Kiss me under the Moonlight

Chapter 5

Deep breaths.

Come on Arthit. You can do it.

Its not that hard.

You are not going to meet the President of the country or the head of some terrorist group.

There is no reason to panic.

She is just your mother.

Yeah.... She is my mother..

To whom I haven't talked to for almost a decade.

Oh God! This is such a disaster. I shouldn't have come here at all.

It had been nearly an hour since I decided to gather whatever courage I had and finally meet my mother. Procrastinating longer than this is not going to do any good than wreck me more, because of the anxiety. So I decided to do it and get this over with. Better to face your demons than to hide away from it for your entire life and live in fear. Not that my mother is a demon. But you get the picture right?

Great! Now I am blabbering. I had been standing before my mother's room for more than half an hour fidgeting and shifting from one leg to the other and worrying my bottom lip. I didn't even know where to start. I didn't know what to say to her when I see her. What do I say? How would she react to seeing me after 8 years? Was she expecting me? Even though Po said she had asked for me, did she really want to see me because she missed her son? Or was this some kind of trick? Or was I missing something that my simple mind couldn't comprehend? There were a million questions running in my mind and I had answer for none.

"You twist the round thing to the right and push it" Aiden whispered in my ear motioning towards the doorknob followed by mimicking the action of opening a door. He even made a creaking sound of a door opening to emphasize what he said, which earned an unimpressed glare from me. He raised his hands in surrender on seeing my glare and responded, "Whenever you are ready." He went back to standing silently beside me but I didn't miss him muttering under his breath, "Why bother standing in front of a locked door for almost an hour if you are never going to enter? More than that, why do I have to be a supportive best friend while I can blissfully settle down for the playboy version?" he finished with a sigh.

My father didn't give me much of a reaction more than a single nod when I told him this morning during breakfast that I would be visiting my mom today. He didn't even ask me why I hadn't seen her yet as it had already been three days since we got here from Atlanta. After the incident with Erawan, everything settled back to the normal routine in the Rajnopat household. I came to know that my father had expanded his business into the rentals for tourists as well, apart from the crop cultivation from our farm lands which used to be the main source of income when I was with my parents.

Bright and Knott were helping my father in taking care of the business. Bright hadn't gone to college and somehow successfully completed high school. Bright had lost both of his parents when he was four years old and had stayed with us since then. My father considers him as one of his own sons. He had always been a clown when we were growing up. Care free and live spirited, he had been the one to always start some pranks when we were kids. Though it made my father to lose his patience and rake his fingers through his hair often out of frustration, as he didn't know how to contain a bunch of troublemakers like us, it had always made us erupt with laughter and had kept our childhood eventful and fun.

Knott had always been the wise one in our little gang and would often try to stop us from doing something stupid and getting into trouble. But most of the times it would be in vain since when Bright comes up with some sort of adventurous scheme it is really hard to stop him from executing it. Knott would begrudgingly agree to Bright's pleas and had saved our asses one too many times when Bright's plans backfire. He was the one who saved us from our fathers wrath when we passed out in the tree house after having our first beers at fifteen. He was the one to save Bright from getting smacked in the head by girls when he tried to get their numbers in our high school. Also, he was the one who stands first to save Bright from getting his ass kicked from some seniors in school when Bright had been his own self and run his mouth earning the hatred of those seniors and used up most of his school days running in the hallways away from being chased by upper-class men.