Broken Faith

E6 - I Love You Too

“I was waiting for your call. I …. I want to say something, Rudra.”

“Ok. I am listening.”

I took a deep breath and sang one of the most romantic songs I could think of. Yeah, I am a fan of old Bollywood songs. Call me oldie. I started singing.

“Ehsaan tera hoga mujhe par, dil chahta hai wo kehne do. Mujhe tumse mohabbat ho gayi hai, mujhe palko ki chaav me rehne do.”

(Please grant me a favor and let me say what I want to say. I have fallen in love with you, let me live in the shadow of your eyelids.)

I sang this song which was basically a love proposal from a girl to a boy.

“Sonali….” He whispered and I felt the hairs on my neck and spine stand up in response. It was so low and thick.

“I am sorry. I didn’t know how to react. The truth is, when you left in the car, I felt a void and it kept on increasing when you stopped talking to me. I started missing you and my heart …”

“Shhh. Please stop talking.” I heard his heavy breathing and felt a knot in my stomach. The way he was breathing, I was imagining his breath on my neck.

“If you had said this when I was there, I would have kissed you so hard, …. your lips would look like a rose which was devoured…. I would have attacked your lips and kissed them … f**k. I still remember your lips. They are perfect. I can take both of them in one go and bite them at the same time…. S**t.”

He was trying to take deep breaths but his voice was hoarse and s**y. I closed my eyes and imagined him near my lips and then he kissed me over the phone. It was a long kiss that was almost a whisper and was accompanied by his panting.

I opened my eyes in an instant.

“This is an advance. I will give you a lot the next time I see you. God… I Love you.”

“I Love you too, Rudra.”

I disconnected the call the moment I said this and rushed to Neha’s room. I didn’t want to go to my room because Smita was still in Team Vaibhav. She was in contact with him and the last thing I wanted Vaibhav to hear was that I said I Love You to someone else.

“You did phone s*x with him, didn’t you?”

“What? No. Eww.”

She laughed. “Your face is flushed and your cheeks are red. I thought you mast**bated. But if you have not, then you will do it in some time.”

I asked her to concentrate on her studies because we had 7th-semester exams in just a month and I didn’t want to fail. I had a job placement in hand and I didn’t want to lose it because I couldn’t pass.

I told Rudra about my exams and he promised that he would not say anything until my exams were over. But that didn’t mean we didn’t talk. We used to talk for hours (sometimes more than 5-6 hours a day). Our record was 18 hours in a 24-hour period.

*****************************

A tear escaped my eyes realizing that we used to talk for hours, and now, I can’t even talk to him for a second. This is what life is. There was a time when I cried when he didn’t talk to me for a day, and now it’s been 3 months and I haven’t heard his voice.

But that doesn’t mean I forgot what he sounds like. I can still hear his “Sonali” in my ears. My mind can still form sentences that he used to say to me when I close my eyes. I can see his face in my tears and my heart can still feel his" I Love You" when I remember him.

Will I be able to forget him? I guess not. Because you never forget someone, the pain never leaves you. You just learn to live with the pain of missing that someone.

Because you can never truly forget someone you loved. And if you can forget, then you never loved them. We just distract ourselves when someone leaves us. And the moment anything related to that person comes in front of us, we are forced to remember him and feel the pain once again.

Missing that person created a hole in our hearts that can never heal. There is no cement in the world that can fill the hole.

I called my mom again because I wanted to talk to my daughter, Maggi. She suffered the most. I had my Dad, and I came to him when I felt I had no one. She ran from her dad, how is she going to accept the fact that the wall which every girl feels, the security that a daughter feels when she is with her father, the umbrella, she will never feel that.

The famous saying – Dad’s Princess, will pierce her like an arrow because, for her, Rudra was nothing more than a criminal.

“Hi. What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Didi brought me some candies, I was eating them.” She was referring to my cousin’s daughter who is in college. Thanks to her, at least Maggi smiled.

“Don’t eat too much.”

“Yes, mom. Mom, are you there yet?”

“No, it will still take 4 hours. Why are you asking?”

“Nothing. I… Are you really going to file a case against him?”

“I am not sure. I don’t want to, but if I don’t, his deeds will go unpunished. I don’t know Sweetie. Let’s see what this lawyer says. I will keep you updated.”

“Do you want to punish him?”

“I don’t know. Punishing him will hurt us both, and I don’t want to hurt you once again. You have already suffered a lot.”

“But then, he will think you were wrong.”

I laughed at her sentence. “Even if I die, he will think I was wrong. There is nothing in this world that can convince him I was right. He said it himself, even if God appears in front of me, I will not believe that you are saying the truth.”

“But why didn't you fight with him that day?”

“Because I was blind. I never saw how unstable he was. I never noticed his toxic behavior.”

“It’s ok mom. We are now safe. You go ahead and meet the lawyer. I am with you.”

“Thanks, beta. I Love You.”

“I Love You Too Mumma.” I disconnected the call. Maggi is only 10 years old, but she is more mature than any kid I met. She understands a lot of things. There are a lot of things Rudra destroyed, and my daughter's childhood is one of them.