Priyanka Story Part 2

I sat in the coffee shop across the street from the building in which I lived; not much of a building really, just a normal one with around 12 triple bedroom flats in Gurgaon; thinking of Aman and everything that I've said so far. Phew! That had been such a shocker for me back then. I was so hurt that I begged my parents for me to go and live with Uncle. I had not even gone to school the next day to give the stupid math test. So I finished my high school there, in New York, and then became a painter.

Thankfully, a good painter at that. Of course, it had something to do with a big, huge chunk of luck. I had just given one of my paintings for a random exhibition where this old man bought it for, believe it or not, 500,000$. AMERICAN dollars! I swear; that is just UNREAL! And I hadn't even asked for that much. The old man told me that the girl in the painting looked just like his dead daughter, and that I looked a lot like his daughter too; and so he spent HALF of his ENTIRE fortune on that painting.

I know, it's like God just showered money on me like that. Thank you Miss. Dead Daughter. Thanks a lot for looking like me. Because that money, even though half of it went to the exhibition people, was not the end of it. News channels covered the story, and people liked my paintings. And there you go, from Pauper to Princess...just not Princess Mia apparently.

What did I do with all of that money? I bought a penthouse and rented it out. Now I earn because if THAT like I have a regular job. And of course, there was the occasional painting here and there.

Yeah, life turned out pretty much okay for me. A penthouse in New York, a nice flat in Gurgaon and a nice set of friends, including Manasi who lived in NOIDA and was a Bollywood stylist, Suman who was Manasi's assistant (she loved Manasi too much to leave her) and married to an actor. Yeah, their lives were on the glamorous side too. And of course, my sweet next door neighbour, Radhika.

It really had been quiet some time since that Aman phase. I was now 27. That would make it 13 years. Whoa! That is a LONG time.

And all right, even though my life may seem all so great, it wasn’t like that. No, it wasn’t like that at all. That was because once you're above 25 and a girl, an INDIAN GIRL, your patents start nagging you to get married. To which I had to say EW!!!!!!!!

This was one of the basic reasons for me to live away from them. Easier.

On top of that, I was the only one who did not have a boyfriend. Hey, I did not want to get married, but what was so wrong with a boyfriend?

Also, the fact that I did not have a boyfriend sort of disturbed me when I went out with Suman and Shiv, her husband, the famous theatre actor (What did you think when I said actor? Shahrukh Khan? We did not get THAT lucky); and Manasi and Aditya (who kept making out - EW!!!!). I was always the lonely one there. And I was not the 'pick a guy at the disco' types. I never trusted any person who would get himself drunk. And EVERYONE got themselves drunk at the disco.

So yeah, that's about the summary of my after-Aman phase. Oh and there had been a random boyfriend in the 11th. After two months, both of us had decided that we were better off just friends.

"Excuse-me?" I was shaken from my thoughts by a small 10 year old "is this seat empty?" the kid asked me, pointing at the seat opposite to mine. I said that it was and the kid dragged it to where his father was sitting with his mother. I could not help but smile. It was kind of cute how the kid dragged the chair to the other table and how the whole family was sitting together and eating muffins and having milkshakes.

Note to self: Must not mention this little kid incident to mom or she will say "Don’t you want a little family like that if your own sweety?"

Of course not! Who wants the extra luggage?

I paid the bill and walked back home wondering which DVD I was going to watch that night. It was Saturday night and Manasi and Suman were out of town.

I reached back home, looked through the DVDs, didn't find anything interesting, put up a notice on the fridge saying 'go to library' and retired to the couch with one of Radhika's books I had borrowed. It had been 3:00 pm when I started and I finished it by 7:00 pm. Not knowing what to do next, and feeling too lazy to finish the painting due for next month's exhibition; I decided I might as well visit Radhika and return her books.

So I went around the whole house and found about 7 of her books I had not returned yet. This was why I loved Radhika. She knew I would return her books someday.

I went up to her door, with a pile of books in my arms, and rang the bell - which was when I realized that it was Saturday night and that she was not coming back until 8:00 in the night because she worked at Microsoft and she was always busy on Saturday nights.

Shit! I always do this! Now I was going to have to apologize to her relative who had come home. Oh GOD!!!

I was expecting some grandma or some pot-bellied uncle to open the door. But I was disappointed. Actually, not disappointed, just SHOCKED OUT OF MY WITS. Because the person who had opened the door had been someone I had seen before. And the first time I had seen him was 13 years ago in the park. I had been listening to a romantic song when he had smiled at me and I had smiled back at him. He was a very, very handsome man who had really dark brown eyes and black messy hair that slightly fell over his eyes. His name was Aman Sharma, my 9th standard math teacher's son who I found kissing my senior Ashita.

"May I help you?" he said. He could not see me because my face was hidden behind the pile of books. Okay, fine. He could not see me because before he could, I HID my face behind the pile of books.

BUT WHAT WAS HE DOING HERE????!!!

"Is Radhika there?" I asked him, miraculously in control of my mouth which had been open since the moment I saw him.

"She's not home yet. She'll be here in half an hour."

I had learnt something in these 13 years and so I was not going to babble on about how it would take Radhika more than an hour to reach.

So like a sensible person, I said "I know. Could you please give these to her?" after which I realized that I should not have said "I know".

Why?????!!!!!!!!!!! Why can't my brains WORK for a change?

And the part about me becoming lucky all of a sudden? Yeah, CANCEL THAT!

I handed Aman the books with my head bent and as soon as I thought he had control of the books, I turned around and attempted to run back to the safety of my home SWEET home. Sadly, all the books fell...and so did my bracelet. I did not turn around immediately. I heard Aman bend and pick up my bracelet first, ever the gentleman that he was, and say "Excuse me? This yours?" I took the bracelet from him, still facing my back to him.

Once the bracelet was in my hand, he bent down to pick up the books. I took one step towards my door when he suddenly said "Priyanka?"

I stopped dead. "Is that your name?" he asked me. I did not say anything realizing the fact that he might have seen it on my bracelet. "That was my friend's name. It's quiet a common name isn’t it?" he said conversationally. Did he not get that I was not in the mood for conversation? But what was I supposed to do? And my stupid heart kept slamming against my chest. In such a situation all I could do was nod.

Thankfully he didn't say anything after that. I ran back in and locked the foot behind me, breathing heavily. HOW DID HE GET HERE??

I dropped to the ground, and leaned against the door, my face buried in my palms. My déjà vu. I should have known. I should have known that this was going to happen. But this was OUTRAGEOUS! I mean, RIGHT NEXT DOOR??! I had not seen him for 13 years and all of a sudden, he lives RIGHT NEXT DOOR?

What if I went out to get the newspaper the next morning and he was there? He would know that it had been ME! What would I tell him? Shit! I should have never ignored him. Now I would have to tell him WHY I ignored him.

And he even remembers me!!!!!! This fact, to my utter annoyance made my stomach do sort of a somersault. I was sure that I was over him, so this thing with my stomach had to mean that I was having an upset stomach. But all I had was half a pizza and a cold coffee. I guessed that there might have been something wrong with the pizza.

Because I was completely and fully over him. I mean, I was only 14 then. Millions of girls have crushes at that age. And everyone forgets them. It was just a phase. Just a stupid phase. And a phase that I had passed a LONG time ago. A very very long time ago.

BUT WHY DID HE HAVE TO LIVE NEXT FREAKING DOOR???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I needed help. Desperate help. I got up and ran to the phone. I picked the receiver up and dilled Suman's cell number.

S: Hi PK.
P: Is Manasi there?

I was hyperventilating over the freaking phone! Oh God!

S: Er yeah...why?
P: You guys alone?
S: Yeah, we're at the hotel.

I heard Manasi's voice from the back. "What happened to her this time?"

Sometimes I swear I could throttle her to death.

P: Just put me on the speaker phone and make sure no one else is around.
M: What up PK?
S: What happened?
P: He's here.

I knew that I was over reacting; and being melodramatic. But I could not bother to calm myself down at that moment.

M: Congratulations! WHO PK?
It was evident that Manasi was getting pretty annoyed.

P: Aman.
M: Who Aman?
S: PK, do you mean...
P: Aman Sharma. Sujhata's son. He's the relative who had come to live with Radhika. I had no idea that she could have possibly been related to Aman freaking Sharma. What am I supposed to do now?
S: Did you meet him? What did he say?

I told them about it and this was how Manasi replied.

M: You are such an ass!
And then she started laughing. What kind of a friend was she anyway?
S: You completely ignored him? You should have at least said hi or something!
P: Yeah. So that we could have talked about the good old times and how perfect he was with Ashita. Oh, and what a great kisser she was. No thank you!
Manasi was laughing harder than ever now.
S: Come on, it wasn’t so bad...
P: Of course it was Suman! I saw him KISSING her. Okay?
M: Whoa whoa whoa!
She had stopped laughing.
M: You can't blame him. It wasn’t like he had promised you anything. It was you who had gone crazy over him and assumed that he liked you back.
P: I did not assume that he liked me back!
M: Either way, it's not his fault. And you can't ignore him forever. It was more than 10 years ago. PK, you need to chill. Just go, grab a coke and switch that TV of yours on. Princess Diaries is on. Watch it and go to sleep. All right?
P: You know perfectly well that I hate watching it...
S: Really? Manasi, which movie had PK here been watching last Sunday?
M: I don't know Suman; wasn’t it something like Princess Party...or was it Diaries of Princesses? Oh wait, it was Princess Diaries!
P: Very funny! Go ahead. Laugh at me. But I swear, I'll get back at you guys for this.
S: What did we do PK? Is it our fault that you can't decide whether you like a book or not?
M: Seriously, you've got to stop letting Aman affect your love for Mia or Michael. Now if you will excuse us, we have to catch up with some sleep. I and my assistant have important work tomorrow at 5:30 in the morning unlike some people who are going to wake up at 11:00.

Okay; so that hardly helped the matter. But they had been right. I should just go and relax. So I did exactly what Manasi had suggested.

As I was sipping at the glass of orange juice (I was out of coke), I suddenly choked on it. That was because I suddenly remembered that I had invited Radhika and her relative home for dinner on Sunday night when I had heard that she was having someone over. Somehow, the juice was no longer as tangy as before. I groaned. Why had I decided to be a nice neighbour? I mean, I was the worst neighbour ever, but the one time that I decide to be a nice one, there you go!

The phone started ringing, waking me up from my daze. I reluctantly picked it up. It was Radhika. Talk of the devil!

R: Hi Priyanka, it's me.
P: Oh, hi!
R: I just called to remind you that I'm having dinner at your place tomorrow night. I know that you're a completely hopeless host, and so I'm going to be nice to you and help you out a little. But yeah, I called to wish you best of luck.
P: Thanks. I needed that.

She had no idea HOW MUCH. A lot more than she thought, definitely.

R: What time do you want us to come?
P: Will 8 be okay? We can have dinner at 9:00 then.

We talked some more after that and then she hung up. I just sunk into my couch lower and lower and lower.
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The next day, Sunday, I had spread myself out onto the living room floor. I was painting. However, it was hard to understand what exactly I was painting - the canvas or myself. I had paint marks all over my face. As I was half way through a strike the doorbell rang. I got to my feet and walked to the door, cursing under my breath whoever it was who had rung the bell.

I opened the door when I noticed that I had a paint spot on my shirt. I swore out loud and started rubbing the spot on my shirt. Why was I so bloody careless?

"Priyanka?!" The bloody idiot who had rung the bell said my name. God!

"Yes, that is me." I said, still rubbing the bright red paint.

"Priyanka!" he said again. God, where had this moron left his bloody brains?

"Yes?" I said annoyed, looking up. The moment I did though, my fingers released the stained end of my shirt. That bloody idiot turned out to be Aman Sharma. Holy mother of God, what did I ever do to you?

"Priyanka!" he said for the third time. I just stared at him like a statue. "Oh my God. It's you!"

I nodded dumbly. Oh man. Why do I have the most rotten luck ever? Why???!!

"It's me. Aman? Remember? From school? Salsa classes?" How could I forget? How could he think I could forget? I nodded dumbly again.

"Oh my God! Where have you BEEN?" As excited as he sounded, I bet I looked as NOT excited. I know because he waved his palm in front of my face when I did not reply and said "Hello?"

I smiled, or forcefully curved my lips, at him and said "yeah...I had left pretty soon after the show..."

He looked ecstatic. And why would he not be? After all, for him, meeting me was basically just a random coincidence. And normal human beings like coincidences like meeting your old friends out of the blue. Was it his fault that for me, meeting him was not a random coincidence with a friend, but a random coincidence with a first crush? And sadly, people, or at least people like me, are not exactly ecstatic in such situations.

"I can't believe that it's actually you. Where had you gone?" he asked me.

I had no choice but to reply to him. "I had gone New York. I lived there with my uncle..."

There was an uneasy silence. I hated uneasy silences. And I hated this one particularly even more than the others.

Aman broke the silence by saying "You know, it's polite to call someone in if they're standing outside your door...” one end of his mouth curled up, making my stomach feel weird again. I tried very hard not to groan at that. And this time, it wasn’t only because of his smile either. It was the fact that he had said exactly what he had said when he had come to my window for the first time.

"Hello? Are you there Priyanka?"

I shook my head. "That's exactly what you said when you had first come to my window..."

