ËËËfull rooms and emotional catharsis 'ËË
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Mahika takes a break from mincing the onions on her chopping board to throw Dhruv a deadpan look, judgmental eyes shifting between his face and the container he just ate a spoonful of sugar from.
She has a feeling that she doesn't look as wooden as she intended, though â eyes ringed red and swimming with tears â when he raises an eyebrow and says, "You got something to say to me, Nobita Nobi?"
With a sniffle, she aggressively reaches for the paper towel roll hanging behind him and rips a piece off to dab at the tears trailing down her cheeks. "I'm not even surprised that you're absolutely useless in the kitchen. Got to have something to break the illusion, after all... nobody's perfect and all that."
"You're talking a lot of shit for someone who's about to make the Uttapam saltier than it's supposed to be," he comments with a raised eyebrow, motioning in the general direction of her face with the spoon. "I did suggest that we soak the onions in water for a bit..."
"You're talking a lot of shit for someone who's about to lose all of their damn teeth before they hit thirty," she fires back, letting out a groan almost immediately after at the way her eyes burn.
Dhruv clicks his tongue when she presses her palms to her eyes with a pitiful whine.
Mahika hears him shuffle away, and then the sound of the tap running fills the kitchen. "How do you do this every day?" he asks, taking hold of Mahika's wrist to pull her hand down and place a damp handkerchief on it.
"The onions get spicier around this time of the year, okay?" she grumbles, pressing the cool cloth to her eye. "And I have sensitive eyes. How are you not tearing up anyway? You're standing right here!"
Dhruv rolls his eyes and hip-checks Mahika out of the way before he picks up the knife and slowly starts cutting the rest of the onions with more insolence than Mahika deems worthy. "Have you considered wearing your glasses regularly like the rest of us myopic commoners, maybe?"
"Ugh. I hate when you nag."
"You hate when I'm right."
Mahika sniffles, and then pointedly turns away to wash her hands. "Shut up."
Dhruv hums, the smile clear in his voice when he asks, "So you wanna talk about something else then?" Mahika turns to him with a questioning look on her face. "You know... like the reason why you keep glancing at your phone every few minutes, maybe?"
If there was a world record for the fastest a person's ears can turn red, Mahika would have won the title easily with how fiercely that question makes her blush.
"Shut up," she repeats weakly, shaking off the excess water off her hands and ignoring the chuckle Dhruv lets out under his breath at the naked mortification on her face. "Can't you play the silently supportive best friend for a bit longer? My mother is in the house with us."
"So you're giving me permission to be nosy in the future? Got it."
The corners of Mahika's lips twitch with the effort to keep her smile at bay. "You couldn't be nosy even if you tried." Dhruv scoffs at that but doesn't deny anything. "You're just mad Naina knows more about us than you do."
"Ohhh," Dhruv drawls teasingly, and Mahika basks in the split-second of realization that he didn't flinch at the mention of their best friend's name for the first time in a long while. "There's an us now, is there?"
She presses her lips together and smacks him on the arm with the back of her hand.
Dhruv dips his fingers in the bowl of leftover water they had kept there for the Uttapam batter and flicks it in Mahika's face. "What, did you expect me to just never bring it up?"
"Honestly? Yes." She grabs his shirt sleeve and brings his arm up tp to exaggeratedly wipe the drops of water off her cheek and forehead, and sticks her tongue out at him when he scrunches his nose at the now-damp spots.
Dhruv hums and tilts his head to one side before letting out a dramatic sigh. "You call Naina and I both your best friends but there's clearly a lack of balance here â" Mahika cuts him off by giving his shoulder a light shove.
"She was there when it happened, okay?"
"Excuses, excuses..."
"What are you two bickering about this early in the morning, hm?" Mahika's mother's voice makes both of them turn at the same time, and the warmth of the smile that graces Mahika's lips at the sight of her could make sunflowers bloom.
"Nothing, Dhruv is just being annoying. Like always," Mahika responds, and Dhruv makes a faux noise of offence that Mahika ignores in favor of rushing over to her mother with her arms outstretched.
"Maaa," she sings, making herself as small as she can and closing her eyes for a split second to take in her mother's familiar citrusy perfume. "We're making you breakfast."
"Is that why you've called this poor boy over so early in the morning?"
"I didn't call him over, he barged in when he found out you were coming home," Mahika corrects, sticking her tongue out at Dhruv without taking her head off her mother's chest. He makes a yapping motion at Mahika. "And now that he's here anyway, he can help around a bit, can't he?"
"I don't mind," he says before Mahika's mother can protest with her usual 'But Mahi, they're a guest'. "And I didn't barge in, I come and go as I please." He holds the spatula in their direction like a wand. "I've claimed this place as my second home. Your mom is also my mom. Go cry about it, Mahi."
