Seven Dates A Weekend | RO ✓

13 | the one in which she has a night racer date.

A good amount of my adolescence, I've spent on preparing the plan. The plan is very crucial for the overall success of your life. If you want to be able to sit back in a rocking armchair in your sixties without a need to worry, you need to start planning now. You need to set goals. You need to draw a path for your life. Setting astray into the unknown is not the way of life.

That's what I've learnt growing up in the Neves' household. It was never voiced out. It was never put into letters to give birth to the exact words I had come to learn. But it was embedded into my heart and mind through everyone's actions for the past twenty-two years.

Failure in life is unacceptable.

I had constantly been reminded of that. My parents would remind me through the expression of their face every time I scored less then what, they had expected of me to achieve in my academics. My relatives would remind me of it through the manner of their taunts- which were never something meant to hurt me but to keep close to the family moral grounds. Even my siblings and cousins made sure of it never slipping out of my mind by always bringing up their own success over every dinner of family functions.

It wasn't like anyone was doing this out of spite. It was just something we all learned to do for generations. Because we knew this well enough; everyone is watching us and everyone knew. Neves' don't fail.

But at this moment I had failed. I couldn't sit through this date. Spending time with this person who thought it was okay to be with someone else even when you were having a committed person waiting for you at home. All for what? Work?

Is this how the real world is? Success made of ploys and cheap tricks? Was nothing based on people'hard work and talent anymore?

There was no difference between the tapping noise my heels made every time they clicked against the ground and the thundering rumbling inside the clouds overhead. In my head, they both sounded the same. Angry.

I don't know if it was the chill in the wind or the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that made my skin come alive with a continuous sensation of goosebumps. It was either way, horrible.

If there was something that messed up with my head, it was always the thought and action of someone using me as their replacement. Whether in work, love or family. Growing up to fit in someone else's shoes had been quite traumatic. How long would it be, until my very existence would cease to exist chasing to fit someone else? Fit someone else for the people I love, for those who were using me as nothing but a replacement.

Viaan Damania made me feel sick. The very moment Henna's text had registered into my head I couldn't stand being around him. I couldn't stand the way his hand tried to grab onto me as I hurriedly had tried to run away. As he had pulled me close to talk to me. All I could think was in that instant was that, this isn't right.