Rewind

Two

Two

She couldn’t understand. How she had ended up with him. If things were happening the way they had in the Past, then why was time making an exception where it mattered the most?

“You guys start from the Intersection” Akka instructed them.

She was not prepared for this! This was not supposed to happen!

He gestured for her to walk ahead of him, and she could not help but feel conscious of the other seniors boring holes into her back.

As they walked in silence for a few seconds, (in case of Maya, it was a stunned and confused silence) he finally spoke up. “Well, hello. I am Siddharth, but you can call me Sid.”

Maya looked at him, something he’d said in the Past ringing in her head.

“To call me Sid, you need my special approval and certificate of my friendship” he said superiorly, with a goofy grin on his face while Hareesh laughed.

I stood there with an eyebrow raised. “If I may ask you, what is so special about you?”

He shrugged and Hareesh answered instead “It is not about him being special. It is about the other person being special to him”

Siddharth whacked Hareesh on his head “Shut up, you princess ball of cheese!”

The issue had come up because I had asked why only Harish and a few other people called him ‘Sid’.

She looked at him and was gathering nerve to introduce herself before she heard a low chuckle. “Why are you so quiet? Nervous?”

Shit! How would he even know that she was nervous? Boys, before she knew them, always made her nervous. She wasn’t as nervous  around these people as last time because she already knew them and them not knowing her gave her a strange sort of confidence, but the nervousness she fell around his was because… well, because it was him.

“What, no!” she replied too quickly and sighed when he quirked a brow. “Okay, yes. I am sorry, it’s just the-“

“-new jitters?” he finished. “That’s okay.”

She felt herself smile a little. “Well, I am Maya. Maya Varma”

“Maya Varma” he said slowly, pausing between ‘Maya’ and ‘Varma’. He looked at her and grinned. “It has a nice ring to it.”

“Well, okay”

Was she supposed to thank him?

She facepalmed herself mentally. She was such an awkward duck!

They walked down the stone pathway, towards the Betelnut Grove, which consisted of rows and rows of betelnut trees.

“So, where’re you from?”

She looked at him and for some reason, it struck her that he was not wearing the same kurta he had worn on the first day in the Past- a maroon kurta with brick red stripes. Instead, he was wearing a peacock blue kurta.

“Hey, Zone Out!” he said, slapping her shoulder lightly.

She looked at him startled and blinked. “Oh, I am sorry… It’s just that your kurta…” And she caught herself, a moment too late.

He frowned and looked at down at his kurta and jeans. “Why are you surprise? It’s the school wear and-”

“No, no. I know it is the school wear. It is just that the color-”