part 2

And then there nothing but the radio silence! Rishi just disappeared from everywhere... He became a ghost. Of course, Vedika used to miss him, but she thought, he did well for both. She never stopped thinking about him, but of course, she was happy, thinking he was happy somewhere...She knew a piece of her heart would be always with him.

Suddenly after 6 months, she got a call from Rishi asking her to meet at their regular office corner. And she was shocked. But happy. They met, they talked, they laughed, they cherished old memories! Time flew... Then came the time of goodbyes... Rishi looked at her, she stared back. There was a longing, helplessness, a passion in their eyes. She weakly smiled at him. He hugged her awkwardly. Took her hand in hand gripped it tightly as if his life was dependent on it. She was almost hurting, he could tell. She didn’t say anything. He wanted her to say something, he wanted her to say it... But she didn’t...He looked at her, smiled...And finally, let her go!

Rishi went away, he never looked back. He was not going back, it was too much to bear. In the beginning, there were few friendly chats, but then there was none. They used to secretly check each other's social media footprints like the last seen, profile pics, statuses, etc... etc... But no contact. 

Then life happened. One fine day, he got a text from Vedika, that she was going to have a baby... 

He couldn’t comprehend what he was reading. How could she? He felt betrayed. He felt that she had deceived him some way. He replied to her harshly but then apologized. He was sitting on the floor, looking at her message. The only thing he could feel was, it should have been him. It was wrong, it was pathetic... But that's what all he could think of... 

It's been two years. They both had their separate lives, their separate careers. They didn't even live in the same city. But... But still, they felt that pull towards each other. They missed each other, they missed being themselves. They had a cold war ongoing in the form of social media quotes, statuses. They challenged each other. And while all it was ongoing, they never talked to each other. That was all so consuming and maddening because their lives are already written, their destinies were tied with others even before they met. They weren't unhappy with their partners, they loved them. But that feeling of more for each other is taking a toll on them. They were in love with each other, but they couldn’t be with each other. They never dared to express that love… They were a mess of tangled feelings.

The question was… How you can be in love with someone when you already have someone to love?

Sometimes a person needs a push, a shock or even a pandemic to realize what they want in their lives.

So, there was a pandemic! The whole world was shaken Everyone realized that life is short to have any regrets. Rishi couldn't handle that feeling. He thought it’s better to die by expressing the unsaid love instead of dying in regret...

His whole attention was shifted to what to do about that unspoken pull, those feelings. So he decides to make it on the first chance they get.

"Thinking of you in these crazy times... Hope you and your family are okay!"  He wrote to her. Vedika read it, a smile escaped from her lips. She knew the feeling. She replied saying, she was okay. She asked him to take care. The reply was guarded as usual. It was a step ahead...

As the quarantine days passed, the feelings became unbearable. They couldn’t live the lie. After the crazy days of world chaos, they realized that they had to say each other before their deaths... Else their lives would be incomplete…

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