One night ...

Till then it seemed like any other night I had been through after reluctantly getting stoned. I always wanted to say it to her but my inherent fears loomed large over my thoughts.

Fear of losing her as a friend or more worse is the loss of her trust in me as a friend. I always felt uncomfortable to decide my stance in a relationship. Being in some sort of relationship for some time doesn’t generate clues to quantize it into any particular kind so that it would be easier to take this relationship ahead to next level.

I waited impatiently many a moment as such to express myself to her. I had decided that night that I shall not let myself suffer this anguish because of my inability to speak out to her. I picked up my phone and dialed her number from my contacts. I chose then to sit at my favorite slant roof of our balcony to avoid any letdowns by people around me. My heartbeat sounded much clearer as my phone was trying to connect to hers and the rate peaked once her phone began to ring. It rang for more than 10 times without any response meanwhile I was contemplating her lack of interest to speak to me at that moment of time. After the initial expected number of rings each further ring was chipping off a part of my confidence. I had closed my eyes as a wave of such thoughts splashed all over my mind. Suddenly I heard her voice and it broke all those unsubstantial thoughts hanging in my mind. The voice seemed much sweeter to listen to especially after spending an entire day in the vocalizations of men devoid of romance. Surprisingly she sounded more enthusiastic than I expected and I sensed energy in her voice if not impatience. I always found it hard to visualize pretty women in real life getting impatient to talk to me. The conversation started off with either of us picking up the most expected ones from our questionnaires. But I was always in touch with my inner self and was determined to make it happen this night.

I changed gears and asked her one of my most intriguing queries. I could sense that she felt it all of a sudden out of blues but wasn’t surprised to hear it. “I wanted to ask you something that I had been thinking of sometime and you need to be frank with me.” There was this longer than usual gap before she said, “Go ahead, but do you really want to do it now?” I said “Yes. It had been weighing heavy on my mind so I thought I shall get my answers today.” “Fine with me” she said immediately.

Me: What do you think of me?

She: Hmm…what do I think, nice friend. You used to quite naughty in school but you seem more matured now.

Me: Ohkay. Let me tell you something. I had spent a considerable amount of time and thought about you since the time I had first met you. You were more than a friend to me. Your voice or your every message evokes in me a longing for you. You are one of those persons who created this impression very early in my life and had been creating it now. Recollecting you brings back the way you talk, smile, cheer, the way you start and end a conversation, virtually everything I had known and observed about you.

There were a couple of “Hmm”’s from her side as I revealed her all that I had in my mind. As I continued saying to her:

Me: I felt it wasn’t completely right to continue thinking about you and not letting you know all that is happening with me regarding you. I could have kept all this to myself and might forget it with time but in the end it would be unfair for the trust either one of us have in other.It had been quite difficult for me to keep thinking about it all by myself as it was becoming more uneasy for me.

She: Hey ravi … you sound quite heavy and serious.

Me: Yeah. Hehe. I hate making it so heavy for both of us. So I will straight away ask you, do you have any similar thoughts regarding me? Have you experienced any feeling as I had just said to you?

As I was feeling this pinch on my toes, I think it was due to the rough surface underneath me.

She:[in a rough voice]…arey ee domalu enti ehhe. (Why the hell are these mosquitoes here?)

It was Rapi who was moaning after an army of mosquitoes attacked his open back.

The intensity of the pinch increased and it was a mosquito bite that woke me up.

I opened my eyes with a haze to find the open back of Rapi lying next to me. He was squatting mosquitoes as the fan and the repellent got turned off due to power cut. I immediately closed by eyes in a fit of anger towards the stark reality I was in and adjusted my bed sheet to cover my feet from mosquitoes. When I opened my eyes after a couple of seconds to find what time it was I found my phone navigated to the position of her name in the contacts page.

I hit the call button and after a few incessant rings she answered sleepily: Hey ravi… what made you call in this middle of the night? What happened…are you fine?

She asked me these with her yawns terminating each of those questions. I reluctantly said, “If you are in a deep sleep continue, I will call you tomorrow evening.”

She cut the call and I too went to sleep after some initial uneasiness.

PS: Though the above story has a few real mappings to my real life this is the author's first take at a fictional story with a catchy-realistic-could-be-found-on-the-street type romance as the underlying theme. My inspiration for building this are my conversations with a co-IITian, ask her about how many lines I spoke to her had been used in the conversations written in the above post.