"Really?" he said, raising an eyebrow, "So you DO remember. I was afraid you had forgotten."

Yeah right. I would forget him! There was no chance in hell that I was going to forget HIM. I know because I had tried very hard. Very very hard. Sadly, to no avail.

"Er...why don't you come in...?” I said, stepping aside for him to come in. He started laughing to himself, probably at a personal joke.

"What?" I asked him, puzzled.

He started laughing even more. "WHAT?"

"Nothing" he said shaking his head as he came in. He was still laughing though.

"Is it my face?" I asked him, forgetting how much I didn’t want to talk to him, out of curiosity of course. I told you, I was completely over him.

"No, no," he said as I shut the door, "it's just...........can I ask you something?"

"What?" What was he going to ask me, exactly? Why I left? Or why I ignored him last night? Or was he going to ask me why I looked so weird when he rang the doorbell?

"Do you always visit people when they're not home?"

"What?!"
Huh?

"Remember you had come to meet mom and I think you knew that she wasn’t at home. And yesterday, you asked for Radhika...?"

I almost sighed with relief. "Oh, THAT. I sort of remembered that Radhika works late on Saturdays only AFTER I rang the bell...and about your mom too"
He looked amused.

I asked him to sit down and I attempted to move the painting from the room when he asked me if I had painted that.

"No Aman, my cat was painting ME and it spilt have some paint on the canvas! Of course I was painting that. I'm a painter."

"Wow, that's nice. So you get to sit at home all day while we normal people struggle in offices?"

"Hey!" I said defensively, "painting is a full time job. And sometimes, they even invite you to teach others how to paint. And trust me, some of those students are not exactly very nice to you when you tell them that they need to paint with their heart and not move their hands like a robot. Some of them might actually threaten to sue you."

"Someone threatened to SUE you?" he looked at me incredulously. I nodded back. "I remember someone tried to sue me once. But I got myself out of it. That's the benefit of being a good CA."

"You're a CA?" he nodded. "Wow," I said, "you must be a busy man!"

"Nah," he said, "I have my own company. So I make the others do all the work. I used to work in Bombay first, but then I opened an office here, in Gurgaon."

"So that's why you live with Radhika?"

"I don't live with Radhika! I'm here for a week or so. That's all. I live nearby. I'm renovating it and I didn't have any other place to go. So I thought I'd come to Riddy's."

"Riddy?"

"Oh, we used to call Radhika Riddy when we were kids. So now everyone in my family calls her that."

We sat down and talked. Actually, HE talked and I listened. He had apparently studied a lot and become a Chartered Accountant. Helped a lot of hot shot businessmen with their money, a few of whom I knew because they bought my paintings. And trust me; you're better off not knowing them. They almost killed me, they were so freaking boring.

Mostly during his talking and my listening, I kept thinking about Ashita. Had he married her? Or did he marry someone else? Or was he even married at all. I reckoned that he probably was by now because I was apparently the only one who found the idea of marriage repulsive. But he kept talking about his job and the weird people he had to work with.

The door suddenly flew open and in came Radhika. "There you are!" she shouted. She sounded pretty pissed off. "I thought you were helping me with the vegetables! I send you to ask for one freaking carrot, and you ditch me!" she bellowed at Aman. I looked from her to Aman who was cursing under his breath.

"I am so, so sorry!" he said. "You know what? I'll make lunch. You don't need to help. All right? I completely forgot."

"You cook?" I could not help but ask.

Radhika looked at me like she noticed me for the first time, sitting on the couch next to her cousin.

"Oh hi Priyanka. I see you have met my cousin Aman. Now if you will excuse us, he has to cook lunch for me." She gave Aman her famous evil glare and he for one did look extremely sorry. Then his face brightened up all of a sudden. He turned toward me and said "Priyanka, why don't you join us? You know, I AM a killer of a cook, if I say so myself."

I did not know what to do. On one side, I did not want to get involved any further with him, but on the other side, a very big side, I wanted to see how much of a killer cook he really was. What? I was just curious. Okay? Is that so wrong? Plus I figured that he was probably not married because he would not have been living with his cousin then. And Radhika had just mentioned ONE relative living with her. So it was not like his wife was living with them. Then again, he could have been engaged. Probably that was why he was renovating his place. And probably all the new stuff in his house had been selected by his to be. Not that it actually mattered.

Oh man; I really am pathetic!

Sadly, I had no choice on the matter of my tasting Aman's food because Radhika said "PK, you have to come. I'm not letting him KILL me with his Killer cooking alone. I'll take you to hell with me."

And so it happened that I was sitting in Radhika's living room at 1:30 pm on an empty stomach giving Radhika company by peeping into the kitchen with her every two minutes. And the one thing that I noticed was that Aman was bloody luckier than I was because he somehow managed to look bloody great in everything he wore. Which means that, yes, he looked awesome in an apron. And I have never, NEVER seen anyone who looks good in an apron. How foes he do it anyway?

But whatever he does to his looks, he does equally well to his cooking skills. He was not lying when he said that he was a killer cook. Because I went straight to heaven when I tasted his dal makhani.

Why does he have to be so darn PERFECT?!
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Dinner that night was fine, I guess. Since I'm the worst cook that ever lived, I ordered food from a restaurant.

After dinner, while we were having dessert, chocolate ice-cream, I got a call from mom. I had just put a huge spoon of ice-cream into my mouth and signaled Radhika to pick the phone up. The lazy git asked Aman to pick it up. So he picked it up.

A: Hello?...Yes, she is here. Could you hold for a moment? Who is this?...oh, here she is...

I had finished gulping the scoop of ice-cream down by then. Aman handed me the phone whispering to me that I'd was my mom. My hand froze for a moment mid-way and my eyes widened. Aman thrust the phone into my outstretched hand.

P: H-h-hello?
M: Priyanka beta, who was that?
P: Who mom?

I knew who she was talking about. But I was hoping beyond hope that she was not going to say what I knew she was going to say.

M: The boy who picked the phone up.

It had not taken me any déjà vu to have known that she would say this. And she did say it. I hate my luck.

P: Er...that was Radhika's cousin mom. Why did you call?
M: Is he married?
P: Mom!
M: What? I'm just asking! Radhika was telling me that day that her cousin was coming to live with her. So I figured that he was probably not married. Tell me, how is he though?
P: Mom! If you don't shut up about this then I'm hanging up.
M: Okay, okay. I just called to say that Ranveer is coming to Delhi, and he wants to meet you.
P: Ranveer?
M: You don't know Ranveer? You used to play with him a lot when you were little. You used to call him Raccoon. Remember now?
P: Oh my God mom, please don't tell me that you're... What are you thinking of exactly?
M: Goodness Priyanka! I don’t always think of your marriage. I told you because he's a family friend. And he's already engaged. Or he has a girlfriend. Something like that.
P: Well, it LOOKS like you think of my marriage all the time! You can't blame me if I think that you might grab an innocent person off the street and tie him up with me.
M: Priyanka, I had given up a long time ago.
P: Okay, mom. I have to go now. Bye.
M: Wait, I called to tell you that you're coming home to meet them -Ranveer and Ashu aunty on Wednesday night.
P: Okay mom. Bye.

I hung up and looked up to see the two cousins trying very hard not to laugh.

"Did your mom think Aman was your boyfriend?" Radhika asked sounding very amused.

I made a face and said "can we just please not talk about this?"

"You know Aman," Radhika said, turning to Aman, "Pooja aunty wants Priyanka to get married. And Priyanka here hated the idea. You should watch them have thief arguments. It's hilarious."

He looked at me incredulously, and said "Really?! I thought that you loved it. Weren't you crazy romantic? You made me read that stupid vampire love story that night."

I rolled my eyes. "God, just because I read romance does not mean that I believe it actually exists. This stuff looks good in books and movies. I mean it looks great. But it just doesn't happen in real life. All of these couples? They just THINK they 'love' each other. But it's just because of a few hormones here and there that wear out later; and then they break up."

"Hormones?" he looked at me in this weird way.

"I read about that in a romantic novel too, I admit," I said, "and the guy who says that falls in love too. But I really don’t believe it exists. I know because I've seen it happen."

"REALLY?" he said again, "were you not the girl who told ME that I was unromantic that night?"

Before I could say anything, Radhika broke in. "Which night? When did the two of you meet?"

"Oh," Aman said, "I met Priyanka around....13 years ago?" he asked me. I shrugged back, even though I knew perfectly well that he was right. Radhika, on the other hand looked confused.

"You guys KNOW each other?!"

"Of course," Aman said, "What did you think I was doing here in the morning then?"

"I don’t know!" Radhika said shrugging and screaming at the same time. She was the only one I knew who could do that. "I had thought that you were flirting with my neighbour."

I almost choked on my spoon of ice-cream.

"Radhika," I said, coughing, "are you mad?"

"What?" Radhika said, defensively, "Is it my fault that Aman here is a big flirt?"

"I am not a flirt!" Aman protested.

"You are too!" Radhika said, pointing an accusing finger in his direction.

"No I'm not!" Aman said, and turned to look at me for support.

"Aman, I agree with Radhika" I said.

"When did YOU see me flirt?" he asked me with crossed arms.

"Lets see..." I really wanted to say something like 'Remember Ashita?' but I couldn’t because Radhika's cell rang at that time, and she said that there had been an emergency at the office; and she refused to use the metro like she normally did because "What is the point of having a cousin who can't drop you?" And so Aman had to drop her to her office and they left.
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On Tuesday evening, Aman rang the bell. I had been watching a movie then, an old, boring English one at that. Even so, I got really annoyed when I heard the bell ring.

"Can I borrow your apron please?" That was what he threw at me as soon as I opened the door.

"What?!" and that was how I reacted.

"I said could I borrow an apron please? I kind burnt Radhika's..."

My eyebrows shot up. "You burnt an apron? How did you manage THAT?"
He looked a little embarrassed and then said "I am not exactly a very neat cook and I am very bad at making vegetables...and I er sort of didn't see properly while I was Reading a recipe, and the apron sort of slipped into the fire..."

I shook my head. Then I burst into fits of laughter. "You really don’t have to make this worse for me, you know."

"Sorry," I said, not able to stop laughing.

"God!" he said, "just get me an apron already."

I stopped laughing, even though I was still highly amused and told him that I didn't have one.

"What are you doing?" I'd asked me.

"Why?"

"If you're not doing anything, come with me. I'm going to have to buy a new one."

"You can cook without one Aman. You don’t have to show off so much."

"I told you Priyanka, you're bad at jokes. So please don’t try. Besides, I told you that I'm not exactly a neat cook. The washing machine is going to break down if I keep throwing in new clothes thrice a day."

I turner around to give the TV a last look and then said "Fine; let me just get my shoes. Come in."

He stepped in as I went inside to grab the only pair of shoes I actually wore, and they were sports shoes. I did own the girlie sandals and also a pair of heels. But I had user those precisely once at a random party I was forced to go to.

When I came out, I saw Aman fiddling with the remote. He was watching the stupid movie, and rewinding it to one of the most boring scenes in the history of cinema.

"I love this movie." he said when I came and stood next to him.

"You have a VERY bad choice. Now are we leaving or what?"

He did not seem like he felt like he wanted to leave the couch, or that movie, but he did get up, frowning.

We went to the departmental store nearby and bought the apron. Even though we did have an argument on which one was better. I had liked a nice blue checked one, and he had liked an ugly green one. Finally we settled down on a blue and green checked one and bought it.

While we were walking back home, I noticed a really pretty poster with a black background and pink leaves, the punk like leaves, not the pretty-pink leaves. When I commented on how nice, Aman read out what was written on the poster. Apparently, this club nearby was having DJ nights on Saturdays and Sundays by some famous DJ. I had never heard of him before, and neither had Aman. What we were doing was laughing at the DJ's name. He was called DJ G.I.Jo-o-o.

We reached home. I was about to close the door when Aman stopped me. "Priyanka?"

"What?"

"Are you going to Delhi, back home tomorrow?"

"Uh-huh. Why?"

"How?"

"I guess Dad will come and pick me up."

"You want me to drop you?"

I was a little taken aback by his offer. "Why?"

"I thought I'd pay a visit to mom. I'll bring you back."

"Er...I don’t think that is a very great idea because, you know how my mom is. If she sees you, she will first drag you in and then feed you till you're dead. And that, she will do because she will be convinced that you are my boyfriend. And I won't hear the end of that; ever."

"I'll drop you at the end of the street then?"

"Tell me why you're so desperate to drop me there?"

"Don’t you know? I'm planning to kidnap you on the way!"

"Very funny."

"Nah, I'm just saving petrol. Have you seen how much our future generation needs it?"

"Yeah, yeah. That's great. Fine. Drop me then. But I sincerely hope that you're not doing this to meet up with your girlfriend."

"Girlfriend?" He looked confused.

I thought about reminding him about his girlfriend, the one he had told me about when we had met in detention, but thought better of it.

"Nothing. Good night."
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We reached my old street at 7:45pm. I waved goodbye to Aman, who drove a nice Chevrolet Avio (thankfully the black one, not the orange one).

