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Her
He wasn't overly friendly, for a friend. I mean, for the way he was chasing me to merely be a friend, you'd think the guy would give a little more in return when he runs into me on campus. I wasn't expecting soul searching conversations and hours on end at our disposal, but I hoped we could at least smile and be normal with each other. Normal as the world said it anyway, because in my worl, normal was the blatant stares the guys left in my wake and the gossip that whispered through the air as the girls passed me.
Monday, he didn't even notice me, but I chalked that off to a mistake on my part. I should have called out to him when I saw him, but I didn't. I don't know why. Why didn't I think I was important enough to say, "Hey! Here's a friend saying hello!"
Overthinking things isn't necessarily the key to making friends, clearly.
On Tuesday I saw him, but pretended I didn't. Unlike on Monday, I didn't have my hand hanging mid air as if waiting for a high five. I walked off. Hey, I wasn't his dish rag waiting around for him to clean up a kitchen counter with. Whatever his dilemma, which could be the only explanation to him ignoring me via text and in person as well, it was no excuse.
It wasn't until Friday that the guy paid attention. As in, nodded as I walked by, his minor affections for me overwhelming my very being somehow. I couldn't think straight, having ignored his presence (or tried to) for four straight days. I was ignored every single day by someone or the other. Why did this one's paying me and my existence some heed make every part of me race?
I'm not kidding. Not having him pay any attention was such a simple thing. Thousands of people, girls and boys included, did it to me in this college. It stung in places I never knew existed, but that didn't mean it stopped my hands mid air in a wave hello or goodbye. I never showed that I was trying. Trying was what got Surya in the mess he was in right now. Trying to be something I wasn't, a friend, a somebody to another somebody, a person in need... that was where the problem was.
I turned around, threw my phone into a corner of my bag and walked to the gate, deciding to let this day end right here, at nine in the morning.
I was going to a water body somewhere to just let go. I was going to have to bribe whoever was here to drop and pick me up, but that was the least of my concerns.
Whenever I tried to be nice to somebody, karma always had another plan in store for them.
Him
For some reason, more than her, Surya was on my mind. We barely exchanged nods the day he returned last week. He came out a day later on bail, his uncle livid, but no match for Shubhadra's, clearly. I didn't know where I stood at this point, or what my take on things were. He didn't seem to be pestering her anymore, but that didn't mean he looked or acted any different from last week.
What even made him stand on that table in the canteen makes me wonder.
Inhaling the smoke, I exhaled without thinking, the night sky sucking in the grey into its black, making me morose and contemplative.
"Dude, you got a light?"
I shook my head, urging for Meet to leave. This was the issue with sharing a PG with someone. Someone always wanted to light, and that someone would always be your roommate. For the past three years I'd been sharing my light with this fuck. "Will you never buy a damned ligter?"
"Consider it penance for getting me hooked to the thing in the first place." I felt him take a spot on the floor behind the ledge, his knees cracking as he folded them, his hands on the ledge on which I sat. "You're going to fall on your face one day."
I took a drag of the cigarette first. "So you've said three years straight."
"We need to figure out that harddrive situation. When're we headed to JC?"
Meet and I never really had much in common, other than our love for computers. When we moved in here at his aunt's relative's place we decided to invest our monthly allowance on fixing up a brilliant system rather than on textbooks. Every textbook out there was on my computer now. If only I cared enough to open them. Or needed to, for that matter.
"Weekend mostly. No time before that."
Meet hummed, making me wonder if he was smoking. "Here," I handed him my cigarette.
"Three years of bumming cigarettes because you fucking can't share a light."
For some reason that made me smile. I hadn't seen much of her this week, but she'd looked right through me on Wednesday, which made me wonder if she ever thought about me at all. Deciding to see if she responded to my text I checked my phone.
To: Shubhadra
Are you alive?
From: Shubhadra
I'm at the lake.
That was hours ago.
To: Shubhadra
Why? Did you skip class? Shit. It's gonna hail.
From: Shubhadra
I just wanted to be by myself.
I thought about this message for two seconds, knowing full well that Meet was finishing my cigarette, but not giving it enough thought on the matter.
To: Shubhadra
Text if you need to be by yourself with me.
It was a sappy text. It wasn't a text I should've even sent. She made it very clear that she wasn't looking to start things up, and sure, some part of me hoped this was that, the start of something grave and severely inflicting upon the greater scheme of things. But if it wasn't, it wasn't.
When I never received a reply for my last message, though, it was quite clear that I was barking up the wrong banyan tree.
YOU ARE READING
Stag Tales Moon Talk
Teen Fiction"Must there be a cliched dialogue a man says to the woman of his life as he proclaims his love for her?" "There must," she answered. "It's the one thing that all girls dream about as they fall asleep, wishing for a man who'll understand all of her i...
