The Distance Between Us

Track Thirty Two - A Thousand Years

Muskaan sighed as she leant against her bedrest. Riddhima's words from earlier were ringing in her ears. It wasn't like she herself hadn't been thinking of talking to Rahul, but it was just that she hadn't been able to muster up the courage to actually go up to him and say something.

In the past 8 years that she'd been alone, her parents had tried to get her married off to various eligible suitors, but she'd always refused, coming up with some excuse or the other, sometimes fighting, sometimes pleading, but never giving in. She hadn't been able to move on from Rahul even a smidge, which was funny given the fact that the two had never been in an actual relationship of any sort.

Before they could have given it a shot, tried to see where it goes, Rahul's dad had fallen sick and then it had been all downhill from there. Rahul leaving her without so much as a goodbye, asking her to move on, but then coming back and pledging his love for her and then, turning away a few weeks later when he learnt of his condition. Yeah, it had all been one huge drama without a whiff of romance. And yet, she still loved him. So very much. Even after all these years.

Only she knew how difficult it had been for her to stay without him for so long - without fighting with him everyday, without calling him names, without irritating him, and without making fun of him. Those little things, those silly little arguments, always trying to one up the other had become so ingrained in her, she never even realized just how important all of it was till she didn't have it anymore. Fighting with Rahul had been the most natural thing in the world for her and she had never thought twice about it, but when Rahul was gone, and she couldn't fight with him was when she realized just how important it was to her.

She missed it and she really, really, really wanted it back. She wanted all of it back - the love, the fights, the silliness. Everything. She wanted to be the Muskaan Chadda that only Rahul Grewal was capable of bringing out. Because, as much as she missed Rahul, she also missed her old self - bubbly, sarcastic and fun as hell. She hadn't been all those things for quite sometime now.

The past seven years had made sure she wasn't the same. The differences between Riddhima & Nikki, the issues between Atul & Anjali, and Armaan & Rahul's absence from her life had taken that girl away. She'd had to be there for her friends back then, bridging the gaps, because it was clear that they would never do it on their own. And she didn't want her friends to have the same fate as her and Rahul, especially not Atul & Anjali, both of whom had been so good to her.

So, on coming back to Mumbai, she'd thrown herself into helping her friends out - being their sounding board, their shoulder to cry on, the one person who encouraged them to move forward. Doing all this for her friends, she seemed to have matured overnight, the loud and outspoken Muskaan getting lost somewhere.

She had relaxed after Atul & Anjali finally got married and Nikki had Nikumbh which prompted relations between her & Riddhima to improve, but she still wasn't the old Muskaan. It took her sometime to realize that most of what Muskaan did back then was fight with Rahul. That's why she was loud.

She hoped that someday, she would be that Muskaan again. She also hoped that someday, her and Rahul would be together again.

In the past 8 years, there really hadn't been a time when she hadn't missed him. She just learnt to live with it a few years down the line. But now, she had an opportunity to make it right, to have him back. She knew that she needed to speak up and tell him, because if she didn't, she would regret it for the rest of her life. And she didn't want to regret anything when it came to Rahul, ever again. She already regretted so much. She regretted that she hadn't packed her bags and followed Rahul to the US, even though she knew it was impossible to have done so because her family, most importantly her brother needed her (he'd been a recovering drug addict when Rahul had to move to the US to look after his dad). She regretted that she'd spent so much time being mad at him when he'd come back to India, just for her. She regretted that maybe she hadn't tried hard enough to convince him that she didn't care that he might never be able to have his own kids.