I tried the door, and it was open. I walked in to see people sitting in the living room. There were Mom, Dad, a lady who seemed vaguely familiar and one hell of a hot guy. Normally, I don’t use the term hot, somehow, I feel repulsed by the word. But thus guy sitting there on my parents' sofa, talking about something and smiling good naturedly; could be called nothing BUT hot. And, I know that this might sound weird, but if given a choice, I would have asked thus guy to get into acting. Even if every movie he did sucked to the core, I knew that the producers would make a lot of money just because of the millions of girls who would watch the stinking movie, just to watch him.

Hey, I told you it might sound weird to you. I really can't help that I felt that way because hey ho, he was seriously
H. O. T.

Oh my God, he was Ranveer. The guy I used to call raccoon was THIS hot? How did that happen? I weighed my chances with him, right there at the doorway. He was much too out of reach for me, but then again, he was an old friend. Did Aman's presence somehow make me meet absolutely stunning guys out of the blue? It looked like that. Because, last time, it had been David; who was my partner at salsa; and now it was Ranveer, a childhood friend. Sadly, Aman's presence only made me meet good looking guys, not get them. Like David had been completely out of reach, and this guy here happened to be engaged, or committed. Oh well, it had been a good thing too. I had seen too many unhappy couples to actually want one so desperately, which was why I did not run in and hug him like I could have. Okay, that would have probably been weird, but what was wrong in fantasizing?

My mother suddenly noticed me standing there, gawking at Ranveer; hopefully just me standing there and not gawking at him.

"Priyanka!" she shrieked in her usual enthusiastic way. She got up, came to me and wrapped me up in a tight hug. And probably I'm too old for it, but I still love it when mom hugs me.

"Hi mom," I said once she released me, my eyes still on Ranveer. Ha! There you go; I was NOT crushing on Aman again. See? Who Aman? What Aman? Where Aman? Oh wait, had Aman drove off already? Or was he still sticking around at the end of the street?
"Just a sec mom," I excused myself and ran out the door. I felt mom's gaze on my back as I jogged to the end of the footpath. I turned around the corner where Aman had dropped me and saw nothing there. He had left. I felt a slight, very slight sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I turned around to retrace my path back home when BAM! I collided with a White wall with blue stripes.

"Whoa, whoa. Be careful." I heard Aman say.

"Hi," I said back looking at the ground, trying to recover from the collision, "What are you still doing here?"

"I was just parking the car when I saw you walking out of the house. I thought you wanted to see me."

"What makes you think that I wanted to see you?" I asked him, looking at his face now. Ouch. My stomach started doing weird things again. I had hardly had any lunch. So I guessed it must have been my empty stomach begging for some food.

"Well Priyanka, you DID come and stand here, exactly where I dropped you."

"I...had dropped my cell phone here... I think." then I pretended to look for it in my bag; I don’t carry a purse because it makes me feel much too feminine for my like. Not that I'm a tomboy. Just that purses irk me. "Ah, here it is. Silly me!" I flashed my cell phone in front of his eyes and put it back, thinking how I could not have been more obvious. But Aman looked convinced, or may be not. Does raising their eyebrows up and nodding once mean that someone is convinced? I'm guessing not.

Sigh.

"Anyway, bye." I tried to escape when Aman stopped me.

"By the way, when are you planning to go back?" I. Shrugged and said that it depended on when my mom would let me, and that there was a possibility that she might ask me to spend the night. He looked thoughtful for a moment and then I suggested that he could leave whenever he wanted and I would drive back home in Mom's car because she hardly used it.

"You know what," he said, "just call me when you're leaving. You have my number, right? And if you're staying the night, tell me. I'll pick you up tomorrow."

"No, it's okay. I'm not such a bad driver." I was lying again. I am a horrible driver. But I guessed that the traffic might be less in the night time; "besides," I added, "You don't need to come all the way here."

"I won't." he said matter-of-factly. "I'll stay."

"Where?" I asked like a total idiot.

"You know, my parents live here?"

"Oh, sorry. But seriously, you don't have to do this..." I wondered why he was being so nice to me.

"Actually," he said, "could you do me a favour? Do you mind staying over? Because then I'll be able to pick you up at around 11:30 tomorrow morning. I was thinking of meeting this client of mine. This ways, you can spend more time with your parents, and you don't need to take innocent lives with your driving. I know how you drive. Radhika told me about the time you almost killed her."

Oh, so he wasn't going to stay JUST because of me. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed because it would have been sort of nice to have someone do so much for you. That ways, you could fantasize about them being in love with you. Oh my God, I did not just say that.

"Yeah, okay. Bye and thanks" I walked back home to be greeted by a suspicious looking mother, a curious father, a smiling aunty and a smiling hot guy.

"What happened?" my father asked my.

"Nothing," I said, "I left my cell phone in the car."

"Your friend's car?" mom asked. When I nodded, she asked me who this friend of mine exactly was. But before I could answer dad impatiently said. "It was her neighbour Pooja. Now let her at least say hello to Ashu and Ranveer."

That was why I loved dad. He always saved my ass. He knew that it had been Aman, Radhika's cousin and my math teacher's son. And he also knew that it was not going to be too good for me if mom got to know that a boy had dropped me. You see, Dad had given up on my marriage the day I had enough to buy myself my own house in Gurgaon. I knew that he was probably scheming something in his own mind. But I would not know that until the end...which I was not sure about either. All I knew was that my guess was on "She will find someone for herself eventually" and Dad has never been good at figuring me our. For example he had never, ever fathomed that I would be a painter, and there you have it.

Meanwhile, I was saying hello to Ashu aunty. The "How are you" s and the "You've grown so thin" s followed. The "I saw you when you were so small" s were there too.

And then finally! "Hi" from Mr. hot. I said hi back and all of us sat down for the usual boring talks, which mostly involved mom, dad and ASHU AUNTY(It sounded so weird, I mean the words Ashu Aunty) discussing in detail about politics. I was so bored that I could feel my eyelids dropping.

Suddenly mom said, "Why don't you take Ranveer to your room Priyanka? Let us old people not bore you." I stared at her for a moment, I was so taken aback. She always did that, asked me to take the people of my age to my room. So I wasn't too sure she had done that to make me want to marry Ranveer. But you never knew with mom.

Not knowing what to do, I stood up and started walking to my room, hoping that he would follow me without ne having to be nice to him or call him. Honestly, I may have painting skills, but all of that is compensated on my people skills, of which, I have none. That was probably why Manasi called me anti-social. Thankfully Ranveer did follow me as I walked to my room. Once we were in I carefully closed the door. Carefully, because I did not want him to get any wrong ideas.

"So..." I said awkwardly, "hi."

"Hi," he said back. "I heard you're a painter?"

"You heard right" I said signaling him to sit down on the bed. He sat down and then we talked at length about my exhibitions and the sort of paintings I did. After that we talked about him. He was an engineer, an IIT graduate (Why am I surrounded by brilliant people anyway?) and worked in IBM in Bombay for 1, 00,000 a month, around what I got for the penthouse I had rented out in New York. He loved parties, and had a liking towards vodka. When I asked him about his fiancé, this was what he had said "Can you keep a secret?"

I said that I could, a little puzzle. Was he gay or something?

"I'm not engaged." Okay, wow. "I kind of lied to everyone that I was; so that they would get off my back about getting married to someone."
Okay, now I liked him.

"I know what you mean," I said, "Why else do you think I live so far away from my parents?"

We then talked about what a pain parents could be sometimes...after which we ran out of conversation. Awkward silence. I hate awkward silences!

"So..."I tried to create a conversation, "Do you go to discos?" I know, how random could I get? But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I was desperate to finish the stupid silence. I thought of the disco from the poster Aman and I had been laughing at the other day.

His face suddenly brightened up and he said "Oh I love them. Do you go?"

"Er...not really. I'm not exactly a party animal, so to speak." I was not lying either. I hated parties and clubs. Therefore, unlike other painters that I knew I was rarely found 'Shaking my booty'; instead I spent all day just painting.

He looked like I ought to not live. "You know what. It is my responsibility now to show you around the most amazing clubs around Delhi. In fact, I'm free on Saturday night. We could go then. What say?"

Even though I truly thought that it was a bad idea, I said "Sure." like the total idiot that I was. And I have no idea why. Was it his hotness? Or was it because just then I thought I saw, just a slight glimpse of, Aman? As Ranveer was saying all of that, something shiny had caught my eye and I looked out the window. Sadly, after I agreed to let Ranveer show me around discos, I realized that the shine had not been Aman's watch as I had imagined. It had been a car passing by. I looked back at Ranveer. He was talking about some hotels and clubs he had been to. I was hardly interested. I had been to one of the clubs he mentioned though. You see, even though I hated clubs, I was forced to go to a few. I had been bored out of my bones. And I was not going to go around dancing with the creeps there, thank you.

But whatever it was, I was stuck with it. And there was nothing I could do I guessed. Besides, thus had been the first time someone so good-looking had asked me to go out with them. I figured going with Ranveer would not be too bad. And he was an IIT graduate. He could be trusted. That was what I had thought then.
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Ranveer and Ashu aunty left at around 11:30 pm and I had retired to bed. I had been so exhausted with the long drive from Gurgaon that I actually fell asleep.

Suddenly I heard my phone ring. I groaned in my sleep and fumble through the stuff on the bed-side table. Actually, my hand fumbled through the stuff, I was dug deep in the quilts I had thrown onto myself in the middle if the night instead of switching the ac off.

My hand found the cell phone and slapped it into my ear. The stupid thing was still ringing. What was wrong with the dumb phone? After cursing the phone company I belatedly realized that I was supposed to press the receive button. I groaned again and pressed the button.

"What?" boy was I so not an early morning person.

"Priyanka? This is Aman? Are you still sleeping?!"

Not any more! He sounded pretty astonished. But not as astonished as I was. I struggled to push the mountain of blankets off me and looked at the wall clock. It was 11:30 am. Oh shit!

"Er...no. No, I'm awake. Er...I'll be ready in a minute. Don’t wait for me. I'll come to your place. I know where it is."

"Er, sure. I'm here. Take your time, all right?"

"Yeah. Bye."

"Bye."

"Oh wait. Thanks."

"Huh? What did I do now?"

I laughed. "Thanks for driving me home, nut case."

"As I said," he laughed back, "I'm just saving lives."

I them hung up, took a quick shower and got dressed. Mom was a little upset that I was leaving so soon; but when I pointed out to her that I was going to leave last night and that I only stayed back because my friend was dropping me only in the morning, she stopped being upset. Instead, she started being annoying. "Who is this friend of yours anyway?" she asked.

I gave in to her and told her that it was Aman, my 9th grade math teacher's son. You should have seen the expression on her face. She was trying very hard to hide her delight and failing miserably.

I said goodbye and walked to Sujhata ma'am's place. When I rang the bell I realized that this was Sujhata ma'am's house. I mean, I had already known that it was her house, but it never struck me that she was going to be there, and that there was a possibility that she was probably going to open the door. And the fact that if she opens the door, I would have to say hello. Because you can not ignore someone you already know. And you can not just walk in on an old teacher and be all "Hey, is your son there? He's dropping me home." either.

Unfortunately, it was Sujhata who had owned the door. But before I could say anything, she spoke. "Priyanka, how nice to see you."

I was a little taken aback of course, but thankfully not enough to lose my voice. "I'm fine ma'am..."

"So I heard you've become a painter now. I spoke to your mother the other day, and she told me that you sold a painting for a lot of money"

My face was burning with embarrassment, and disbelief. Embarrassment because of Mom. Why dies she always have to do such things? And disbelief because, for once, Sujhata was being nice to me. And she was not even giving me detention; which would have been way nicer than her tests, trust me.

"You live next to Radhika?"

"Yes ma'am... She's my neighbour, and a friend. I had no idea that she was related to you."

"Small world, isn’t it? Oh there's Aman..."

Thankfully Aman arrived at the door just then, playing with his keys. "Hi" he said to me.

"Hi" I said back even though that was not what I had WANTED to say. What I had wanted to say was "Can we please get the hell out of here so I don't have to speak to my math teacher who suddenly converted from spawn of the devil to angle?"

"Bye mom," he said to Sujhata and walked out. I just stood there and watched him walk to the car. What was I supposed to do now? Say goodbye? Or wait for her to say goodbye? Or wait for Aman to drag me to the car?

Thankfully, she said "Okay then, see you beta..." which is just another way of saying "Get out of here before I get too tired of standing at my door". Oh well, either way, she was doing ME a favour.

I waved goodbye as I walked to the car, and as soon as I reached the door, I jumped inside.

On the way back, I was listening to the fm. Suddenly in the middle of one of the songs; Aman said "So...how was your meeting with that guy?"

I had no idea what he had been talking about, so I went "What guy?"

"The one you came here to meet?" I still did not get it. I was about to ask him what he had been talking about when I realized that he was talking about Ranveer. Unlike last time, I mean the 13 years ago last time, I was not going to misunderstand Aman's genuine curiosity with jealousy. So I said "It was okay I guess. He asked me to one of the clubs somewhere in between Delhi and Gurgaon. He apparently loves discos. He's an IIT grad."

