A Lot Like Moon & Stars | ✓

12 | mizar

xxii.

M I Z A R (hill)

"Why Virat? What were you doing?" she cries, cradling my face with her hands, and with her thumbs, she traces my tears away. 

I don't know if it's an image created by my drunken haze that I can see Tara doing all that to me. I slowly stagger backwards, feeling breathless. It's like my heart is ahead in time, miles away from my brain which is still trying to process if it's actually Tara or just my hallucination.

But whatever it is, Tara looks goddamn furious as she yells at me, "Why would you get piss drunk and then come to a beach during high tides, Virat? Are you out of your fucking mind? What if something would've happened to you?" I don't even think I had seen Tara this angry before. She has never yelled at me before; she has either talked to me or felt me the way no one has ever.

I just poke her face when I ask, "Is this really you, Tara?"

Tara doesn't answer, and slowly all the blood drains off her face. "This is not the question you should be asking now. First let me get you home." And with that, she holds me but I push her away gently.

"I need my goddamn answers! Why is everyone stating you are dead, Tara? I saw you two weeks back, and you were breathing. Why will your dad lie to me?"

"It doesn't matter, Virat. We have to get you home first." she argues but I frown at her, linking my thumb and index finger to her wrist.

"It fucking matters to me. Because I love you."

"Virat —"

"— I know you don't love me and all that shit, but it doesn't change the fact that I love you."

"No Virat." she shakes her head at me, riveting her eyes to the sky. 

"Tara. please tell me —"

"— there are so many stars which do not form constellations but do you know what's a supernova?"

I frown at her, "We are not going to discuss astronomy at midnight, are we?"

"No, but it's important for you to understand." she dryly chuckles. "Supernovas are the stars which shine with an exorbitant multitude of brightness that they catastrophically implode because of the ejection of it's own nuclear mass."

"Why are you telling me this?" I ask with a frown, confused by her words.

"Because I'm a supernova, Virat." she screams frustratedly, digging her feet into the sand. "You're too drunk to even understand what I actually mean!"

"I love you, and I would die without you." I squeak, taking her hands in mine. "I'm not even joking, try me." I look at her for a reply, but she looks at me with eyes blazing. Supernova, I cannot help but bitterly smile at the metaphor. 

"Go then, die." Tara snaps at me, and I look at her with indredule. Was I hearing sane? Was I so hideous that Tara would want me to die? As she sees me thinking about it, her eyes widen, mouth pursed with her lower lip sticking out slightly more than the upper one as she frowns. "Are you going to really do it? Life isn't some novel where a person gives up on herself or himself just because a person doesn't love him back. It's just not me —it has never been only me, Vi. People are willing to love you, it never has to be just me."

"Why can't it be with you? I'm not even a quarter a heart without you, Tara. It's just impossible for me to live without you." I argue, fighting back my tears. Withdrawal is the most difficult job here, undone. Withdrawing from the fact that my life would be without Tara is difficult.