||~~The Brewer's Girl~~||

👼She's gone👼

☺Chapter 24☺

❤Dedicated to --Mirage-- as a promised birthday gift! Late but here I am!❤

Kabir.

A fortnight has passed since the last time I felt happy. What did I even do that my life has turned so disastrous suddenly. My greatest concern being my Grand mom, I am always running here and there for her medications or whatever small I could contribute to make it easy for her to live her last days. She doesn't speak at all, and I've been tolerating all her odd behaviors, her being so old and this cranky has been worrisome for me. Her vision is also getting unclear, doctor told me. It's like she sees in the unfocused galaxy in the air. This morning when we were told to take her home, she didn't even recognize who I was! I can't believe her time has come! That gave a blow to my heart.

Speaking of my heart, I think someone has just twisted it really hard. That someone being Aashna who is crossing the limits of acting moody these days. I know there is something up with her and I've been trying to get her talk to me but god! Is she stubborn!

I'm having no luck with Kukkie's help, it's always like she wants to tell me something but then she jumps to her patent reply that only Aashna should be the one to tell me. One day and what might change? I'm tired of thinking all this, texting her whenever I can and waiting impatiently for her cold replies.

To add to my bursting head with already so much of complexities, my aunt has come with Aarohi. The girl with whom she has linked my alliance with. She can't help with Biji much but still my aunt insist she'll be of help. I know better why she is here. To get to me and know me well.

What has Biji done! I can't blame her either though! I took so much time to tell my folks that I'm with Aashna, I can't even think of marrying someone else. But in all this chaos I can't just bring up this topic. As for Aarohi, I'm seeing her after years and sure she is grown up into a very intelligent and sensible woman but I'm deliberately talking limited to her. Not just to her to be honest, I don't feel like talking to anybody. The one I want to talk with is away in another city with problems that I know not of.

The clock strike 3:00 after a long night and I sigh looking at Biji's sleeping figure. She lay unmoving but still a slight movement under the quilt feeds to my relief that she's still breathing. While getting up from my chair I stand up stretching, freeing my aching muscles from a single sitting position. Glancing at the clock again I make my way to the washroom and empty my bladder.

I've developed a little cold from the changing seasons and also from all those relatives living under same roof. I walk out sniffing and rubbing my eyes. I'm met by a shadow and I can tell it's a woman. Her shoulders are hunched, defeated as if harboring sadness. When the shadow floats near me I realize its Aarohi walking to me, her eyes wide as if in a shock filled with a transparent sheet of water and redness.

"Aarohi.... Kya hua?" [what happened Aarohi?] I ask, my voice sounding strangely raw and too loud for me even after the fact that I'd whispered.

I watch her gulp and wipe her sweaty hands with her scarf. Her eyes meet mine for a split second before dropping to the ground in hesitance, "she's gone." She whispers and my world stills in an uncanny dread.

And I don't move. I don't breathe. I don't think. I don't blink. I don't hear. I don't see. I don't feel. Anything!

Yet it's like an earthquake making my strong foundations of love with my Biji crumple down. My eyes focus again on the lean girl standing before me with worry in her eyes. My feet take me outside to see my mother sobbing silent tears in the corner of the room. My father is sitting beside 'her' body. He lifts her wrist and drops it again sighing in defeat and despair. Strange how in one moment all that remains is the structure while your soul frees out. Out of people's lives who have done nothing but giving love. I engulf my mother in a hug, feeling a coldness invade my senses. Aarohi's words finally dawn upon me as I close my eyes in utter pain. "she's gone"

Aashna.

I can't take it anymore. I can't take his silence. Earlier at least he was texting me or calling me once in a day. We argued, we fought and huffed the other times to ignore each other. But this is not his ignorance. Sitting this far and away from him I can feel his broken demeanor. I've heard the news of his Biji passing away a week before at the catering house from Kapoor Uncle. But I couldn't bring myself to call him in case I lose my cold behavior to him. Neither did any word come from him and I fudging care so much that it puts me at edge. I can't take this anymore. I've decided I'd call him come what may. Maybe I'll have to start being bad and cruel again from the beginning but I want to be sure how he is. I pretty well know how he would be but a week without hearing his voice is making me anxious. I smirk bitterly at my self-restraint for showing much attachment to him. I can't help it. One call. And the last.