"That IS impressive..." he said like he was admitting something very sad. My déjà vu, (or is it called intuition?), told me that he was having a sort of an ego problem. I had read an article in a Femina or seventeen or one of those Lady magazines, that men have a lot of ego issues. So my déjà vu, or intuition, was telling me that Aman was dealing with one of those at that moment because of Ranveer. It was probably because of the whole IIT thing; even though technically, what he had studied is equally respected in the society. Oh well, it was not like my trying would make me understand anything that he thought. The day a girl understands a boy's mind will be the end of days, according to those magazines. Then again, since when did those magazines ever solve anyone's problems?
For example, the advice column had said that you should talk to the bullies and try to resolve the matter peacefully because mostly, bullies bully people because their family life was messed up. I had tried to speak to this bully in the 7th grade and she just threatened to hit my nose until it caved in. So much for peaceful.
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That night Manasi and Suman had a party...at my house. And whenever that happened, you could bet your life on the fact that the two of them would arrive at my place 5 freaking hours earlier. Reason? No, not because they want to help the pseudo host. No. They came to give the pseudo host a makeover. And I can bet MY life on the fact that it was that pseudo host's worst nightmare.
Of course in 13 years I had pretty much learned how to escape their evil clutches whenever there was a party by pretending that I could not go or by going back to dear mom's place because she wasn't feeling too well. Once I even told them that I had to fly to Australia immediately because my painting was being auctioned; because of which I actually bought tickets to Australia and spent two days roaming about the place, mostly shopping for souvenirs.
Sadly, this time; I had been so exhausted from the trip back to Gurgaon from Delhi that I had forgotten everything about the party; which was why an hour after I reached, the doorbell rang and in walked the two evil witches; Manasi, the witch of the west, and Suman, the witch of the east.
Seriously, I could understand that it was their job and that they were great at it; and that they probably MADE the most famous actors and actresses who they were; but what was up with their obsession with giving me makeovers?

"Get up!" Manasi had ordered as soon as I had gone back to my painting on the floor. I looked up at her and asked her why. Suman threw three very heavy bags onto one of the couches and said "Because we have to get you ready."

"For what?" I asked them, puzzled. They looked back at me like I was crazy. I had thought that they were doing that because of the mess I had made of my clothes and my face. Oh, and my hair. I was probably looking like a multicoloured peacock; or a peahen.

"For the party?" Suman said. "What do you think we're doing here then?"

"I don't know" I said "I thought you guys just came....oh wait. No! Shit! You guys are SO freaking NOT getting ME ready. The party's supposed to start at 8:00. And why does it have to be at my place? I hate parties!" I had started with talking, and then went on to screaming and then whining.

Manasi sighed out loud. "Suman, there's nothing we can do now." and then as swiftly as a hawk, she swooped down and snatched the bottle of paint away from my hand and held it over my painting threateningly.

"DON’T!" I shrieked.

She looked back at me, a tinge of evil reflected in her eyes. "Oh yes Priyanka... you get that ass off the ground or this green paint creates a river on your canvas..."

"Manasi..." I whispered, I was shivering so hard, "Give that back to me..."

Her evil grin became larger, looming over my innocent painting, and the bottle in her hand tilted a further 15* so that a drop of the dark, sinister green was almost leaving its container.

"Okay, okay!" I shrieked, "I'll do it! Take it off! Take it off!"

A satisfied smile spread over Manasi's face, replacing the evil grin; as she tilted the bottle away from the canvas and moved the bottle just a little off the painting that was probably breathing east now. My poor, poor painting!

Seriously, I know that I get highly annoyed when someone says this because I've heard it so many times; but who needs enemies with such friends? They're pretty much competent enough to be your worst enemies. For example, Suman was standing behind Manasi and laughing her guts out.

So anyway; this was how at 7:30 pm I was standing in front of a big mirror, whatever it's called, in my room, in a greenish-blackish knee-length DRESS with a square neck and a small collar, shot smart sleeves, and sort of pleated bottom edge; and knee high boots. I kind of liked the boots; but why the dress? Oh, and the excessive make-up. I was probably looking nice, but at that time, I was too busy screaming at the two of them like a two year old baby that I was not going wear this if the party were to be at my place. The two just laughed at me.

I repeat; who needs enemies with such friends?
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Varsha; Suman's cousin; and Harsh, Varsha's husband gad already arrived and I was bringing out the snacks, in those awful clothes (Suman and Manasi would not let me take it off) when the bell rang. None of the lazy bones were ready to answer the door. When I solemnly refused to get the door because by hands were full, Suman obliged. I later the snacks on the table in the living room and looked up to see Suman jump at Shiv, her husband; and kiss him on the lips. I almost barred at that. "Guys?" I said hoping that I was loud enough for the two of them, "Hello? Do you know that there are other people in this room?" The other people I had just mentioned were hooting, including Aditya, Manasi's boyfriend; who was doing exactly that just seconds ago. Talk about hypocrites...

As Suman and Shiv headed for the couch; the bell rang again. It was my turn. I put a wafer in my mouth from one of the bowls and walked to the door. When I reached, I swallowed, opened the door and almost passed out. Yes, you guessed it right. Outside stood Aman looking like a God in a plain black shirt and slightly faded jeans, his hair falling into his dark eyes as usual. I had the sudden urge to do exactly what Suman had done a minute ago and would have done just that if Aman would have not spoken just then. "You look great Priyanka..." I LOOKED GREAT? Did he not SEE himself in the mirror? If I was looking great then he was looking like God. Oh wait, I already said that he was loping like God. I just kept looking back at Aman like a three year old glued to an episode of Sesame Street.

"Hello?" Aman said smiling, my stomach lurched AGAIN.

"Hi..." I said, miraculously finding my senses as Radhika approached us after succesfully locking her door. "Come in..."

I don't even know whether I closed the door behind me or not because I just followed Aman like a puppy dog.

We sat down and talked and talked...until the topic of School Days cane up. That was when, curse them, Manasi and Suman remembered the salsa classes I used to go to.

"You went to salsa classes!" Varsha said with wide eyes.

"Aman went too," Suman added. It was pretty evident that she was enjoying herself.

"You both went together?" Varsha asked us. I was too stunned to say anything at all. I had a bad feeling that they would make me dance. But I did not have to say anything because Aman said "Yes...well, sort of."

"We didn't dance together" I added quickly, in case anyone was getting weird ideas and questions about the 'sort of'. My heart was beating faster every second. The look on their faces told me that they were dying to see us dance. My déjà vu, I mean intuition, was telling me that they would... And as always, it had been right. They, all of those wretched morons, begged for us to dance, including Radhika.

I was shaking my head and outright refusing when Aman said "Come on Priyanka, be a sport!"

"Not you too Aman!" I glared at him. He looked back at me innocently. When I continued to say no, he said "Am I THAT a bad dancer?"

What was I supposed to do? I just sighed and agreed. Everyone cheered and helped clear the table out to make some space for us. Manasi her cell phone ready (She had taken the salsa song from Benjamin on the day of the show), she had probably thought of this from the beginning and put this song into her mobile.

I took my chunky shoes off, and the music started. I looked at Aman nervously. I hadn't had practice for so many years and I hardly remembered the steps.
Aman nodded reassuringly and moved his finger in circles to remind me one of the individual steps. We had to shake a lot and then move in circles. I broke almost ever step and Aman was just a little better than me. It really had been a long time ago. But as the beat got faster, and it was already fast let me tell you, we sort of got into the thing and sort of remembered more. With each new beat we got better; well better for someone who did not know the S of salsa. Technically, we weren't all THAT good, but everyone else was enjoying it.
Then came the couple part, where the boys and girls had to dance together. That was the point about which I had been nervous, very VERY nervous. Aman took my hand in his, my eyes moved to meet his like they were enchanted; and then Aman tugged me closer. We were both standing very close, chest to chest, my face tilted up to his face. He took one step forward, and I one step back, he took the same step way back and I took it way front, our hands in each others hands, our eyes in each others eyes. We were moving fast, feverishly fast, like we had to hurry; like if we missed one step, we would miss out eternity. The lights dimmed around us and Aman twirled me around. One moment, I was twirling and the next, I was being pulled towards him. He took me in his arms and turned me sideways, sliding his arm down my back so that I arched my back and bent backward as he bent forward with me, our faces just a few inches apart.

That was when I did a horrible mistake. I looked into his eyes. And to make things worse, he looked into mine.
The music drowned off, the lights were completely out now, the hooting had miraculously vanished and the world had suddenly disappeared. It was just me, stuck there in Aman's arms, looking into his eyes; Aman, standing there, holding me in his arms and staring back; and a slow trailer of that night outside in the park. I felt my breath slow down, slower and slower and finally stop. I tried very hard to look away from his eyes....and I finally looked away. Sadly, my eyes moved only from his eyes to his mouth. Oh shit! I looked away and thankfully I looked down at the floor. However I did not have too much time to look at the floor because just then I heard someone clap loudly.

I broke away from Aman like he was on fire and almost tripped when AMAN got hold of my hand and steadied me. "You okay?" he asked me. No! Of course I was NOT okay! I was just staring into a guy's eyes like one of the helpless damsels in distress I had read about in so many serious romances. And they annoyed me to no end. I mean, just go ahead and kiss the guy already!

But I was not going to kiss Aman! Oh my God! No! I would never be caught dead doing that! So why did I somehow feel...attracted to his lips just a Minuit ago? EW! Something was really wrong with me. And no, I was not okay.

"Yeah, I'm okay." that was what I had said. What? I could not say that I was not!

"Wow Priyanka;" I heard someone say, "I didn't know you danced so well."

I almost screamed when I saw who it was that had clapped. Almost. Thankfully, I had lost too much breath in Aman's arms for that much of noise to have come out of my lungs. It was Ranveer. I had forgotten than I had invited him.

"Hi Ranveer;" I said, letting air into my lungs. I then introduced everyone there to him and him to everyone. I could see that all the girls, including the already married ones were taking in his hotness. I somehow was not as taken by him as I had been the first time probably because my hormones had been excited enough for the day, thank you. But it was pretty amusing nevertheless.

It was around 10:00pm when I served dinner, from a restaurant, of course. As Suman put it, I would most probably blow the kitchen up if I went in to cook anything. I was just getting the plates out when Aditya sneaked up behind me. I was about to scream out of fright when he shushed me. "What are you doing here?" I asked him, "Besides freaking me out, I mean."

"I need you to do me a favour." he said, and started to dig something out of his pocket.

"What is it?" I was getting impatient.

He finally dug out a small navy blue velvet box. It was a ring. My jaw fell to the ground as he opened it to reveal a platinum ring with a pale pink stone. It was a simple, but VERY pretty ring. "Oh my GOD!" I almost screamed again, "YOU'RE PROPOSING!"

"Shhhhhhhh!" he shushed me again. "Yes, and I need your help."

To say that I was shocked would be THE understatement of the year because Aditya, like me did not believe in marriage. Well, he was not opposed to it, unlike me; but he never really planned to, or so he claimed.

"You total ditcher!" I pointed an accusing finger at him. He looked back at me embarrassed. "What happened to our pact?" He looked even more embarrassed now.

"Don’t make this worse for me okay?" he said.

"All right, what do you want me to do?"

He gave me the ring and whispered what I had to do into my ear. By the time he was done, I was mighty impressed by his sense of romance.

"Okay, I'll take care of that. Now go. I have to get to work." He thanked me and ran out the kitchen.

I turned around and was taking the plates out when I heard someone come in. I turned around to see Ranveer standing there looking puzzled.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, "but did I just happen to witness your marriage proposal?" I had no idea what he was talking for a second. Then it struck me.

"No way! Where did you... No! Oh my God, no! He's Manasi's boyfriend and he's proposing to HER and I'm HELPING him!"

He looked funny for a moment then looked relieved. Why?

"Good then." he said. Okay...?

"Why....?" I asked him slowly. My déjà vu or intuition was not giving me good vibes somehow.

"Oh nothing..." he said, "Guess what?"

"What?" what was he about to tell me, exactly? My déjà vu, I mean intuition was giving me warning signals. But I really never got to know what exactly he was trying to tell me then because unfortunately or fortunately Aman entered at that point.

"Hurry up will you," he said, "we're all starved." Then he noticed Ranveer standing there and said hi. Ranveer looked a little bit annoyed, but only for a second, and then said hi back. I got the plates out and walked past them, out of the kitchen as fast as I could. My déjà vu, INTUITION, was ringing giant bells in my head, and I had a proposal to fix. Too much for me to handle!

It was as we were having dessert that Manasi choked on the ring from the chocolate mousse.

"What the- Priyanka, did you cook? I think you dropped something." that was what Manasi had said before Aditya snatched the ring away from her and said "I think....isn’t this an engagement ring? Manu, someone just proposed to you and my guesses lie on PK."

Everyone started laughing. Yes, word had spread and EVERYONE knew about it, except for Manasi that is. Manasi glared at Aditya. You could tell that she was blushing very hard and trying to hide it. "What's going on Aditya?"

"Nothing Manu. PK just proposed to you. And these flowers" he pulled out a huge bouquet of red roses from the sofa, "are from her too...I think...Wait. It says something. 'Will you marry me?' See?" Then he showed her the flowers and the card on it.

Okay, this was the worst proposal I had ever seen in my life, but you had to give it to Aditya for trying. To put it in simple words, he was not exactly very romantic.

Manasi looked at Aditya in a bored sort of way. "It says Aditya here, Aditya." Aditya acted shocked and then looked into Manasi's eyes and said "And so will you marry him? He seems pretty to really love you..."

