Perfect Mismatch

Ch 10 - Of appearances and deceptions

It had been three days since the day Sana and Siddharth had met up and checked out the houses in Siddharth's society and spent time with the Shukla family. The next morning, the Instagram was flooded with pictures of Siddharth and Sana in the car, from the afternoon at Sana's hotel. While Sana remained unaffected by the paparazzi, Siddharth was perturbed. Of course, he hadn't said anything to Sana, but since the day, Siddharth seemed distant and it bothered Sana. However, not having been able to meet up due to differences in Schedules and due to the whole figuring out the housing scene, she had not been able to take up the issue with him. 

On the house front, she had finalized a place three floors above Siddharth in the same building and both -Shukla and Gill families seemed very happy about it. It was a smaller home -a 2 BHK but that was all that she needed at the moment. She was supposed to be shifting on Sunday, when the movers and packers were going to deliver her stuff from Punjab. Since Siddharth's sister had went back to Dubai, his mother was alone again and was looking forward to having Shehnaaz shift closer. 

Amidst all of this, they had been individually been contacted  for a performance at an award function which was going to take place in two days. They practically had 10 hours to rehearse and then shoot the song and Shehnaaz was nervous. 

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It was around 12 PM when Shehnaaz reached the venue and went ahead with the warm up. Since it was her first time and Siddharth had done this several times in the past, the choreographer had already begun working on the steps with her in the interest of time. 

Her mind however, was somewhere else. Unlike other days, Siddharth told her to reach the venue on her own and she realized, this decision had everything to do with the Instagram incident. While she understood how Sid felt about people knowing about him from what he had told her that day in the car, when he confessed his love to her for the first time, this hurt. 

As she mechanically mirrored the choreographer's actions with a straight face, the choreographer and the other dancers stopped mid-way. Their hero had arrived. 

Siddharth reached the venue and said hi to everyone, including her. It wasn't the "Hi darling" she was used to receiving. This was his formal, conscious and business-like greeting. A few shook hands with him and the choreographer hugged him. 

He then reached out to Sana and gave her a quick side hug and all Sana could do was give him a flash of her business-like smile. Without any ado, the choreographer started with the steps and once done with their individual entries, they had to be in very close proximity for their steps. 

As she swayed to the music with her face in his chest, she felt his hand tighten around her waist but she was not going to let him do whatever he felt like. 

"Mhhmm... mat kar abhi", she whispered, without giving out any reaction.

"Kya hua", he whispered into her ear as she moved away for the next step, wherein she bent down holding his hand. 

"Mood nahi hai", she replied in a dull manner. 

Siddharth knew why she was upset but he hoped that the conversation would not come up. Not now, at least. Therefore, he gave up and they continued with the steps. Once the first song had been practiced, the choreographer decided to give them a break for half an hour. 

He was in a discussion with the dance troupe and she sat down on the floor, with a water bottle in her hand, gazing at him sadly. He felt like a completely different person with others around. Nobody around them would know how he had taken care of her when she was sick last week. People will not know of the amount of calculations and estimations he had made for her when they went house hunting a couple of days back. The world will always only see the love-struck Sana who was in a one-sided relationship with this handsome hunk who deserved more than a Punjaban who could not sound and act as sophisticated as his other exes would.