A Lot Like Moon & Stars | ✓

09 | magnetar

ix.

M A G N E T A R (the destroyer)

TARA'S POV

When I saw him for the first time, I fell in love with his eyes.

•••

His arms were wrapped around me, and I feel so safe, so myself that I wonder if it is possible that this could last for forever.

•••

R. I. P.

N I S H A D O B R I Y A L

I saw the words etched on the grave. I cry. I cry and scream. I cry and scream so loud - just like a monster that I fail to recognize my voice, myself. Why did the night die? And why was the star its collateral damage?

•••

"I-I am going to die, V-Virat. T-this is the during, and this is only the end."

Why am I not dying? Because God, this is so painful that I don't want to feel anything anymore.

•••

"You know what pain is, Virat." I say before closing my eyes, "But you don't know that not acknowledging pain and not knowing pain are two different things."

"Speak up, Virat. Just let it go, the pain."

He tells me everything. How Shaurya died in a Kausauli landslide, and how his death left a permanent void in his life.

I decide to fill that void.

Not bothering that maybe I may leave a larger void in his life.

•••

"But that doesn't deny the fact that you're a star." The way his eyes twinkled when he said it spoke volumes. You're my star.

I knew when Virat would fall in love, he would love her like the moon loved the stars - endlessly and irrevocably.

In the past two weeks, I had become his star. And in a turned and twisted way, he had become my moon. But he didn't know that I was a supernova, the one that suddenly shines so brightly, and then explodes catastrophically owing to its instabilities.

Not because of the exhaustion of the nuclear fuel but myself.

•••

The silence is defeaning, and I chew on my lip as I feel his leg softly grazing against mine, shivers cascading down my spine. "I like you." It's not even a question, but a statement and I don't know how to react.

So I decide to react in an oblivious manner. "What?"

Virat scratches his forehead shyly, "Scratch that, I think I'm in love with you, Tara."

And I run. I run away not bothering to look back at the fire my escape velocity had caused.

•••

I don't think I'm in love with Virat.

I am in love with Virat.

And then suddenly, the thought hits me like a meteor which exists before it ablates. I feel its temperature. I let myself feel the 2000 Kelvin temperature which is enough to burn my existence into what people call a shooting star.

But unlike the shooting star, I can't even fulfil their wishes.

The thoughts that accumulate my mind along with the feeling of love which has wormed its way into my chest like a wedge is pure fear. Pure apprehension.

I know I'm supposed to feel warm, and fuzzy, and whatever they show in the romance fiction novels but that's exactly what I don't feel. I don't feel warm and fuzzy. I feel the heat - the snorching heat instead. Simply because I had seen it all - how my dad was broken when he saw my mom dying. How broken he was when he came to know that she wasn't her constant, that her forever and always was never theirs. The thought that I'm in love with Virat, and that Virat may also be in love with me feels something which I can't even phrase the words in my tongue.

It feels petrifying.

It feels claustrophobic because gosh, I'm in my home, and I feel like the oxygen is slowly draining in spite of the open windows. Maybe it's because Virat and I are breathing the same air. The toxicity which I'm exhaling is being breathed by him, and the thought itself makes me feel like I'm under a hundred foot wall and screaming to breathe.

I don't even want our relationship which had the wondeful shades of friendship to be tainted with the scarlet color of It's not you, it's just... me.

You can hear love even in silence, and it hurts, and that's why I decide to run. Run and scream my lungs out. Because maybe that's the only thing that can numb down my feelings.

Maybe he doesn't love you, it's just infatuation which would drain away a thought chases my mind, and I want it to be true but I know it's not. Every single time Virat looked at me with his eyes spoke volumes. That how he was gravitating towards me with such a strong tidal force that I couldn't even build a chance to stop him.

But please stop before you fall. Stop because -

I know why this was happening - only because I've been the only person he has seen over the past two weeks which was obviously the reason why we were so affectionate about each other. I had become a too much of a constant in his life. But I don't want him to forget how to become his own constant.

Because nothing lasts forever.

•••

I look at his eyes, and feel the dampness of the pillow. He has been crying all night.

I love you. So much.

Maybe that's why I am doing this.

Because you deserve the entire universe. And I'm just a star.