Manasi looked at him in a very amused manner, "Aditya, you do know that it's the lamest proposal in the history of proposals don't you?"

He nodded at her like he was proud of it, "So, what do you say? Wanna make history with me?"

Manasi shook her head to herself and then said "Okay, but there's one condition. You are not to use that line EVER again. Seriously, wanna make HISTORY with me?"

Aditya pretended to be thinking for a while and then said "I guess I'll survive" and then she gave him a BIG hug which Varsha joined, followed by Suman followed by Radhika and then finally me.
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I was Reading the newspaper when my phone rang on Saturday evening. It was Ranveer. He had called to remind me of 'the date', as he called it, and told me that he was going to pick me up at 10:00pm. I was a little surprised that we were going to go out so late; but according to him; that was when the real party started. Oh well.

After I spoke to Ranveer, Aman called to ask me what I was doing. He was apparently getting bored. I told him that I was going out with Ranveer to this club called Nirvana at some random hotel; the club where G.I.Jo-o-o was the deejay. He was apparently great. Aman then asked me whether Ranveer was the same guy as the one in the party two days ago. When I told him that he was and asked him why he was asking he just said "Nothing, all right. Bye." And then he hung up on me. Seriously, I was destined never to understand him.

I got ready by 9:30pm and switched on the TV. At around 9:45 the doorbell rang. Thanking that it was Ranveer, I switched off the TV and went to get the door. It was Radhika.

"Hey," she said as soon as I opened the door.

"Hi," I said, "What are you doing up so late?"

"Late?" Radhika looked confused. She checked her watch and then said "It's just 9:45. Since when did 9:45 become late for you? Your lights go off at 2:00 in the morning!"

"Sorry," I said, "I'm just going out so I'm a little screwed. That's all."

"I heard," she said, "You're going out with that guy from day before yesterday's party right? Aman told me."

"Uh-huh..." Did she have a crush on Ranveer? It was hard not to. And both of them were from the same field...isn’t it? Aren't computer engineering and normal engineering almost the same?

"Er...do you mind if I er....do you mind if I tag along?" she looked a little embarrassed. I smiled. Oh yes, she DID have a crush on Ranveer.

"Someone's crushing on Ranveer?" I said. She looked at me like I was crazy.

"No! I mean, he's cute enough. No, actually; he's very VERY cute; so, so freaking cute...sigh..........I think I'm losing my point. Oh yeah, that's not why I want to go."

"Come inside." she walked in and I closed the door. I then asked her to sit down.
She obediently sat down and I stood with my arms crossed across my chest in front if her. "Now you will be nice and give me the real reason for you to suddenly want to go."

She frowned. "All right," she said, "But you're dead if you tell Aman; who is being dragged along too, by the way. There's this guy; Raj, who works with me. And he goes to Nirvana every Saturday. And he's going to be there tonight too. I just wanted to see what's so great about this place. Not that I like him or anything. He's double dating my friend. And I'm hoping to take pictures...you know. Just to prove to my friend that he's cheating her."

I looked at her for a while. Something told me that Raj had more to do with HER than her friend, because she was not looking me in the eye. Why else would she have asked me not to tell Aman? But why was she bringing Aman along?

I just told her that she could ask Ranveer and that if he was okay with it, she could go.

Ten minutes later, Ranveer arrived right on time, and the four of us left for Nirvana.

You know what, the other reason for me to have let Radhika and Aman come along was that I was not exactly sure I wanted to go to a club all alone puke that, and was glad that Aman and Radhika were going to be there with me.
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The club was great, amazing, fantastic, and the worst place I had ever been to in a very long time. There was loud music, VERY loud music; which was completely fine with me, I love freaking out with loud music. But not when the person standing right next to you is probably going to throw up on you because he's an underage teen who's trying to show off to his friends. Oh, please do not get me started on the smokers. I thought I was going to die with all the smoke.

Sorry for sounding like such a Grandma, but this was not, by far, the place for me. But of course, it was not like I had any option but to sit at the stupid bar and order a coke every two minutes and wait for the rest of my companions who were having the time of their lives. Aman and Ranveer were great friends now and Radhika was talking to some random guy in the crowd and LAUGHING. Where was RAJ anyway?

Ugh! And the place was just so freaking dark. God, did I hate myself for getting me into such shit or what.

"Priyanka!" I miraculously heard Ranveer's voice over the loud music.

I turned around to see him standing in the beginning of the crowd on the dance floor. Oh boy, he was calling me in. I shook my head, but the idiot kept calling me. I finally got my butt off the stool and walked toward the dance floor. I decided it was at least better than sitting with all the drunken fools, half happy, half sad and a few drinking for the sake of it.

"Why are you sitting there all alone? Dance!" he said enthusiastically. I just smiled at him. I'm already here; do I have to dance too?

After 5 minutes of him trying to make me dance and me trying very hard to make it look like he was enjoying, he asked me "You don't like all the doped here, do you?"

Finally! I nodded while rolling my eyes. He said "It's all right. Let's go over there," pointing toward the other side of the dance floor. "There's a better crowd over there." and then he dragged me along. I was just waiting for my so called friends to show up and ask for us to go back home. But there was no sign of either of the cousins. Back-stabbers!

However, the crowd at the other side of the dance floor was sort of better...I guessed; they were less drunk anyway; and I sort of started enjoying myself. The music really WAS good. Hey, this wasn't too bad.

Another minute later, I was dancing like a mad person and no one could stop me. I could just go on and on and on. If the morons would let me, that is. Radhika had to come just at that time and say that she was hungry. And Aman, ditcher, had to back her up.

How mean!

And so it was that at around 12:15am we were sitting at a table and ordering food as I looked longingly at the dance floor. Yeah, life officially sucked. To make things worse, Aman was sitting right next to me and no matter how much I tried; my stupid leg would keep colliding with his.

"Any drinks?" the waiter asked us.

"Er, one vodka for me," Ranveer said, and looked around the table "You guy's? Priyanka?"

Aman ordered a Champaign and Radhika a beer. When I ordered coke, Ranveer looked shocked. "You don't drink?"

"Why is that so shocking?" I asked him.

"Okay..." he said, still not looking convinced, "I guess that was why you weren't comfortable down there…"

Aman looked at me incredulously. And because I was being conscious of him like the bloody idiot that I was, I said "No I wasn't! I was dancing when you guy's so rudely brought me up here."

"You were sitting on that stool for half an hour PK." Radhika said. I was going to kill her.

"Look," I said, "just because I don't drink does not mean I mind drunken people. Because I don't." That was a complete lie. Okay not a complete lie because I really did not mind my friends drinking; just not getting drunk.

"Really?" Ranveer said, "But no wonder you don’t drink. You were always the good girl."

"I was not!" I snapped. Hey! I used to have a guy in my room in the middle of the night! Where was the good girl there? Not that I was doing anything with the guy; but there was a guy nevertheless!

"You were PK" Radhika said.

"And how should you know that?" I snapped back.

"You were worse than Aman!" Radhika said. "Aman was such a goody two shoes. But you were even worse than him."

Goody two shoes, my foot. I caught him kissing a girl in the 11th grade. That's goody two shoes?

"How can you be so sure?" I asked her again.

"Manasi and Suman."

There were going to be three murders tonight.

The waiter went away and Ranveer excused himself. Radhika spotted someone in the crowd and went away leaving me and Aman alone. Not again!

"You know Priyanka," Aman said, breaking the silence between us, "I know that I should probably not comment on your personal life, but I think you should reconsider your engagement with Ranveer. Or at least think it over once more."

"Huh?" that was what I had said when Aman said that. What engagement?

"I mean," he said, "He's a nice guy and all, but he just isn’t your type"

"My type?" I asked him, surprised, "How IS my type?"

"I don’t know..." he said, "just...he...there's something sort of...you know. You guy's just don’t click."

"Click?"

"Like; for example. He's presently mixing alcohol in your coke at the present moment"

I turned around but could not see Ranveer any where. "How do you know?"

"I know because I'm a guy Priyanka. And I know other guys."

"Aman, he's my friend. And I know that he won't do any such thing." I assured him; even though I had doubts of my own.

"Fiancé." he corrected me. I shook my head and said "friend. I'm not marrying him. I'm not marrying anyone Aman. I don’t believe in marriage. And as for him, he's engaged. Or so he claims to the rest of the world."

I explained to Aman Ranveer's little situation. "See," he said, "I was right. He's a fraud."

"He's just trying to get away from marriage. Look at me. I live AWAY for the same cause."

"But you don’t lie, Priyanka."

"Why are we having this conversation?"

"Because -" but before Aman could compete what he wanted to say, Ranveer came in with the drinks and Radhika walked in smiling.

I eyed the giant glass of coke and then looked at Aman. Aman shook his head. I shook my head back at him and grabbed the glass from the tray. Aman chuckled to himself. Why was he so amused anyway? There was going to be nothing at all in my drink and when he would know, I would be the one laughing at HIM.

I took one swing from the glass, and took GREAT pains NOT to spit it out. It tasted AWFUL! Aman had been right. There WAS alcohol mixed in the coke. But I was not going to let it out. Even if I had to drink the whole thing down, I was not going to let Aman know that he was right.........only HOW?

The stuff tasted awful. It was probably the worst thing I had ever tasted. But all I did was smile at Aman, and ignored Ranveer as much as I could; and Aman raised his eyebrows. Ha!

Halfway through the glass, I kept it aside and said that I was full.

"What's wrong Priyanka?" Aman asked, trying very hard not to burst out laughing, "Something wrong with the taste?"

I glared at him, and pulled the glass back toward me. "There is nothing wrong with the coke." I said through gritted teeth. Ass!

I cursed Aman and Ranveer after every sip and by the end of it, I stopped. That was because I felt like dancing. I stood up and started dancing.

Aman got to his feet and said that it would be better if I went home. How silly. He thought that I was drunk. I just wanted to dance. Was that so wrong?

"Aman," I said, my feet were already moving to the music, "I'm really not drunk. Okay? Let me dance na!"

Ranveer stood up too and said, "I think we should really go back now Priyanka. It's late."

"It's not late!" I told him. Was he mad?

"Er..."Radhika also stood up and grabbed one of my arms.”We can dance at home PK. We'll switch the music player on." and before I could protest, she dragged me out of the club and into the car.

I was just sitting in the car waiting for the rest of them to enter the car but no one did. I looked outside to see Radhika shouting. I stuck my head out and heard Radhika say "...and just how much of it did you put in her drink?"

Ranveer replied looking sheepish, "none...there was no coke in it...the whole thing was-"

"YOU WHAT!" Radhika had seriously lost it. It was really funny. Hey now, I really WAS drunk! How did that happen?

Aman saw me, and settled the two of them down; and then made the two of them sit in the car. Ranveer drove us back home. And I giggled all the way back home. All of them looked so funny! Aman laughed with me. See? I was genuinely laughing. I wasn't drunk.

When we reached Ranveer came up with us and was going to help me in, like I needed it. Idiots! But when we reached the door, there was a huge pile of boxes in front of Radhika's door.

"Shit! Those guys send the computer in the middle of the night!" Radhika shrieked.

Ranveer then suggested that he take me in and Aman help Radhika with the boxes. Radhika outright refused and forced Ranveer to help her out with the boxes and Aman take me in. And in all this while I had already opened the door and was inside. Aman stepped in before I could close the door and said, all strictly "Priyanka, I want you to go straight to bed right now."

I laughed at him and closed the door. "With whom?" I asked him and laughed some more. He raised his eyebrows and said "Preferably no one at the present moment. Now," he then grabbed my wrist and pulled me to my bedroom. "You don’t need to change; just get in and sleep." He then left my hand and waited. I stayed where I was.

"Do you want me to tuck you in Priyanka?" he said sarcastically. I laughed again because he said what he had said right before our pillow fight. "What happened now?" he asked me.

"You know," I said, "you're VERY mean."

"And why is that?" he sounded tired.

"You don’t like me." I said.

"Of course I like you Priyanka!" he said, placing his hand on my back, pushing me towards the bed.

"Liar!" I shrieked at him. "You like Ashita." By now he had already made me sit on the bed. And before he could get me to lie down, he said "What?!" he sounded shocked.

"You LOVE Ashita!" I said, pointing an accusing finger at him; "you LURVE Ashita."

"What are you talking about?" I laughed at that.

"Liar!" I said, "You kissed Ashita! You love Ashita! I saw you!"

And then I passed out. The last thing I saw was Aman's confused face.
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Ouch! Ow! My head. Ugh. Why in hell's name was it hurting so much? And why on earth was I wearing my jeans in bed? And why was Aman sitting next to me? In my room? What was going on?

"Good Morning!" he said not sounding too good himself.

"What are you doing here early in the morning?"

Aman raised an eyebrow and said "Early in the morning? It's 10:00 in the morning. Not so early."

"10:00?!" I said, "That is sort of early..." Aman laughed, shaking his head at me.

"What?" I asked him.

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

"So since it's nothing; I shall assume that you're talking a walk in my bedroom?"

He laughed again and my stomach did the weird thing again. Man did he look good laughing or freaking what. "Do you know how weird it is to find a guy in your bedroom as soon as you wake up?" I asked him.

He shrugged and said "I do. I was in a boy’s hostel. But I'm guessing that's not the feeling you're getting. I once saw was a roommate in his underclothes, if you know what I mean, and it wasn't a very pretty sight."