Mahika makes a face and makes a show of straightening up and stage-whispering to her mother. "Do you think he'll disappear if we ignore him long enough?"
"No." Her mother pats her cheek and moves to the dining table to take a seat. "And he's not wrong."
There's a dramatic gasp of dismay and an equally loud cheer of triumph in the kitchen, and it's not that hard to guess which came from whom. Mahika's mother shakes her head with a small smile playing about her lips when the two of them start bickering like children again.
"Could you put some extra ginger in my tea today, honey?" she asks Mahika, and sure enough, their grumbles come to a halt immediately. "I think the weather's making my throat feel a bit sore."
"Oh, of course." Mahika pours a cup and keeps it aside before adding more ginger to the pot, because she knows Dhruv will complain about the burn, and pointedly ignores the cheeky grin he throws her way at the gesture when she slides his tea over. "You haven't caught a cold from traveling, have you?"
"No, no, just the â"
"We should have used the vaporizer after your shower," Mahika fusses with a frown, stirring the pot before setting down an empty cup for her mother. "You get the flu after flying sometimes."
The said woman pours herself a glass of water and hides her smile behind the rim, because she already knows there's no way to stop Mahika from going on a tangent from here.
Times like this, she usually asks Mahika: Am I the mother or are you?
"I could still heat the machine up for you, though," Mahika continues, unintentionally cutting her mother off again. "Your ears get stuffy around monsoon, too, so it might help with that as well... maybe we should â"
"Mahi," Dhruv interjects softly, corners of his lips twitching with a smile when Mahika only responds with a distracted 'hm?'. "You're not letting her speak."
"â oh."
When she turns to look back, her mother has her chin in her palm and a fond smile playing at her lips.
Mahika clears her throat and ignores the chuckle Dhruv lets out at the bashful look on her face, opting to just silently pour some tea for her mother. If her braided hair hits him when she turns abruptly, he doesn't say anything about it.
"Thank you," her mother murmurs, reaching out to pat Mahika's cheek affectionately yet again when she sets the cup down. It's a gesture she had missed dearly. "I'm fine, okay? No cold, no flu."
Mahika nods with a small smile, and squeezes her mother's wrist before going back to the kitchen island to help Dhruv.
There's peace in her chest that she hasn't felt in a while; a candle that was beginning to flicker burning brighter than ever. Maybe it shows in her smile or the ease with which she moves around the kitchen, but the grin and the little shoulder bump Dhruv throws her way tell her that other people can see it, too.
It's not long before they're engaged in catching up over breakfast, and when Mahika brings up some of the Dixit household arguments she was at the forefront of, Dhruv laughs so hard he almost chokes on his food.
The living room feels full for the first time in a while, and so does Mahika's heart.
She'd always liked living in this house but maybe, it'd finally start feeling like home again. Soon.
-
It's a few hours later, when Mahika is on her way back from the grocery store with Dhruv by her side that her phone rings, and the name of the person she's been waiting for a response from flashes on the screen.
Her eyes instinctively dart in Dhruv's direction, only to find him looking between her and her phone with an impish smile on his face. And then he slides his hand inside his pocket, pulls out his earbuds, and puts them in before showing Mahika his phone where A.R. Rahman is playing on full blast.
When he takes the bag she's holding and takes another step away from her for good measure, Mahika throws her head back and laughs.
In that moment, she is so, so incredibly fond of him that she could cry.
She wraps her arm around the crook of his elbow and pulls him back to his original spot beside her before they continue walking.
When she picks up the phone, she clears her throat and says, "Hello?" like she has never talked to Amoli before in her life.
"Hi," Amoli murmurs from the other end, and the smile in her voice makes pure, kindled yearning unfurl in Mahika's chest. "Is this not Mahika? Have I dialed the wrong number?"
"Mahika passed out earlier this morning waiting for her girlfriend to respond to her texts," Mahika tells her, voice serious, and there's a groan-laugh from Amoli's end, somewhat muffled at the end that makes Mahika wonder if she hid her face in her pillow like she does when she gets embarrassed. "This is her friend. You can leave a message if you want."
"Mahi..."
"Wait, let me get a notepad real quick â"
"Oh, my God, stop," Amoli whines, and Mahika can't help but laugh. "Stop being mean. Why are you mean to me when I'm away?"
"Because you can't make that face at me to make me stop."
"What face?"
"The one where you look like a duck." Mahika barely stifles a giggle at the offended gasp she gets in return. "And you start talking in pout."
"I do not have a duck face, thank you very much."
Mahika can already imagine the sullen look on Amoli's face. "I bet you have one right now."
