Holding on and Letting go [Complete]

11) A jigsaw puzzle.

"Well done, Ahid. I'm proud of you," Rameez patted Ahid's back as they walked through the hallway erupting with students and their chatters.

Seethe had taken the best of Neha's face while she struggled to pick up her pace in those black-heeled pointy shoes she had donned until she came in sync with their steps.

"Well done? Are you effing kidding me?," she peaked across Ahid and plopped her eyes to Rameez's grin plastered lineament. "And you," she accosted Ahid. "What the hell is wrong with you? Why did you do that? Why would you do that?"

Oblivious of his surrounding, he kept walking, his hands in his jean's pockets and head down-cast.

Her face boiled red on being shunned like that. She grabbed him by his arm and yanked towards herself, her eyes blood shed. "I'm talking to you, you douche," she said through gritted teeth.

"WHAT?," he roared, his voice raging with tumultuous storm, agony washing over his entire being and chestnut hair falling unruly on his forehead in perfect waves.

"She has started to grow on you, hasn't she?," there was anguish in her voice mirroring the disbelief in his inscrutable eyes.

"What? That is neither here non there," he shook his head.

"Don't lie to me. I saw the way you admired her while talking to Aliyan," a thick sheen of precipitation had started to form in her orbs.

He huffed in exasperation "You're insane. She means nothing to me. How could you even think of something as implausible as this?," he complained rhetorically.

"Oh really? Then why the hell didn't you delete that freaking project and let her go through the ignominy she clearly deserved?"

The panic that had welled up inside her due to her prudent and ominous nature, insinuated to a gentle and tender smile as she scooped up the laptop in her hands and put it on the bar stool near the projector before plugging it in. The smirk that had been playing in Neha's lips for quite a while now fell as she furrowed her eyes in utter confusion, thinking that the shock had driven Ayat nuts or something.

Oblivious of what was going on, she watched her each move with a frown beset face. As soon as the first slide bleeped on the projector, her jaws dropped in disbelief, vanishing the smirk that had broken out in her face as she spun her head towards Ahid, hyperventilating. His eyes were brazenly clamped on Ayat, plump lips pursed in agony, and face creased into a rickety plank making it hard to decipher the chaos billing up inside his head.

There was a moment when even Ayat felt him staring at her as she deliberately stared back with knitted brows giving a move-that-shameless-look-away-you-idiot look.

A bout cloud of awkwardness and ire loomed between Neha and Ahid while Ayat went on with the slides, receiving applaud every now and then for her hard work making Neha cringe.

"I'm not answerable to you," he chided as he jerked away his arm from her hold in defiance and sprinted ahead.

******

Finals had gone by smoothly but the weirdest thing that happened was; since the day she had delivered her project, Ahid had maintained a safe distance from her. Things had started to change between them unbeknownst to anyone including herself. The ever so cool and carefree eye candy of the class boy had been jinxed, but only around her. His jokes and quips had hit the rock bottom, but only around her.