Tum Hi Ho

Chapter 17

After dinner, everyone dispersed to their rooms for a well earned rest. Darshan too changed out of his clothes and settled down in his bed, checking messages and mails of the day. Hardik seized this opportunity. “Darshan, yaar ek baat bata. Tere aur Paridhi ke beech kuch hua hai kya?” He asked in a casual tone and Darshan looked up sharply.
For a moment there was confusion on Darshan’s face, but he then realized that the rest of the team must have noticed his behavior. He then switched his expression to a glare.
“Nahi to. What would happen between me and….that…manager?” Hardik was startled at the bitter tone of Darshan’s voice. This was really something serious.
“Then why are you behaving like this with her?” Hardik asked and Darshan scowled at him.
“What do you mean by ‘behaving like this’? I am behaving normally. She is my manager, I am just keeping a professional relationship with her.” Darshan shot back and Hardik was left speechless.
“But…but you were …errr… friendly with her before. What happened all of sudden to change to professional behavior? Did she say something to you?” Hardik tried again, but Darshan shook his head.
“Why would she say anything to me? And this is my normal behavior towards people who work under me. Now if you don’t mind, I am really tired and I need to sleep.” Darshan said, keeping his phone aside for charging and tugging the duvet over his head.
Hardik stood there for few moments, confused by the behavior of his close friend. But he knew there was no use pressing this matter any further. Next morning, Hardik told Paridhi all about the conversation he had had with Darshan the last night.
Paridhi frowned as he told her about keeping professional relationship and everything.
“But I never said anything to him that would make him switch from friendly relationship to professional relationship. Why would he do this?” She asked, now truly troubled because of his behavior.
Darshan had again ignored her at the breakfast table and the team had noticed again. Half of them had asked Darshan about this and half of them had asked Paridhi.
Both Paridhi and Darshan had given evasive answers. Darshan didn’t want anyone to know and Paridhi herself didn’t know what was going on. The team and Darshan relaxed that day, lazing around in their rooms.
The boys gathered in Darshan’s room after breakfast to pass the time and Paridhi awkwardly excused herself. She knew Darshan was going to ignore her there too and it would be really embarrassing and awkward in front of the whole team.
She went to her room and completed her pending calls to her mother and cousin. She then called up Nikhil to discuss about ways to talk to their parents.
Nikhil didn’t want their parents to know that they were in a relationship. Paridhi didn’t want to hide anymore. They had been arguing back and forth on this matter with no solution. Nikhil’s plan was to subtly hint his parents about his marriage and when they would start looking for matches, get an elder cousin to suggest Paridhi’s name for marriage.
Nikhil would immediately agree to the idea and rest would work out itself. Paridhi could see about 100s of flaws with this plan. Anything could go wrong if they tried to hide the relationship.
What if Nikhil’s parents rejected the proposal? What if Paridhi’s parents rejected him? What if the families didn’t agree on something in the process of marriage and ended up breaking ties and this ruined everything?
There were countless possibilities of things that could go wrong. Paridhi wanted to tell the entire truth so she wouldn’t have to hide from anyone. She was tired of hiding and lying for Nikhil.
When she had suggested this idea, Nikhil had been furious at her. He did not want to expose his ‘personal life’ to anyone, not even to his parents. This seemed odd to Paridhi as this behavior was suspicious.
He was a boy and she was a girl. She was going to face a lot of problem if her family came to know about her being in relationship. On contrary, his family was ok with him having a relationship.
It seemed odd to her that she was ready to face wrath of her family for him and he was not ready to even tell the truth. Did she even deserve this? She knew they were going to have a huge fight over this once she went back after the next concert, which was tomorrow. She sighed, trying to prepare herself mentally for everything that was coming.

//New readers, do tell me how the story is going. Also please vote and support if you want more stories to come.//