Little girl's wild side

Chapter 22

Sindhu and Gautham were sitting side by side in a park. Sindhu's excitement finally wore out after all the shopping and roaming around they did. It was almost sundown when Gautham suggested they take a break. Sindhu's legs were practically jelly. It has been long since she last roamed around so much.

The park was pretty quiet since they were sitting in the far end. On the other side of the park, children were happily playing around with their parents hovering behind them. Sindhu had a small smile playing on her lips seeing them. Gautham followed her gaze and found a little girl with pigtails. She was pouting over something.

"You know she reminds me of Akira," Gautham said absentmindedly.

"Who is Akira??" Sindhu asked curiously, mainly because she loved kids more than anything. For her, they were the only uncorrupted form of a human.

"Akira is Priya and Rahul's daughter. You will be able to meet them. They are my childhood friends. " Gautham said, but a slight sadness crept on his face. When Sindhu noticed it first, her brows frowned in confusion but then a light bulb lit on top of her head.

"Oh. So you loved Priya." Sindhu said. It was actually a statement rather than a question.

Gautham was surprised as to how Sindhu read him like an open book. But then he also felt pleased.

"I guess. At one point in time." Gautham said and paused as the memories flood in his mind. And slowly he started verbalizing the, "But she... she was so infatuated with Rahul that I never really even came within her line of sight. She was so out of it that she would come and cry to me every time something bad happens between Rahul and her. She was that oblivious."

"But when Rahul found out, he broke up with her. I had hella of time patching them up back together." Gautham finished and then looked at Sindhu to gauge her reaction.

Sindhu let out a chuckle and said in an amused voice, "You look like a puppy waiting to be praised."

Gautham's ears turned red in embarrassment and his hands fumbled around his face to check on his expression which only fueled Sindhu more and she let out a giggle patted on Gautham's head like he always does for her.

"You know Gautham, you don't really have to feel sad as if you might have missed out on something or sacrificed something because if you think about it, you never really sacrificed anything. The choice was never really between your happiness or their's. It had always been whether or not you want to give yourself a chance in happiness or not."

"Say you did not patch them up. Let's even say Priya falls for you too which is not a guarantee on itself. But when one day you found out why Rahul did what he did, will you have been able to be happy with Priya??" Sindhu asked with a solemn expression.

Gautham shook his head subconsciously but his mind was reeling over what Sindhu just said. Everyone he ever talked to always just gave him a sympathetic look. They always looked as helpless as he had felt back then. They always advised him to move on. But no one explained it the way she did. He felt as if someone has lit a bulb on top of his head.

Gautham always had this nagging question on his head, "What if he confessed to Priya and she fell for me?? Could I have been happy too??" But he never had it in him to do it to Rahul. Not a single day went by where he hadn't wished if only it had not been Rahul. Even though all these became redundant when he met Sindhu, but he still had a slight bit of arrogance that he had sacrificed his happiness for the sake of someone else. But Sindhu deflated that arrogance like a balloon with just a few words.

A sense of pride spread through him when he saw how she put him in place without even batting an eye so unapologetically. That too without even realizing what she was doing. And a proud smile spread on his face when he thought how she will be HIS wife and be by his side for life.

Sindhu looked up at him and was confused seeing him with a pleased smile. She grabbed on his shoulders and shook him and asked, "Hey, Gautham. Are you okay??"

"Nothing. I am just proud of you." Gautham said praising her and he reached out and patted on her head still having that cheeky grin on his face.

Sindhu frowned even more confused from his reply but she let it go seeing as Gautham was no longer looking sad.

They both stayed there for a while more. After which they had an early dinner and headed back.