Going Back To You

05.

We were fifteen when I came to first acknowledge the nature of our relationship. We were lying on the laid out mattresses in my room. Mother had asked Arin to stay over after he and I had spent all evening studying and reading comics. I would occasionally ask him for his help with sums or paragraphs I didn't understand.

After dinner, Amma had insisted on having Arin sleep over since it had become late and she assured Arin that he'd have nothing to worry about since my father was out of town. Arin reluctantly obliged. We didn't have a telephone and Arin's eyebrows crinkled with worry for he could not tell his grandmother. And I could tell he was still worrying as he laid beside me on his back, staring intently at the ceiling.

"I'm glad my father's out. I can have you beside me like this."

Arin turned to look at me and smiled. "Me too."

Silence settled between us, and every cricket's chirp and the drunken slur of men outside painfully echoed in perpetuity. I glanced to the side wondering if Arin was still awake. Arin's clear-eyes were open. I wondered what it would feel like to inch closer and trace those eye-lids holding his mellow eyes.

"Are you asleep?", I asked but only because Arin's presence was obscuring my conscious and it felt like my body was functioning arbitrary.

Arin smiled again without looking at me as he said, "Why ask?" His voice was the same old- ever slightly velveteen whisper, an eternal evenness to his tone that was so low, so deep, so attractive and so sensual. Even when he spoke with anger, it would sound the same- but his words would be frosty and respectful at the same time.

I propped myself on my elbow and stared at Arin, my hands aching to reach out and draw my fingers on the contours of his face upon which a linear streak of light was diffused.

"Do you miss your parents?" I asked him because Arin never spoke of them and I was curious because although I hated my father and was annoyed by mother most times, I couldn't imagine living without them.

"I don't miss my parents because I never really knew them. I just miss the idea of having parents. Everyone does, so it just makes me crave for them. But, sometimes, I'm glad you know, I feel emboldened because I don't have much to loose and I can be who I want."

I nodded in understanding. Now that he'd said that, I became extra glad that my father wasn't around that night.

Arin turned to me, "We're different, aren't we?"

In retrospect, I didn't know what it meant when he had asked me that, It seemed like everyone always tried to define our relationship and ease their doubts, It would annoy me that they were so into our business, but Arin would suavely laugh it off and say, "We're just really close." And then my feelings of annoyance would persist even more.

"I'm not different. You're." Arin's eyes had become indiscernible and it worried me a lot. It seemed like what I had said wasn't the reply he had wanted to hear.

"We both are different, Naksh, we have no similarity. But that's also why I like you so much. If you were like everyone else, my life would become so boring and...tragic. I really like you." 'More than a friend.' He whispered in the end, just enough for me to hear but also soft enough for him to think I hadn't.

It'd be a lie if I told I didn't understand what he had said. His words had filled me up with heartened spirit. I wanted to touch him, hug him. And he was so close. And I was scared and unaware of what I had to do. Arin simply continued to look at me. The usual brown in his eyes had become darker and glassy, so much so that, even under the inchoate light in the nightly room, I could see myself.

I couldn't look at Arin the same after that night, his silent cryptic confession to me made me hyper aware and extremely conscious of every little thing. I found myself noting small unnecessary details of his, like how he seemed to wear only the same five t-shirts on loop, the birthmark on the side of his lip, how is second toes were longer than the first, how his fingers were smaller than mine, and how he seemed to be perfectly fine while I was a nervous mess.

It didn't take me long to accept that my feelings for Arin were something more than friendship, it was a fact for me, no more real than gravity. But, with the acceptance of that fact, came fear. My father's face would flash through my eyes, I'd remember that society wasn't a sanctuary as I'd like it to be, it was like those fences made of wooden planks, with intervening spaces- the filled parts and the empty places, and around here was no fulfilling place; but mostly I feared myself. I feared that if I let myself get swept away by my feelings for him, I wouldn't be able to recover, that I wouldn't want to leave his side, that I would disappoint my father. It was then that I decided that I would have to keep my distance from him, shun away all my feelings and be content with staying friends. I would still be able to be with him, everything would be just the same as it is now...I lied to myself. If it were to remain the same, so would my feelings.

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A/N: Remember, this is a collaboration between I and my co-writer, Merakioni . Please, go and support this story which is up on her profile as well! Go check out her other works. I'd recommend the poetry. :)