"Can we not do this right now? I have something important to tell you and you wouldn't let me get to it," Amoli complains, and Mahika can hear the pout in her voice. "And did you just call me your girlfriend, by the way? Let's talk about that for a second, actually."
It's Mahika's turn to deal with the fluster now, because she had just let the word leave her mouth without a second thought. "Oh, I â wait. I didn't... it wasn't â" It takes her a second to realize that she had stopped walking, Dhruv turning to look at her with his eyebrows raised quizzically. "Oh, sorry," she mutters, even though he can't hear her and quickly steps beside him again.
"Sorry?"
"Oh, I was just... talking to Dhruv."
"Wait, you're with your friends?"
"Just him. He can't hear us, though."
There's a pause from Amoli's end. "I... have so many questions."
"You can't ask him any right now, Amo, I just told you he can't hear us."
The sigh Amoli lets out sends Mahika into a fit of giggles. She always tells herself that she won't pester Amoli the next time they talk, but she always ends up doing it anyway.
And because of it, by now, Mahika has gotten distracted about four times so Dhruv shifts all the bags to one hand and takes hold of Mahika's wrist with the other to guide her around like a five-year-old through the streets.
"You're terrible and so are your jokes."
"You want to try saying that again without a smile?"
Amoli breathes out another sigh that turns into a chuckle. "I would like to get to that thing I called to tell you before we discuss your newfound sense of humor, please."
"Hey! What do you mean by newfound?"
"Mahi." Amoli's tone takes on a whiny edge again.
"Sorry." Mahika disguises her laugh with a cough. "I'm sorry, go on."
"I know you're not sorry, but thank you. And you can't distract me from the fact that you called me your girlfriend just now, by the way. We'll get to that after I tell you what happened today."
Mahika presses her lips together to resist the urge to bite her tongue.
She's always been an overthinker by nature, but if Amoli is joking about it, then it must be okay, right?
"Will you let it go..."
"No," Amoli responds immediately, and Mahika clicks her tongue. "Anyway. I was at this café with my friends today, right? And â oh, wait, I'll... just tell you the details about how we got to it later. Because that's not the point."
"Hm?"
"The point is..." Amoli drawls, and Mahika can hear the smile in her voice again. "I told someone about us today."
It really is a good thing that Dhruv is dragging Mahika along with himself at this point because she would have definitely stopped again at those words.
"Amo... oh, my God?"
"Yeah," Amoli whispers, and then lets out a breathless laugh like her chest just couldn't contain the joy and had to let it out somehow. "Yeah. It felt so... cathartic? I didn't know it would feel like that."
Mahika thinks about the time she had come out to Naina, and feels the corners of her lips lift at the memory. It is cathartic. Liberating in a way nothing else could possibly be. And from where her and Amoli began, Mahika is well aware that this couldn't have been easy for Amoli.
And Mahika knows Naina seemed to be in support of their relationship since the beginning, but Mahika believes that her knowing is still very different from telling someone.
They've come a long way from, 'That was a mistake. I'm sorry' to 'I told someone about us today'.
"It was just one person, but â"
"There's no 'but' here, baby, that's amazing, I â" Mahika feels unexpectedly choked up and shakes her head like that would get rid of the downpour of emotions; the pride flurrying across her chest. "I'm so proud of you? You just came out to someone. That's a really big deal, okay?"
"Okay," Amoli breathes. "Yeah, okay, you're right. Thank you."
"So incredibly proud of you," Mahika repeats, wishing Amoli was here in front of her right now so Mahika could give her the biggest hug and tell her that to her face. "How're you feeling? What'd your friend say?"
"He said he was really happy for me." The words come out like Amoli can't quite believe them. "And he also said you were really lucky," she adds with a little chuckle, and Mahika joins in before she can help herself, exhilarated and dumbfounded in equal measure.
"I am," she murmurs with every ounce of sincerity she can muster at that moment, and distantly registers the sharp intake of breath she hears from Amoli's end. "I really am."
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a/n
please stop sending me dms/board posts/comments like 'when will you update' or 'where are you', 'you haven't posted in months' etc etc. because if i Could update, i would. these comments don't do anything aside from making me feel more exhausted than i already am. mostly they just put me off wattpad tbh.
you don't know what it's like to be on medication for uncountable things at once. i've requested this once, i'm doing it again: please don't make my life harder than it already is. i appreciate that so many people want to read the book and keep up with it, but i am doing my best even when it doesn't seem that way. please stop acting like i'm getting anything out of this. it's always people that never, ever vote or comment that always come to me with crap like this.
to the rest of you, thank you for reading. i adore you with my entire heart and i hope you have all been doing well.