciprocation. Maybe it could never really happen. Maybe..

--

Three hours later, being finally done with the entire date sequence, I sat on a chair, chatting with Soha. She was friendly and sweet and we shared many similarities. Parth was nowhere in the vicinity, probably hanging out with our director, at least until 10 mins back . That's when I saw him walking, towards us, as in Soha and I and he pulled a chair to himself and sat on it. He gave us a friendly smile and then fixed his intimidating gaze on me and then said a word that almost felt unreal.

"Hey." He said .

Manan's date sequence to me is more than what it looks like in the episode. It's not just Manan. By rewatching it time and again with an empty mind, lot of things dawned upon me and thanks to the keen interest I took in researching stuff from that time, few more things dawned upon me. I tried writing it as nicely as I could. I have absolutely no clue how it turned out to be like (hopefully nice). If you liked it/ not liked it, do leave your reviews and I promise from here on I'm gonna write stuff that you'd really like.

Also there are few more chapters that I'm gonna write for this story. Maybe 3 or 4 followed by an epilogue and then you can always read finally found you for the continuation .

And yes, Finally found you has a new part that I wrote and posted some days back so if you haven't checked it out yet, do that pretty soon and leave ur reviews :)