Crazy, Stupid, Summer Sparks |COMPLETE| MaNan Fiction

Chapter 4: Monster 'Manik' In Action

Mox sat there, impatiently biting his nails, he had called Nandini some twenty times in the last half an hour, but her phone wasn't reachable. He sat there panicking, and grumbled to himself, "However flirtatious, Nands will remain a silly fool! Why couldn't she tell me she wanted to come with us?" huffed Mox impatiently. As he sat there waiting, he got a call from Manik, he sighed in relief hoping that his bhai must have found Nands. But on receiving the call, he was even more agitated to know that even though Manik had reached the club, and he had checked inside out, Nandini wasn't anywhere around.

"Bhai, call up Soha and check, maybe she has gone for a sleepover with her sister?" asked Mox hopefully.

"No, I dropped Aliyaa and Soha myself, she wasn't around" Manik's voice was thick with tension, "But don't worry, let me drive along the area and see if she is anywhere around okay? I will keep you posted." He finished and hung up abruptly, the more he spoke with Mukti about it, the faster he was losing his cool.

Manik drove along all the nearby lanes and even the highway, there was no trace of Nandini anywhere, the longer it took, the more, an unknown fear was plaguing him. He drove around like a maniac in the middle of the night for another half an hour when Mukti called. He received her call hopefully.

"Bhai, she is here, she reached home safely" finished Mukti breathlessly and Manik sighed in relief. Then an unknown fury engulfed him, how irresponsible was this Nandini? Where the hell was she all along? Couldn't she just make sure she was reachable on phone? Couldn't she inform him that she was left behind? With all these thoughts in mind, he asked through gritted teeth, "Mukku, can you pass on the phone to her?"

He heard Mukti unnecessarily clear her throat once and responded, "Maybe this is not a good time to talk bhai, and she is quite shaken"

"What do you mean?" he asked, not being able to mask his concern.

"Well, she is not really acting like herself - for the first time, she didn't reply to my questions. She just walked straight into her room and shut the door behind her." confessed Mox uncomfortably.

If Manik was angry at her callousness a few moments back, hearing that she was shaken by the night's event and that she wasn't talking made him forget his fury completely. He had softened again, but he knew better, maybe she needed some lone time to get over the shock - so without much ado, he hung up. He decided to check on her the next day.

Nandini sat on her bed, finally inside the security of her room. She was still for some time and then the enormity of the situation was crashing down on her, and she started shaking vehemently as tears rolled down her eyes. What would have happened if Dhruv hadn't found her there by chance? Would she still be stuck out there? She felt wounded by her friends and their behaviour towards her - maybe it was time, to realize that they weren't really her friends - if they were, wouldn't they have realized that she was missing? As she sat there, there was a text message on her phone.

3:15a.m. [Hey Nandini, hope you are feeling okay now? Please get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow :D]

3:17a.m. [Thank-You so much Dhruv. I don't know where I would be, if you didn't find me today. And all the best for tomorrow, Aliyaa is in for a very big surprise. Goodnight!]

Nandini smiled imagining Aliyaa's expression when she saw Dhruv tomorrow. Nandini and Aliyaa's father and Dhruv's father were best of friends, and it was in their childhood, when Dhruv's mother had jokingly told their mother that they would take home Aliyaa as their daughter-in-law when she grew up. Everybody had laughed at the suggestion, other than the two children who sat there in awe - the two children about whom this was said - they were about nine years old - since then it was somehow ingrained in Dhruv and Aliyaa's head that they were soul-mates, they were meant to be.