BEYOND THE CLOUDS (Completed)

Chapter 10

No matter how much Sidharth wanted to extend this brief coffee date, but ultimately they reached to a point where he had no reason to stop her and dismayed, he let her go.

But he was satisfied that at the end she had left with a soft blush on her face.

“I could live my entire life looking at that pretty face” he muttered smacking the back of his head gently and with a huge goofy grin, turned back to his apartment.

He had kept all his meetings on hold, just for this date and immediately got on to completing a few calls, soon as he got back to his apartment at the South Avenue, four blocks away from The Orchard.

But a certain face kept popping in front of his eyes, shooting his focus like never before.

He couldnt understand what was so beguiling about Shehnaaz that didn’t
allow his mind to think of anything else but her, since the drunk scene happened.

It obviously embarrassed him that the girl he was trying to woo had his first impression as a drunk.

But this had been a regular with him. Everytime he met his parents, he drank himself to oblivion to stop himself from going back down the dreaded memory lane.

He cursed himself for being foolish enough to feed his number in her phone and not taking hers.

Had he shown his presence of mind then, all it would have taken is a call, but those eyes, those supple lips, in fact the whole package was so enigmatic, his sanity had taken a nosedive from the second she had shown up.

Unable to place his restlessness, he resorted to another desperate solution.

Social media. He was obviously too busy to have his own account and operate it, but as he set about it, he realized it was a childs play.

After having registered himself as Sid S, he tapped open the search button, but was transfixed realizing that he didn’t knw her last name, nor Kartik’s.

Still being optimistic, he tried a few combinations of names but gave up after looking at numerous strange profiles.

“Shehnaazzzz... baby how do I find you?” he rubbed his face, exasperated, and kept staring at the screen for a long moment.

Finally unable to figure out a solution, he lit up a smoke and pulled a heavy drag to calm himself down.

The whole day, he kept willing the time to move fast. He had to leave for the airport at 6.00 pm but was ready and packed by 5.00 pm.

To kill time, he surfed on his mobile for a bit, but immediately flicked it off, after seeing a pop up of a gossip channel on google trends which aired a short video of his recent birthday celebration and how Devanshi clung to him.

After that it was all about Devanshi and her undying love for him.

They even called her To Be Mrs. Jubilee Shukla, as a partying shot.

Trying to suppress his anger, he closed his eyes shut and tossed his phone aside.

A long moment later, he was woken up by the nagging buzz of his phone. He saw it was Rana calling him. “Yes” he answered, clipped mode on again. Rana had called him to check if his schedule is on track and with that small conversation they disconnected.

He looked at the watch and realized it was almost six, when he got off the couch with a happy smile and left for the airport.

*

Back in the Galley, the first thing Shehnaaz did was take a look at her passenger list. She had only four passengers today, and one of them was him, seated at 2D again.