Mahika and Amoli can't stand each other, but that's not the only thing they have in common.
Mahika treats Amoli like she's childish. Amoli thinks Mahika is a stuck-up prude. But Mahika's best friend and Amoli's brother are getting married, so they c...
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˗ˏˋawkward silences and eventual blow-ups'ˎ˗
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The amount of awkwardness in the silence that stretches from that point on is astronomical.
Mahika doesn't remember the last time she felt so awkward that she felt the feeling run through her veins. Amoli looks just as traumatized as her if not more, and their eyes avert from each other's faces at the same time.
Her heart is pounding so hard inside her chest it's a wonder that the sound isn't deafening to everyone standing around her. Any faster than this, and she would have to worry about it ripping out from the middle of her chest and falling at Amoli's feet like a dead animal.
Now that would traumatize her.
And even amidst the shock, the fact that Amoli had called her Mahi hadn't gone past her. Not Mahika. Mahi. The very same name she had whispered when Mahika's lips were on her neck, her cheek, her temple. In a whisper. A plea. A lost breath.
She feels her chest tightening at the intensity with which she's hit by the memory of that entire evening now that Amoli is standing right in front of her, her eyes looking bigger than they ever have, her small figure almost hidden behind her brother's form.
Mahika is worried they have been silent for a little too long, because it's slowly spreading all around her — everyone's eyes on them are heavy — the chirping of the very same birds that sounded pleasant now seeming a little too loud. It makes her wonder if they're going to start hearing the sound of crickets as well any second now.
"So..." Keerti is the first one to break the silence eventually, and Mahika has no idea if she wants to shower her with appreciation or kick her. Because as unnerving the dead silence was, she wasn't ready for it to end this abruptly. At least not before she had gathered her words and set them in one place so she could pick out which ones were allowed to escape. "We all know each other already," she adds, and the words sound cringingly awkward because everyone present there believed that Mahika and Amoli did not get along.
Or they 'weren't on the best terms' to put it nicely for Naina's sake.
It's funny that the first sentence had no significance anymore. But the second one was true in a whole different way now. And if Mahika is being honest, she preferred the old way. The deer-caught-in-headlights look on Amoli's face makes her feel the first traces of regret lick at her skin and mock her beliefs.
For everyone else standing there, it probably looked like just two people distasteful of each other standing under a spotlight. Little do they know that Mahika is going through at least a million emotions at once if not more, and if they challenged her to name one of them, she would fail.
She's frozen on the spot, waiting for the sky to fall upon her or for the ground to swallow her whole. Either would work, really. Anything that gets her out of the situation she's in right now would work.