I chew on my lips scowling at the frown on my face in the mirror. Its midnight and maybe he doesn't have chores to do at this time. The call goes to voice mail after ringing several times. Maybe he is asleep? I purse my lips feeling a strange heaviness in my heart. Turning to the dressing table, I pick up the heart shaped ring he'd given me.

I close my eyes in despair, smiling sadly and remembering our time together last time. What did I do, why you chose me god to be marked with this terrible thing?

Ringing of my phone brings me out of my thoughts and when I see the name,my breathe falters before picking up the pace. I don't say hello, my ragged breathing does. He clears his throat and I can imagine him running his hand at the back of his neck, an action he does when in a situation like this. I stare at the mirror in front of me, hating what I see immediately. The guilty tears finally make way and I let a sob escape. "I'm sorry...Kabir" more tears flow when I utter his name to him and then I realize how much I have missed him. There is nothing I hear on the other side though.

I wait for him to say something but few seconds tick by in silence and my heart dips with the passing of each. Am I not worth talking to now?

"come home....please!" he whispers and his pleading voice breaks my heart into tiny shards, those that I'm too weak to even bend and pick up right now. I can't bring myself to say something or react too, it just sends me into a shocking unmoving state. Few words spoken in his distant voice and they communicates all those turmoils he is lost in.

"come....I need you" he says again in a much upper tone and I don't need to be told again to make my decision. I've decided to go. Just when I am about to reply he ends the call and I feel it, I feel it all, the severity of his need, of his condition and partly because of all I did to him. I cover my face with my palms, guilty and dirty in my eyes. His words echoes in my head once again just like they've been echoing all of these past weeks. "It's you and me v/s the problem Aashna, not you v/s me." He'd said. Should I let him know? Would he accept me the way I am now?

Whatever be the problem, it is with me and me alone. Why should he suffer along with me? I can't let this happen. But he needs me. He wants me. He'll accept me the way I am now will he? I sigh looking at myself in the mirror. Oily face, covered with marks, hollow eyes, unwanted freckles upwards from my neck to chin and few of the silver shines in my tresses. I'm no more that beautiful Aashna he fell in love with. My body's changing to look full with mass but I'm weak on the inside. I trust him that he'll accept me and try to make me better than this, but what I have or rather what I lack, can it be mended? Can love be the remedy for this loss that not only me but he'd also suffer if we go ahead with this relationship. With that passes another night of depressed thoughts plaquing my mind.

A day after when he'd urged me to go to him I have come to his home in Chandigarh. Somehow I managed to land at the right address that he sent me. Kabir's family unlike mine is huge. The front hall is full of his relatives, reading something from their religious book and remembering what good his grandma did in her life. My eyes wander among the unknown faces. I recognize his dad sitting with the fellow males. He is really tall with beard surfacing on his chin neatly, his hairs are covered with an orange cloth tied at the back of his head in a knot and he is wearing a khaki kurta over the white pants. Kabir had shown me their picture back in Dublin when we used to live together. One of the older woman with a round belly scowls at me and I stare back in confusion as to try and search my head for any signs of recognition. She glares at my feet and I realize my dripping top was spoiling the clean tiled floor. I tear away my eyes from her and move to the corner avoiding her trained eyes on me. The drizzling rain outside has soaked me and I hated every bit of it. Yes me hating this nature's gift. I feel disgusted of myself of how I've become. A sense of inferiority hit me and I don't want to be here among so many unknown faces. I want the earth to gulp me or to run to the hills but I can't.

I know I have come here for him and I have to find him. My eyes travel upwards scanning the stairs and I catch one known face that I'm both relieved and distressed to see. Hers.

I follow her upstairs but before I can catch up she enters into a room and I come to a standstill upon hearing a lady inside the room take Kabir's name. I hate that his name alone can make me feel the things I so want to feel but I shouldn't. How am I going to get past seeing him? What would he be doing?Is he aware that I must be here by now? I stand uncomfortably in the empty corridor reverberating with voices from downstairs. There are more voices coming from the room Aarohi just entered and I donate my ears to them in search of any information I can gather of Kabir's whereabouts.

"What more can I do in times like these Aunt?" I hear Aarohi speak exasperatedly.

"He is lonely and grieving girl! You should start supporting him." The lady who'd taken his name earlier speaks. For a second or two I think that I've heard this voice before. But where? I wonder for another second scratching the side of my forehead with a finger as if that's gonna take out some answer from it. And it does! I recognize the voice as Neha aunty's. It's sore and raw from all the crying perhaps that's why I couldn't place it the first time I heard.