"Ew!" I said, sitting up in my bed despite my headache. "That is really not the first thing you want to know the first thing in the morning."

His lips curled up into a half-smile. "Priyanka, do you remember anything from last night?"

"Ugh...no idea. I just have this bloody headache. I feel like I'm hung over or something. Like I got drunk..........HOLY SHIT!" I screamed as the events of last night flooded my memory. Oh my GOD!

I dropped my head into my palms and groaned. And then everything I said to Aman came back to me. I screamed, and I did not care if my headache just got worse. Aman got off the chair he had been sitting in and sat next to me on the bed.

"Go away Aman" I groaned into my palms.

"You remember everything don’t you?" he asked me. I did not reply. "That's not even half of what you said in your sleep. I looked up at him with wide eyes.

"I WHAT?"

"You spoke in your sleep." I store breathing. He was kidding right? What had I said?

He was about to say something else when his cellphone rang. He picked it up and jumped to his feet. "I'll be right there." he hung up, turned around to face me and said in a hurried tone. "Priyanka, you stay right there. You need rest. I'll have to leave now. One of my friends is critical in the hospital and I need to see him. I'll be back as soon as possible. You stay right there and don’t worry. Okay?" and with that he jogged out my door.

Stay right there? Was he bloody mad? I don’t care what he heard, but it was enough that he had heard it. Enough to make me jump out of bed, pack my things and leave for Delhi. I was going to have to leave. Fast.

DON'T give me that look. Okay? I was not going to sit through another Ashita moment. One had been enough, thank you.

I took my car and drove back home; from where I got myself tickets to Chennai and flew there. Bye-bye second Ashita moment and hello Chennai and its rented apartment in Gopalapuram.
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I was sitting in the coffee shop next to a theatre near my apartment when my cell rang. It was an unknown number. I picked it up uncertainly. I had not had too many calls from unknown callers.

P: Hello...?
Caller: PK, what in the world do you think you are? Queen of freaking England?
P: Manasi! How did you get my number?
M: I told you, you're not Queen of England. Anyone with brains and with a name that is not Aman can call your mom up and get your number. Oh and call from a borrowed phone. Why on earth have you been ignoring our calls?
P: I was busy...
M: Yeah. Right. I don't even want to know the real reason for you to vanish into thin air PK; but I'm not having you missing at my wedding.
P: Wedding?
M: You utter moron! MY wedding! I'm getting married. To Aditya.
P: When?
M: Next week. And you're coming. Like it or not.
P: Manasi...?
M: Oh my God. I am NOT listening to you. I'm hanging up. You're coming and that's final.
And then she hung up on me...which was how, a week later I was sitting at 1:35 in the bloody night in Manasi's room helping her get ready with Suman and a hundred of her Manasi's cousins. Honestly, the pandit just had to choose the ceremony time to be at 4:27 am. I mean, did he not have a wife to get back to?

Sasha, Manasi's 12year old cousin came running in screaming for me. "PK di! PK di! Someone's calling you." I groaned. It had to be Manasi's aunt who had taken this liking towards me because I had told her that I don't believe in marriages. Don't get me wrong; she was happily married. She just wanted ME to be happily married. I swear; dies it say on my forehead that please force Priyanka to get married. Aargh. She must have found another photo to show me.

I ran behind Sasha who was leading the way. But instead of taking me to the room where all the ladies were sitting, she took me out to the empty lawn of Manasi's Farm House.

I followed her outside looking for whoever it was who had called me. But I saw no one. Suddenly, the lights outside went off. It was pitch dark and I noticed that the lights inside the farmhouse were on. I figured that the phase of the outside lights must have gone off. I attempted to get back in but when I reached the door, it was locked. I realized with horror that the brat had locked me outside. Shit!

I could hardly see anything and I kept knocking the stupid door and shouting but no one even opened the dang thing. Suddenly I saw a candle flame coming closer. I thanked God, and called out "Excuse me!" five times till I was sure that the light was coming toward me. As the person got closer, I could sort of make out his facial features. He seemed to be around my age, a few years here or there, seemed damned good looking from whatever I could see and he was wearing a sherwaani. All in all I would have totally been 'Checking him out' if of were not for the sorry fact that I had already checked him out ages ago and the fact that I had made Manasi promise that he was not invited. I should have known better than to trust Manasi.

I looked around me for escape routes, but thanks to the pitch darkness, had no such luck. I had no other option than to listen to him.

I stood there, freezing to my bone in the January wind, in a freaking sari of all things.

"Hi Priyanka. Long time, no see?" he was smiling, and despite the biting cold, I could feel my face grow warm.

"So," he said when I did not reply, "How’s life?"

I had re-winded and replayed that night a 100 times in the past month. The night I had been drunk. And by now I knew exactly what I had said to him. And that had been exactly everything. There was no point in hiding it anymore. Might as well get it over with. He was probably feeling bad that he might have hurt me or something; I guessed that was why he wanted to talk to me.

"Look," I started; but he cut me in.

"Priyanka," he said softly, "Shut up. First, it's my turn to speak. You've spoken everything you needed to, if not more. And second, you are the most annoying and irritating girl I have met in all of my life.
"First, you leave me hanging there after the salsa dance; when I want to say so bloody much to you; and then you ignore me and take off to the US of freaking A. Then, you meet me 13 years later and finally, when I get a second chance to tell you; BAM! You're off! I mean, honestly; how much more do you think I can take? Huh? What do you take me for?-"

"But Ash-" I tried to say when he cut me in.

"Ashita was my FRIEND. I have no idea what you thought was going in between us, but I never even thought of her that way; and neither did she. Hell, I think she dated that partner of yours after that show. Apparently the sweet-heart he had been speaking to was his baby sister. And as for that kiss; I had no idea what you had been talking about that night. I thought about it for two whole weeks and realized that you must have seen us when she was showing me the correct way to do a step I had done wrong, and her necklace got stuck in my sleeve. All right?"

"Oh." I said.

"Oh is right." he said, running a hand threw his amazing hair; "And yeah. The first time I saw you, I knew who you were. I saw you in the park, your ears blocked with headphones. I knew you because my mother kept talking about you. And when I saw you that day, I couldn’t believe that YOU were Priyanka. The Priyanka. The one who was driving my mother insane because she knew everything and still wouldn't study. You were so much more than that. And then that day when you came home and asked for mom when you knew that she wasn't there; yeah that's where you got me. I was like 'What the heck is she doing?' when you were making those silly things to your maths questions, and I just had to tell you how to do it. And I liked being with you, because you always talked and talked and talked about everything that did not matter. I couldn’t sleep so I came to your freaking window. I mean, that isn’t even sane, but there you go. That's Priyanka there, and there's her window. Jump in. And there I was. I mean, it was so easy to talk to you. I could come up to you in the middle of the night and ask for a pen. I could play Sir Lancelot with you and you would actually laugh. And when I danced with you that day in class, I loved it. It was not the best dance, it was never ABOUT it being the best dance. It was just dancing...with you.
"That day, after the show; I wanted to tell you...everything. I wanted to tell you about what you meant to me. But then you just left. You never came back to school and then you just weren't there anymore.
"I tried forgetting you; got three or four girlfriends. But none of them were you. Because that's what they were. Just girlfriends. Not my friend, not a friend I could go to in the middle of the night and trouble and pillow fight with.
"And then when I saw you again; you have no idea how I felt. I went mad with joy...I could not believe my luck. And at the party, I could not have missed the chance to dance with you again...”
And then he laughed. “And I even made Radhika tell you that she wanted to go with you to that club; just so that I could keep a watch n that Ranveer guy.
"It was so perfect....but I wasn't sure. I wasn’t sure whether you liked me back or not. I knew that you did once; but did you stop? That's why I never told you.
"And then that day when you told me, well not me, but blabbered in general in your sleep, I was shocked. I was happy; but before I could tell you anything, you ran away. Again. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that you had no idea about how I felt. I mean, EVERYONE knew it; Radhika knew it, your friends knew it; even your DAD knew it when I called him up to find out where you had gone.
“Which is why I'm here to tell you that you are the most annoying girl I have met in my entire life.
"And the bottom-line of this long story: I have been in love with you since before you even knew me and you are still the most annoying person I've ever met."

I stood there quietly looking at him. "You knew." I said, "You knew that I liked you back then; and you didn't tell me?" I had stopped breathing normally ages ago and my heart would probably need surgery to start working at its normal rate again.

He shrugged, the candle still held in one hand and the fuse plug in the other hand, and said "I wanted to tell you after the show..."

"And because of that," I ignored him, "I suffered for THIRTEEN FUCKING YEARS?"

He smiled a self satisfied smile and shrugged again, "YOU suffered? Well then I’m glad about it..."

"You're a sadist" I told him.

"I know" he said.

"I hate you" I told him.

"I know" he said.

Then he kissed me. On the mouth. The fuse plug and the candle fell to the ground as I kissed him back and everything was engulfed in darkness...
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PS: My déjà vu sucks.

Priyanka Story Part 1

The leaves rustled softly in the wind. The sky was filled with dark clouds - it was going to rain. I looked outside the window longingly at the swaying tree. I wished to be outside, dancing with the music of the breeze and playing hide and seek with the leaves, just like the tree's thin branches.......but I couldn't. That was because I was inside the class room pretending to be listening to the midget of a math teacher drone on about congruent triangles. And I honestly did not feel bad about it; because I don't see myself sitting and measuring the sides of a triangle and then checking for the SAS congruency rule. However, it did not matter whether I felt bad or not; because Mrs. Sujhata, my math teacher did.

"Priyanka? Priyanka? PRIYANKA!"

I was so startled I literally fell off my seat when I stood up.

"What are you doing?" she asked me. Hello? I was looking out the window? Can't you see?

That was what I was thinking. I obviously did not SAY that out loud! That would have just been plain mean! Something that I would expect someone like Anusha Jain (Snob No. 1 of my class) to do. So I did what I thought was the smart thing to do. I kept quiet; which ended up making Sujhata even madder. Why do I have world's most rotten luck? Why?

After she was done giving me this long -and when I say long, I mean long - lecture, she looked me in the eye and asked me the question I dreaded the most. "Why did you not come for yesterday's extra class?"

I gulped, and it felt like I had just swallowed a whale - a giant whale. "Er...ma'am...I was-wasn't well...I reached school late..."

The thing is, students like me; the really hopeless ones; are supposed to attend extra classes at school; and for that we have to come to school a whole hour early. Like we don't have anything better to do; for example sleep. Whoever wanted to attend extra math classes every Monday morning anyway?
Besides, I hadn't entirely lied. I had been ill - stomach ache. Of course, a small detail such as the fact that the stomach ache had been the earlier night did not matter...right?

She simply shook her head and said something about how people just don't care about responsibilities anymore and other equally annoying things. Finally she asked me to come home that day after school to get a few questions she had given to the other kids in the extra class. Yes, sadly the fact that she has to torment me at school is not enough of bad luck. That is why she lives right across the street; and as a consequence knows of my activities - which might include roaming about the common park and sometimes listen to music in the evenings on the i-pod while watching the sun set. I know that she knows because she looks into my homework carefully every time I go to the park. Gosh! Can't an innocent ninth standard student even BREATH???

But I couldn't say that to her either; and so I ended up simply nodding dumbly at her.

I hate my life.

That day, after school, as I was walking home from the bus stop, I decided that I might as well go and get those questions then and there. It would be a lot more painful if I had to meet with the devil herself after the comforts of my room. I'd rather just get it over with.

I went up to her door and rang the bell...which was when I realized that the teachers had been called for some kind of a meeting and that it would take her some time to beat the traffic - she drove back home everyday in a black, posh Honda City.

Shit! I always do this! Now I was going to have to apologize to whoever it was who would open the door.

I was expecting some grandma or probably a pot-bellied husband to open the door; but I was disappointed. Actually, not disappointed; just surprised. Because the person who happened to open the door was someone I had seen before, even if it was just once; and someone who looked to be only a little older than me; and most surprisingly, someone who was TALLER than me!

It was a boy, a very, very good-looking boy, whom I had seen at the park yesterday. He was lean, wheatish in colour, had really dark brown eyes, and messy dark black hair that softly fell over his forehead. I had been listening to this really nice romantic song when I had seen him. When I had first seen him he had smiled at me and I had smiled back, just to be nice. And of course, with a face like that, I had not stopped thinking about him. Not that I had developed a crush on him; I am too sensible for that. Because I know that:
a. It would just be a waste of time and patience;
b. He was WAY out of reach - hello? Good looking guy and super ugly flunky like me? Not even in dream world.
c. He was standing at my math teacher's door. Why?

Holy shit! I had heard that Sujhata's son was joining school. Apparently, he was in the eleventh standard. Why? Why? Why oh why does such a cute guy have to be my math teacher's son? Why? Can't there be SOME sanity in this insane world once in a while?

"May I help you?" the boy standing in front of me said, waking me from my little self talking session - and making me realize the embarrassing fact that I had been staring at him for so long.

And even though I knew for a fact that Sujhata was not home, I asked him if I could meet her.

"I'm sorry," he said, "she's not home yet. She'll be home in a couple of minutes though." I decided that he had a very nice voice.

