The Unforeseen Path

Chapter Six

I felt like my feelings for him were out of control now. My emotions had become too overwhelming for me to handle and they wanted to get out.

I couldn't go on like this, without indirectly affecting my career. I had to get into a good senior college and that should be my focus.Not a guy. I had often seen my friends crying because of a guy and I had decided I wouldn't be one of them. Now Mohit made me eat my own words.

How much ever I thought about controlling it, I couldn't help the way I felt. When we retured from our mid term holidays and I saw him after almost twenty days, my heart was beating erraticly. His looks, his charm every thing hit me all over again. I felt like touching his hair and just playing with it.

Once, when we all hung out together, in a self service junk food joint, I got up to ask everyone what they'd like to have and I had a hard time not staring at him and looking at other people. I just wanted to look at him and not anywhere else.

It also turned out that I could get jealous. Something I thought I would never be. Even I couldn't be that much of a saint as Myra interrupted when Mohit and I were talking in class. He was sitting in between both of us, and the shark who was making her way in my territory, high jacked our conversation.

Every cheezy thing in the book made sense to me. I didn't just listen to the sound of music, I felt it too. I listened to the lyrics and imagined different scenarios involving Mohit and I, whenever music was played. When I read romance novels, that were plenty available on wattpad, I fancied me as the nerd who ended up with the popular guy. I thought maybe like Naina from Yeh Jawaani Hai Dewani*, I could end up with Bunny too.

These were poisonous thoughts and somehow I had to get away from it.

Slowly, I started entertaining the idea of telling him about the way I felt. I knew that he didn't like me that way and if I tell him how I felt that 1% chance of him ever liking me would also vanish, as one thing I knew from romantic books was, guys liked the chase and never went after girls that liked them.

After that he would ignore me like the plague, just like I ignored Nikhil, when he had proposed to me. It would be a perfect way of distancing myself from him. Also, internet told me that this was the the only way I could move forward in life and getting some closure.

I would be able to move on with my studies and career and all these thoughts I get about him would eventually vanish.

I asked some friends and my sister for advice though. My sister told me that maybe I should flirt with him first, butter up the field a bit without directly jumping to it. But I didn't know how to flirt. I was so clueless that if someone came and flirted with me, I still wouldn't have any idea. So that was out of option.

Tanya thought that I shouldn't tell him anything. But she also thought that he was an obnoxious git.

My other two friends weren't from college and didn't really know him, but both of them told me to go ahead with it.

I thought that maybe, next year before 12 th grade ends I would tell him. Turns out I wasn't that patient.

***

A day before our one day college trip, I was alone at home and there was nothing to do. My older sister had gone to Goa with her friends and my mom wasn't home either. I was idly sitting and these days whenever I did that, I somehow would end up thinking about Mohit. I thought about all the things I would tell him, if I ever confessed my feelings and thats how I wound up typing a message to him.

Pia : I know you don't like me, but I have to tell you that I really like you. I really like how you mingle with everyone and annoy them into being friends with you.I like the fact that you help me out whenever I ask you, be it an electric circuit in a science project or money for petrol.I like how you are always so excited. I enjoy the crazy antics that you do.
But I also know that you are popular,good looking, rich guy and you wouldn't probably like someone like me. And I am sorry for bothering you with all of this.

P.S : Please stop pulling my hair, whenever you sit behind me in class.

I could go on and on, but I didn't want to freak him out. So I re read the message and sent it to one of my close friends. She told me maybe I should go ahead and do it. I was so pumped up after writing all my feelings down, that I impulsively sent it to Mohit.

And I majorly freaked out. Because this wasn't me. I was the poster child for good girls. Girls like me can't go around confessing feelings to guys.

OMG. What would my parents think of me now? What would my relatives think of me? More importantly what would Mohit think of me now?

I had no idea what to do now. There was no guide book for such things. Also, he didn't appear to be online as there was only one tick on the message.

I decided I should calm down and not look at my phone after every two seconds.It was hard to do, so I tried making up my bag for the next day. And two hours later, he texted.

Mohit :  I know you might be waiting for a long time for a reply.... Its just that I have never seen you that way Pia..... You are a really good girl... And you also have a lot of brains..... You don't look bad..... And you deserve a much better guy than I am.... You'll get someone who really likes you Pia

P.S : Dhondu just chill yaar!

P.P.S : Don't count me on not pulling your hair.

His reply was something unexpected for me. I know he didn't like me and I expected him to just reply with a simple no. And then I texted him back, he told me he knows what I am going through and tried to make me laugh. As I talked to him, I somewhat relaxed.

The moment I kept my phone aside, it hit me that he was just letting me down easy, without trying to hurt my feelings.

Try as he might, they had been hurt, now the knowledge of what I had done hit me. I had kept my heart on the line for someone who obviously wasn't into me and now I was rejected.

Then I felt this numbing, suffocating pain, which made me unable to do or say anything. I usually ended up crying in such situations and then forgot about the pain. But no tears were produced and no burden was lightened. It all just stayed inside and gripped me from within.

I just thought about how no matter what I do, I would never be good enough for him and my feelings would be always unrequited.

Author's Note :

Hi guys! So what do you guys think about Pia's messy, impulsive proposal?

Have any of you done something like that and immediately regreted it?

*Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is an Indian rom-com about a nerdy girl who falls in love with a guy, Naina is the heroine in the movie.

Dhondu is something people call their buddy.