Hide & Seek

Oh, Why, Reya Why?

Sometimes it's beautiful that we understand other people so deeply as if we have known them forever, lived with them, lived as them.
Conscious about how they would feel every single moment, about every single action or phrase or joke or chiding and stuff.
It's so simple yet beautiful.
It's called trying, engaging ourselves to the fullest, knowing and letting the other know. Sometimes it's pivotal to open the locked doors and divulge the interior murals, the scratched paintings, the withering of the wall papers, because who knows that one person we are unveiling to, even half of our own messed up pretty world is really the one who could understand. Who does want to understand?
Who knows?
It's irresistible, really, knowing someone as if we have lived them.

I say that Miha had grown to know me enough that she didn't take my word for when I said everything was fine with Nicholas.

"Nothing is fine with Nicholas! You've been dodging his calls! He came to pick you for Christmas and you stand out refused! Don't say you were ill or anything.....God! We got dresses and sheos together! You were bloody excited for this, you'd have came even if you were dying on the bed! So, stop this nonsense and spit it out."

And I repeated the same thing again. Everything was fine and I talked to Nicholas and took care of it. Miha, at any rate, didn't believe me and stormed out. I sighed. I wasn't in the mood to wary about anything else all right now. It was Reya I was waiting for. She was gone days, to where I had no idea.

Eventually, my waiting beared its fruit. She found me on New Years eve on the beach under the dim glimmers of sunset, peeking through papery clouds.

She sat beside me on the bench. "Hi."

I gritted my teeth. "I don't want to talk to you. Go away."
I probaby shouldn't have said this.

Good thing she didn't take the word for it. Nobody was taking my words for anything these days, anyway."Whatever. You've been looking for me everywhere."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "So, you were around."

"Kind of." She gave me an uncertain smile. "Anyway, thats not the point."

"Nothing's the point. Go away."

She didn't.

I clenched my hands to stop them from shaking. "I don't like you."

She laughed, in her vibrant gelatin way. "Oh, you do, I know that."

What did she know? I asked myself. She knew too many things. Things I should have known but didn't. Things fouling with my head right now. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She didn't  answer right away.  Far ahead kids were playing at shore, their voices swathing us with the air in soft ripples. "What was there to say?" Answering one question with another. Classic Reya!

I kicked the sand with my foot. "I should have caught it. When your hide and seek game around my friends became frequent."

She tried to mimic me but her foot went through the sand. "Well, you just thought I didn't like them."

I rolled my eyes. "Could I have thought otherwise?"

"Not really." She said. This time an ominous silence followed, like something much pressing were to come. "You know," her voice was near to a wisper. "I left him a letter. I wonder if he read it."

At this moment, I thought of Nicholas's calm eyes, behind which he hid his pain, his smile, too genuine to be sceptic of. "He must have."

"He hasn't forgiven me."

I glanced at her. Her hair playing with the faint evening wind and the daisy in it still as a breath. "Do you expect him to?"

She shook her head. Her eyes fixed at the horizon which was breaking into dozens of shades as if someone has spilled colours on a canvas. "Some things can't be forgiven. I left him. Just like my mother. And all I had was my sister while my father was lost in the span of the modern world." She sighed. "The thing about adapting is that, most of the times we learn to and then are times when we refuse so hard that is tears us to the core in our desperation to live the familiarity that is long gone. The familiarity that was a version of us, reminding us of what we were, what we had and never letting us change." She paused. "Partly, that's happening to Nicholas."

"He refuse to accept, that is why he cannot forgive." I said.

She nodded. "In the end I forgave my mother. She didn't wanted the treatment because of the fees. She would rather me and my sister had a good life." A sad smile creased her face as she slightly shook her head. "Silly mother."

"And you?" I wispered.

"I?" This time she looked at me. Her gaze warm and too familiar. I looked away. "My doctors gave me a probably of forty percent. I left because I wanted to visit the place my mother never got to, where she could have been saved. I knew if I don't get admitted I won't have much time but thats the thing about being on the edge....you don't know how much time you have left and sometimes, you have to let it go. You can't have.....have everything. My leaving was strictly on the stretches that I cannot avoid death. It's a family thing, I guess, my sister also succumbed to fatal illness." She chuckled and went on. "I had fought my entire life, and I couldn't do it anymore, I knew Nicholas would be fine with his father and I went on for peace with conflicting thoughts that were finally at rest because of you."

"Me?" I turned to her, surprised.

"Yep. When I looked at you, I knew what I had to do. That hour we shared together affirmed that you deserve to live a long and beautiful life, of course, I didn't expect you to fall for my son."

"Hey!"

She rolled her impeccable eyes, dramatically. "Yeah, yeah, fine. I give you my permission, what do you say, to date him."

I scoffed. "I don't need your permission."

She smiled at me. A very rare smile. I wondered what would have happened of me if I hadn't met her? That day in my room? I refuse to beileve that something good would have happened. We were litteraly soulmates. "You should talk to him." She said.

The approaching dusk embraced us as it bid farewell to the sinking light. I knew what she was referring to. Nicholas. I gazed at her. My first best friend in a long while and I slowly nodded. "I will."