"But doesn't she have a meeting? She's going to return at 5:00 most probably." Sadly, I realized the fact that what I just said proved that I knew that she wasn’t home, only after I said it. Another unfortunate problem with me is that I'm not a very convincing liar. Again; WHY?????!!!!!

He raised his eyebrows. "Er, the meeting's been cancelled and she will be here any minute now. Is there a message I can give her?"

"Er, nothing. She had just asked me to get a few questions from her. She's my math teacher. So I figured I would come and get them from her on my way home and rang the bell. But I remembered about the meeting only after I rang the bell, and when you opened the door I didn't know what to say, so I asked you if she was home even though I knew that she was not. And when you told me that she would be back so soon I was surprised because obviously it had to take her longer than that if she was going for the meeting? So I assumed that she was going to skip the meeting or had probably forgotten it."

Another problem with me is that I speak too much. Once I start, I can't stop - not even if God tried. And when I speak, I usually blabber. This could have possibly been why he was now smiling at me like he was highly amused with me.

I looked at him smile at me and felt my face heat up with embarrassment. God, do I need help with my mouth or what? "Er, I should go. I'll come back later."

"Why don't you come inside and wait? She will be here any minute." I considered the offer. If I stayed, I would feel awkward - I'm not a very people person. But if I would come later, I would have to walk all the way. So I shrugged and said "Okay, but if you don't mind. I mean, I could come back later."

"It's no problem. Come in."

I walked into what looked like a living room, if the expensive looking sofas and the posh coffee table were any indication. He asked me to sit on one of the giant leather sofas and excused himself. As I sat there waiting for Sujhata to arrive, I decided to do a little math, or pretend to anyway. I thought that it might impress her.

I opened the book to the exercise she had given for homework and read the first question. It seemed easy enough...until I started doing it. How are you supposed to prove that two right triangles are congruent only with one side and one angle? Aren't we supposed to use three parameters? Probably I have to calculate the other angles. But they just mentioned that both the triangles had a 45* angle. Oh God, it was so freaking confusing!

"Any problem?" I looked up from my notebook to see Sujhata's son standing in front of me. I politely shook my head and buried my head back into my books, furiously wishing he would go away because I did not want him to think I was dumb. But since when did God ever listen to me?

He still stood there attempting to read the question up side down.

"Here, let me help you with this." He said and sat next to me. I shifted a little away from him as he sat down, warning bells going off in my mind. I had never been so close to any guy before - with the exception of the fifth standard when I had loads of guy friends. That was before we had shifted here. Since we shifted, the only friends that I made are Manasi and Suman; who happen to be best friends; of each other.

He grabbed the pen from me and started to explain to me that here we had to use the AAS property, and the third angle was the right angle itself. And so we had the given side, the given angle and the right angle in both the triangles; which proved that they were congruent.

I kept staring at the notebook just so I would not have to look up and see his face. Because I knew that if I looked at him from such a close proximity, I would faint. Intact I was already shivering. Well, not literally because it was too warm for that - the dancing winds had stopped ages ago. But I was feeling, for want of a better word, ticklish. At one point of time I think I might have touched his hand by mistake; or was it my notebook?

But you know what the funny part is? I actually understood! I was actually able to understand something related to math! God, he was so much better than Sujhata!

Speaking of whom, she entered the house at exactly that time.
"Priyanka?!" She saw me sitting on one of her super expensive sofas with her son and apparently could not help but be surprised. I sprang to my feet at the sight of her, dropping the contents of my bag as a consequence. Why do I have to be so clumsy? Seriously, my life is completely filled with questions and there isn’t a single person who can answer them. Oh when shalt thou send me an angel?

"Ma'am I...er...you asked me to come over for the questions?"
She considered what I said for a moment and nodded, not unkindly, just a little oddly.
Why oh why am I so freaking nervous? WHY???!!!

She asked me to wait and she walked into one of the doors leaving me alone with her son in the living room. As soon as she left the room I bent down to pick up my stuff; and so did he. I felt my face go warm, and this time it was not solely because of embarrassment.

When I was done stuffing my bag with all the books and stationary that had fallen out of the pencil box, and he was done helping me; we stood up, only to hit our heads against each other's.

"Ow!" I rubbed my forehead in pain.

"You okay?" he asked me, sounding concerned. I nodded despite the pain. He bent forward and hit my head with his own again, gently this time. It was then that I remembered that you are supposed to do it again or it is said to bring bad luck. Of course, the fact that it was all a myth and that everyone on the planet does it all the time would not stop my breath from going really slow and deep; nor would it stop my eyes from looking into the eyes of the person who had hit my head with his own; someone who was looking back into mine.

Thankfully Sujhata came into the room exactly at that time so that I hardly had time to make him feel awkward; or so that I did not have enough time to understand whether he was looking into my eyes because I was looking into his and he wanted to be polite or because he was wondering why on earth some random student of his mom was staring at him. I looked away and turned to see Sujhata holding out a sheet of paper filled with questions I had no idea of how to solve.

I took the sheet of paper from her, thanked her and almost ran out of the house. But before I could make my escape she called my name out and I had to stop halfway out the front door. "I want the answers by Friday." I turned around nodded, thanked her again and got my butt out of there.
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The next day at school I had Physics. Sadly, the teacher was in a bad mood; and to make things worse I could not find my Physics notebook. I had not bothered to set my bag last night, so I thought that I might have left of at home. Why am I such an idiot? And so, as a result, I got yelled at. She even gave me detention. Sheesh! I had just forgotten a notebook, not murdered someone!

Suman was trying very hard to cheer me up in break time; but it was of no use. God, my day was getting worse. In the morning I had spilt my orange juice all over my mom's night gown and got yelled at by her too. And after that I had missed the bus. After all of this mess, I had to deal with detention, not to mention miss out on a whole hour of TV as a consequence.

"It's all right PK," Suman said, "you might be able to make a really nice drawing for me. Remember you had promised you'd make me one?" I nodded. She was terrible at this stuff; cheering a person up was obviously something she needed a little help with. But at least she was trying, unlike Manasi who was fed up with me whining all the time. "Come on, cheer up PK. You look nice when you smile, you should do that more often; like..." she suddenly stopped midway and I looked up at her; till then I had been staring at my desk. She was looking at something outside the door. I followed her line of vision to see...WHAT IS HE DOING HERE?

Sujhata's son was standing outside the door trying to find someone. When he saw me his face brightened with recognition. He was wearing the school uniform - a White half-sleeve shirt, grey pants and a navy-blue tie; and he looked pretty good in it - oh man, I started to get this really weird feeling in my stomach.

When I kept staring at him in shock, my jaw almost touching the floor, and my eyebrows touching the sky; he started waving a notebook at me. I belatedly realized that it was my Physics notebook and ran outside the door very much aware of the fact that all eyes were on me. I reached him and stopped to catch my breath. He smiled at me. "You had left this yesterday. It was lying under the sofa."

I took the notebook from him, wondering what exactly he had been doing under the sofa; and thanked him. I should have stopped there but I, being me, would not stop there. "Thanks; but you're too late. My Physics period is over and I've already got detention for not bringing my notebook."

"Wow, that's harsh. So you're stuck in the school on a Sunday?"

"No, I have to stay here for an hour after school. We don't have to stay back on a Sunday; the teachers here are too lazy to come to school on a Sunday just to give detention." I realized the fact that his mom was a teacher only AFTER I said that. How typical of me! "You had to stay back on a Sunday for detention in your previous school? I heard you're new here." I tried changing the topic.

He nodded and said "Yes, but we had the hostel wardens taking care of the detentions. I was stuck in school all year; I was a hosteller. And it isn’t any better here because I still have to live with a teacher 24*7"

I laughed at that and then the bell rang. As he was leaving he suddenly called out my name and said "By the way, you draw well. And I liked the poem about the dead roses." After that, he left. I kept staring at his back. He had seen the back of my notebook. My Physics notebook; the very notebook in which the number of pages I had used from the back were more than the number I had used from the front. I had written a dozen poems and made a hundred drawings in it; and he had seen them.
OH SHIT!
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I was finishing the nose of a girl I was drawing in Chemistry period when the last bell rang. It was time to go home; but only for my classmates. It was time for detention for me. I groaned.

I headed for the detention room; and on the way I met Ashita, my senior. She was in the eleventh and happened to be one of the few seniors I actually liked. She was pretty, smart and was an awesome singer. She also happened to be my neighbour; but we hardly met. And there was hardly any reason for us not meeting so frequently; it was just one of those things. Sometimes we were too busy, and sometimes we just didn't bother.
We talked about the latest chick-lit books we had read - our favourite common topic; and then updated each other about ourselves. There was nothing on my side of the updating of course; but apparently there was a lot going on in her life - she was going for a concert this weekend; watching a movie that evening with her girl friends, going for a singing competition and winning it the next week (You see, Ashita was not one of the modest kind; she knew what she was good at and what she wasn't) and she was going to start salsa classes this weekend; for which she was very nervous because she did not want a bad dancer as a partner.

After our little rendezvous; we each went our way - she went to her bus and I went to torture chamber.

The detention teacher was missing from the room because apparently the last day's meeting was rescheduled for that day.

I sat in the classroom, not knowing what to do. I decided that finishing the cursed math assignment would be a good idea; and so I dug out my math notebook and the sheet of paper Sujhata had given to me yesterday; and started with the problems. Miraculously I was able to do the first question right. And even though it took me 15 whole minutes for the 1-mark question while an average student ought to spend a maximum of 2 minutes on it; it was still an improvement.

It was as I was struggling with the second question that someone suddenly entered the classroom, walked up to my desk and said "Hi!" to me. I looked up from my notebook to see Sujhata's son standing in front of me. His name was Aman Sharma, I had learnt from the most popular source of information in our school - Tanya Shettey, the Gossip Queen. She had also informed me that he was this super genius who topped his previous school in his board.

"Hi!" I was a little more than just surprised to see him there. Then I reminded myself of the meeting; he must have been waiting for his mother to finish the meeting. But nevertheless, I had to be sure; so I asked him what he was doing there. It turned out that he WAS waiting for Sujhata to finish her meeting and was getting bored so he came here. “So what are you doing?" he asked me.

I rolled my eyes and said "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm struggling with a math assignment."

"Let me look at that." He turned my notebook around and read what I had written. He then read the question, smiled and then pulled a chair out for himself. He sat down, took my pen from me for the second time since we first met, and started scribbling in my notebook. I didn't say anything because I didn't know what to say; and I was too busy staring at his nice, soft hair. What did he do to it anyway? Did he shampoo it ten times that day and condition it 20 times or something?

However, my day dreaming was rudely interrupted by the subject of my day dream himself. He had solved the question and had started to explain to me how to do that question. It sort of reminded me of this book I had read; Princess Diaries, in which Michael teaches Mia math and then they get together at the end. It had been my first ever chick-lit; and even the thought of Aman as Michael and me as Mia thrilled every bone in my body.

STOP IT. STOP IT NOW!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Had I gone mad? Since when did I, Priyanka Sethi, EVER think of any boy like that? Whatever happened to my anti-crush policy? Was the world coming to an end? Had the ice caps finally melted and drowned all of us? Had Doom's day already arrived?

I desperately needed a psychiatrist. And if I did not get one very soon, I was pretty sure I would hyperventilate to death.

But psychiatrist or no, there I was, sitting next to my math teacher's son, trying to understand what he was teaching me and trying very hard not to let my eyes wander away from the notebook to his face.

"...and so this triangle is congruent to triangle ABC; which means that they have the same area. And that's the answer."

"Wow," I said, "that seems pretty simple! How come I never thought of it?" He smiled at me (Okay, seriously; he has to stop doing that; or very soon I will go mad).

"That", he said, still smiling, "is because you keep telling yourself that you can't do it." I rolled my eyes and told him that he sounded like my mom. And guess how he replied to that; he said that my mom was right. I raised my eyebrows and stared at him. "What?"

I shook my head. "Nothing" I said, "you're just weird."

"And how is that?"

I shrugged, "How can any normal person ever top a school?"

"Define normal."

"I don't know...someone who watches TV?"

"How can you be so sure I don't watch TV all day long?"

"Okay, forget that. Er...oh, I got one. If you were normal, you would have had a girlfriend by now." I knew I was bluffing because I knew loads of people who did not have girlfriends in the 11th. But hey, it was completely abnormal if such a good looking guy had not had a girlfriend yet.

He looked thoughtful for a moment and then looked at me. He was smirking. "How do you know I don't have one right now?"

My eyes widened and my jaw dropped. "You have a girlfriend? Where?"

And as my luck would have it, just then my detention teacher entered the classroom holding the list of detained students. She saw Aman and asked him what he was doing there. Apparently, she knew him.

Instead of replying to her, he asked her about the meeting. She told him that it would get over in another fifteen minutes; so he asked her if he could wait there in the classroom. She let him stay and asked the rest of us to stop making such a ruckus; because the other people were having very loud conversations with their friends. I did not know any of them but recognized their faces from the last time I had been given detention (this was my second time you see) and they were regulars apparently.

