They say finding true love at nineteen is a blessing. Or so they thought until they believed in their love.
But some people are really unlucky without any apparent fault of theirs. Manik Malhotra came in a similar category.
Eight years later, when...
~ Some incidents scar us forever, and it's really difficult to heal them, even for the sake of survival~
The shrill alarm tone broke Nandini's precious sleep, who rolled to her side, in an attempt to snooze it, but the table clock fell down, and the continued irritating tone forced her to sit up. Switching it off, she yawned as her gaze fell on it.
6 am! Damn, she was up too early. Her usual wake up time was around 7 and that meant she lost almost an hour of her previous sleep. Grumpy at a very early hour, Nandini walked out of the bed, to the coffee maker, and made a strong coffee with milk and sugar.
It made her chuckle though, the memory. Years ago, she hated coffee with milk and sugar, it was always black coffee for her, and Manik used to make fun of it, for according to him, there could never be enough bitterness around to make your taste buds suffer. Coffee was meant to be with milk and sugar, and Sometimes even extra choclate syrup. Nandini laughed to herself as she walked over to the window, thinking how over the time she had adapted almost all of his habits, maybe as an escape from missing him.
A sigh escaped her froth laden lips, and she opened the glass window, letting the breeze in, allowing it to play with her hairs. Her eyes seemed to embrace the beauty of the scenery around, when they fell on the gorgeousness of the man, jogging in the park below. Manik was back-facing her, lost in music as he took faster steps to finish his rounds. Her eyes lit up, as she savoured him, until he disappeared from her sight, back into the hotel lobby.
Sometimes it made her wonder how did she spend eight long years without him, when clearly seeing him again had brought back all the feelings she thought she had moved on from?
The caller tune of her phone broke her chain of thoughts, and she picked it up, only to be notified about coming down by Kabir. Freshening up, she wore a pink off shoulder top,paired with white plazo and pinned her hairs to one side. A line of Kohl and shimmery lips, she was ready to go.
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Walking down, she found everyone else around the breakfast buffet, and her eyes scanned the hall only to spot him in a corner, in a white transparent shirt, and trousers. But before she could walk over to him, Mukti dragged her aside, asking her plans about the day. Turned out that the outdoor plans had been cancelled owing to the rains, it was not heavy rains yet but the drizzling was continuous and nobody wanted to fall sick. The group decided to watch some movies, like they did in college days and refresh those memories. They zeroed down on 'Before Trilogy', deciding to binge watch when Manik excused himself for a call.
Everyone walked back to the hotel suite, except Nandini who followed Manik to the hotel lobby, and found him walking down the alley in rain. For the first time in her life, rain didn't scare her, the thoughts of ruining her clothes didn't matter, all the did was him, and she followed him blindly, until he reached a point where the roads had begun to curl forming a mesh. The downpour had increased too, but he stood still, his hands extended in the rain.