"I don't want to bother him aunt. He is so affected and aloof and seeing him like that I just don't have a heart to force my presence onto him." Aarohi says and ignoring the fact that I feel uncomfortable when she knows about him more than I do, I really get worried thinking how is he dealing with all of this. Why god? Why did you choose so many problems to fall in our destiny?

"you both have to spend the rest of the lives with each other.....Are you going to do this after marriage too when he's yours? you both have to stand by each other and heal with love what all......." Aunty goes on but I no more hear what she says. I'm stuck at this news. Marriage? Kabir and Aarohi's marriage?

How is this possible? He was going to talk to his parents about me...he fudging proposed me and then how can he agree on making alliances with a girl he met randomly in a park? A small voice speaks in my head that Aarohi is a known relative to him and infact that random girl is me whom he met in a street.

Is this the reason he's been so aloof and closed with me too? Is he going through a lot trying to change his parent's decision to not get him married to Aarohi? But obvious it is not his decision.....he loves me. As the thought comes to me I gasp. He can't marry her can he? Does he want to? Maybe that's why he has cut all the contact with me last week. I don't want to believe all this. He must have told me in all our fights too if this was the case.

"I know! I know we are going to be a married couple and I will do anything to make him happy...to give all the happiness that he deserves aunt...but there's this thing called space that putting me at edge right now.....we're not even friends...I can't just go there and utter empty words and promises to him." I hear Aarohi loud and clear, she sighs at the end and then there is silence. But the care in her voice still rings in my ears. She is going to do anything to make him happy. She is going to marry him.

But this can't be happening!why not? She is perfect girl and too sweet to hate even. She can give him what I can't. He deserves everything nice and perfect. She is all he needs. And why does it hurt me to think so? I am here to end what's left of us, then why I'm burning inside? Why are my cheeks wet from all the tears sliding down them? I start to feel suffocated by my own feelings and my head feels like bursting orange flames. I run to the other side and take a flight of stairs on the upper floor escaping into an open terrace.

I cover my face with my hands silently letting the anger out of my system, falling on my knees. I'm angry at myself. I've come promising that I'll not fall weak, that I'll not cry and make him believe that I still feel for him. why am I breaking again? It should be easy for me to make him leave me now. I have a fight to win. I have a reason I can hold him guilty for. I can blame him for cheating on me. I can say anything then why do I feel this ache right in my heart? Please god, all I ask is a little courage for the time being.

When I uncover my face I feel the drops of rain getting harsher. It is still raining and now I'm fully drenched in rain. I push back the hairs sticking to my face angrily. Life's so cruel and its kicking me really hard on the soft target. I stand back on my feet and what my eyes sees, I'm left speechless.

Kabir's sitting on the floor, hugging his knees and he's entirely drenched in rain and even dripping. My heart lurches forward falling in a dip. Fudge! How long he's been sitting here like this? In that moment, I don't think about anything troubling me. I just rush to his side.

It was scaring me to even call his name or touch him to let him know that I am here. Watching his shoulders move like that as he sobs, his cries mingling with that of the pouring rain, I feel like someone has just switched on a vacuum inside my system which is swiping away my every breathe. I can't even move as my eyes itch with fresh tears. Maybe he didn't cry all of these past days. Maybe that's what he needs, to let it all out.

He looks up suddenly, his red eyes colliding with mine and I bend down unaware of my movements till I'm really close to him with only the falling rain separating us. It fudging hurts to see this emptiness in his eyes, so unfocused and distant.

"Do you know what it's like? To never know which dinner together will be your last? To never know when you'll get that dreaded phone call? To know that there will be a day where you won't see that beautiful face again and that she won't ever be there to see you grow up, to hold your children; to see you start a family just as she had once done not long ago?do you know how much that kills me?" he looks at me almost as if he is begging me to speak, but I can't.

I just can't. I am speechless and no matter how hard I try to speak I can't.

My throat clogs up with emotions and I cradle him in my arms, protecting his soft heart and he holds on to me like his life depends on it.

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

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Done with exams and here I am!  After this update if you are sad then hold on and stay tuned to my Instagram feed for a surprise.
It gets out tomorrow!!!! 💋👅 hope it cheers you up.

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