Aman started explaining the next question to me and refused to speak of anything but congruent triangles. After 5 minutes the bell rang and we had to leave; the teacher chased us out of the class. As I was walking out of the door, still wondering at what Aman had just said about his girlfriend; I got the feeling that someone was looking at me. You know that feeling; it's like a prickly feeling on your back. I turned around and saw Aman looking at me. When he saw me, he smiled. It was not the general smile, the polite kind that you give when you say hello or goodbye. It was the kind of smile that clearly signaled that the one who was smiling was hiding something from you and enjoying watching you getting tormented - something between a smirk and a goofy grin. In return, as a reply to this highly intimidating smile, all I did was furrow my eyebrows together and gawk at him in wonder. Had he or had he not had a girlfriend? That, to my utter annoyance, only made him laugh at me.

Unfortunately, just then I felt the teacher glare at me; and I was forced to leave.
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The rest of the week went by as usual (Read as miserable, horrifying and terribly boring). It was Friday evening and the weekend was finally starting. I decided to take a walk in the park to celebrate (Read as sit at my usual bench and listen to my i-pod without having walked for more than 2 minutes).

I was listening to this rock song with my eyes closed, when I felt someone tap my shoulder. I opened my eyes expecting some old uncle wanting me to make some space for him; but who I saw was hardly as unpleasant; because
A. He wasn’t an old uncle; and
B. I knew him, not to mention liked the fact that I knew him.
Yeah, you guessed it right. It was Aman.

"What are YOU doing here?" I asked him pulling off my earphones and switching the i-pod off with my other hand. He shrugged and said "I don't know; I'm obviously not here for dancing or juggling balls in the middle of a park? What do you think?"
I frowned at him and said "Sheesh! I was just asking."
He grinned at me and apologized. No, he didn't say that he was sorry. He actually said "I apologize my lady. I beg thee to forgive my imprudence. Damn be me lest such disregard ever taketh place on my part."

"Whoa! Slow down! I don't even know these words EXIST!" He bent a little, pointed at my bench and said, in the same tone "May I?"

I shifted a little to give him some space to sit. He sat down and asked me if I came here everyday.
"Nah," I said, "I come here once in a while; just to relax. I love the wind here. I like it when the wind blows and there's music in my ears. I just sit here and close my eyes. It's like I've been transported to another world." After a pause I added, "A world where I don't have math assignments and screaming moms being thrown at me all over the place."

He laughed at the screaming mom’s part; and my stomach felt weird again. Note to self: must NOT, I repeat, must NOT look at Aman Sharma laugh again. Ever. Or consequences could be drastic.

Just then I remembered the thing about his girlfriend. When I mentioned it to him, he smiled THAT smile again - the smirk-come-grin one; and my stomach just got worse. Why must he torment me thus? Why?

"So tell me; who is she? Is she at your previous school? Or is she here?" His stupid grin just got bigger and he said "Why are you so interested?"

I looked at him like he was crazy. "Of course I want to know! I'm a girl; I like gossip!" well, gossip when it came to him anyway.

"Are you sure?" he asked me; or more like stated it. I did not know what he meant by that.

"What do you mean?" I asked him, even though by then I was starting to understand a little; probably.

His grin grew even bigger (Jesus! Someone's got to STOP him from doing that...that...that dumb smile of his). "You never know;" he said, with this mischievous look on his eyes, "you just might have fallen for me and might be asking me about my girlfriend because you're JEALOUS." He was joking. But me being me; I only realized that after staring at him for a whole minute; which he sadly caught on to and said "What? Did you think that you could hide your little crush on me forever?"

"In your dreams!" I replied to him, catching up to my senses before he could notice.

He was now full on smirking. "It's all right; I have this sort of an effect on girls. It's just my charm, you see, that the girls can not resist."

I raised an eyebrow, "uh huh; right. Whatever." Okay, I have to give credit to my incredible acting skills because I sounded so freaking cool; which was a billion light years away from the true condition of my mind then. "Besides," I added, "I have a much better choice." Wait, did I just flirt with him? Oh shit! Did it sound like that? I was not trying to flirt with him at all! I don't even know how to flirt! I hoped beyond hope that he did not think that I was flirting with him.

"Really?" he said, "so what sort of a guy DO you like then?"
I had to reply to THAT; I couldn't just be all "Sorry Aman, but I think I just flirted with you and I feel weird and I can't flirt with you because I have this giant crush on you and I think I'm going to leave now."

So instead, I pretended to be thinking really hard. I could obviously not say that my kind of guy was sitting right next to him and it happened to be the very person I was talking about my kind of guy with. Thankfully just then I saw someone wave at me from a few feet away from my bench. It took me a second to realize that my saviour was Ashita.

I waved back at her and she headed towards me. Ashita was looking really good, I noticed. Then again, she always looked. As she came closer, her footsteps sort of slowed down. I noticed that her gaze was not exactly on me but on something; or SOMEONE beside me. I looked from her to Aman, who had this really weird expression on his face, and then back at Ashita. Somehow, I got the feeling that there was no need for introduction here.

"Aman?" This was the first thing that came out of Ashita's mouth when she finally reached the bench.

"Ashita?!"

And the next thing I knew the two of them were hugging and jumping around; and squealing in Ashita's case.

When I had realized that they knew each other, I had assumed that they were classmates because I had not asked Aman which section he was in. But when they started hugging and jumping with excitement; I knew that they were WAY more than just classmates.

"Is there something I'm missing here?" I asked. Somehow, I no longer thought that Ashita was my saviour. They obviously knew each other very well. Not a very good thing when I was finally having a proper conversation with my first crush EVER. Great; now I would have to forget my first crush; because Ashita was obviously the girlfriend he had been talking about.

"Aman," Ashita said, "is my best friend. He used to live here before you came. We used to play everyday. Oh my God; I can't believe this. I'm meeting him after so long! Where were you?" she asked Aman.

"I had been in hostel; but you never wrote to me! You had promised me you would!"

That feeling I had been getting in my stomach had gone and was now replaced with another weird feeling. Man; my life DOES suck. I watched on as the two long lost friends talked about how they had mixed mud in Aman's dad's tea and how Aman had once pulled on Ashita's hair in class and she had been in trouble because of him.

I told myself:
Face it Priyanka, they make a completely cute couple. A sweet best-friends-falling-in-love couple. Cute. Very cute.

Then I turned to God and cursed him. In between I mentioned that he ought to send notices with cute guys saying that they have best friends they're going to fall in love with and that I could completely forget about him if I wanted any sort of peace of mind.

Ashita asked Aman to join her Salsa classes. Apparently they were beginning the next day. Aman was reluctant at first but then he agreed. Trust me; no one could say no to Ashita; not even the toughest guy on earth. It had a lot to do with her eyes. She would give you this puppy-dog look that you could not help but say yes to.

But whatever it was; they were a cute couple and there was nothing I could do about it. They completely deserved each other - both being super geniuses and great looking. And I was an ugly bat around them. What the heck; the least I could do was he happy for the two of them.

I excused myself claiming that I had a lot of work; which I did have, only I was not exactly planning to do them right then; and walked back home sighing at every step.

Yeah, life did suck if you were me; and there was nothing you could do about it.
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"Priyanka?" my mom screamed my name from the living room as I was busy sulking away into my pillow. I screamed back at her asking her what exactly she wanted from me. I was not in the mood for getting her reading glasses from the bedroom or getting her a glass of water. As far as I was concerned she could get her own water if she wanted.
Instead though, she wanted me to "See me in the living room."
I threw the pillow I was using as a mask for so long, onto the ground in irritation. Honestly, doesn't a teenager deserve some peace after heartbreak? Okay, well, it wasn't exactly some heartbreak; but honestly, why could Ashita not have come at another time? Then again; I had no right to be upset. I did not even LIKE him. I just had a small infatuation for him. Nah, I was just overreacting.
I got off my bed, picked up the pillow, threw it back onto the bed and walked to the living room to see mom looking at the news paper and talking over the phone.

"...Yeah...uh huh...yeah...tomorrow evening...sure...yes, with her...perfect! Thank you" She looked at me and said "You're going for dance classes from tomorrow." like she was talking about the weather.
"What?"
"You're going for dance classes from tomorrow evening. The same one as Ashita is. I talked to her mother this morning. They're supposed to be professionals." I blinked at her.
"Huh? Why?"
"What do you mean why? It's not like you do anything sitting around at home. This will be an extra sport for you. Don't worry; you'll enjoy. Ashita is there with you."
Oh my GOD! My mother; my OWN mother was out to make my life miserable! I can not believe this. I blatantly realized that now I will have to WATCH Aman and Ashita dance together. It was even worse than imagining them do it. Even their names started with the same alphabet! They were just MEANT to be together. Why was I even bothering to think about any of this anyway? It was not even like I thought I had any chance with Aman. Not that I really wanted to. No sir, I did not. And you know what; yeah, the two of them made an awfully cute couple; and from now on, I was going to support their love. I decided that I was going to work towards bringing these two together (That is, if they were not already together). It would make me feel so much better. It would be just like a cute best-friends-falling-in-love movie.
Deep sigh!!

That was how I had cheered myself up. However that night; I couldn't sleep at all. And it wasn't even because of the salsa classes; or Aman. I had actually cheered myself up about THAT ages ago. This time, I was upset because; okay, please don't laugh; because the kid in one of the shows that I watched hurt his knee and now he couldn’t participate in the running race. Now his arch enemy would win. Yeah, I know, it's silly. But hey, I get attached to people very soon. Or characters, in this case.

Oh well; whatever. Who cared anyway? It was as I was thinking all of this that I heard a knock on my window. I had been just lying on my bed like an innocent teenager does at 12:00 in the night when it happened. I was so startled that I jerked myself out of bed making my life-size doll fall off the bed. I saw a shadow outside the window. The light off the street lamp was falling on the person's back.

You have no idea how freaked out I had been at that moment. I actually stared at the figure standing outside for about a whole minute until my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I realized who it was. My eyes widened and I rushed to open the window.

"Aman?!" I practically screamed at him.

"Shhhh..." he said, placing a finger on his lips; "Hi."

I was too shocked for greetings at that moment. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"I was just taking a walk and noticed that the lights were on in this room. When I looked in, I saw this giant picture of yours" he said pointing at a picture of me that had been taken a couple of years ago at my birthday in my grandmother's place. My mom had liked the picture so much that she enlarged the darn thing and forced it on my wall. God; why do I have to have such a weird mom? Why? "And then I saw a giant doll on the bed and figured it was your room. Why were the lights on?"

"You were taking a walk at 12:00 in the night? Why?....oh wait; does this have any thing to do with your girlfriend?" I was trying very hard to divert his attention from my lights because I did not want him to know about my fear of darkness. Okay; I'm not scared of the darkness or anything. It's just that I get scared when I'm a little upset because I feel all alone...yeah, I know, I'm a freak.

Aman shrugged in reply and then said "I was just getting bored. And what is up with your obsession over my girlfriend?"

"You were feeling bored when the rest of the world was dreaming of their sorry love-lives or probably alien invasions?"

He looked at me in this weird way and said "Boy, do you dream about weird stuff or what."

I suddenly realized that he was still standing outside. I wondered whether I should call him in or not. But before I could say anything; he said "You know, it is polite to call people in when they're standing outside your door, or in this care, your window."

I looked at him in an amused manner; because, I really WAS amused; and then said "Who said anyone wants to be polite to YOU?"

"You know," he said, in this fake hurt tone, "I thought that we could be friends. But YOU, you have turned away such a great honour."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh all right. You may come in. I give up."

He jumped onto the window-sill and onto my room's floor. As he walked around the front of the window he said "By the way," I looked up at him from the floor (I had spotted the pen I had lost that evening under my study table). "Nice pajamas."

I felt my face grow warm as I realized that was standing in front of an actual GUY wearing PINK pajamas in my ROOM.

I noticed that he was wearing jeans, the same ones he had been wearing at the park. Even his shirt was the same. "Don’t you change before sleeping?" I asked him.

He turned around to face me; he had been fiddling with the pen (he had followed my line of vision and picked it up). "What?"

"I mean, you haven't changed... Normally people change before sleeping."

"Er, that would be because I'm evidently NOT sleeping?"

"I can see that! But don't you ever change before sleeping?"

"Nah," he said, sitting on a chair, "I sleep in anything... What's this?" he pointed at a long and flat wooden thing with a small doll stuck on top.

"Oh that," I said, sitting on the bed, "I bought that in Thailand. It's supposed to be a bookmark."

And then we started talking about Thailand and how I had gone snorkeling there and how scared I had been. He told me about Singapore and how he thought it was the best city ever.

We talked on and on and on. I felt so relaxed. The fact that I had a boy over at my room in the middle of the night hardly made a difference. I finally had a friend of my own now, besides Suman and Manasi. Ashita did not count because, even though I liked her a lot, we actually became friends because our moms knew each other. And now I had my very own friend. I was definitely not going to ruin it and think of my crush on him. Crush Shmush. It could all just go out the window. Only, in between the conversation, he would start laughing. And all the crush shmush would crawl back into my stomach and give me THAT weird feeling again.
We would have gone on for the rest of the night if at around 2:00am, mom would not have knocked at my door and demand it to be unlocked.

Aman got to his feet, not as quickly as I had, but not lazily either; and whispered "I think I should go now."

"I know you should." I whispered back. He gave me a last smile (more stomach churning feelings and hormones flowing in) and jumped out the window.

I went and opened the door acting all sleepy. I didn't have to act much though. I suddenly realized that I felt sleepy as soon as Aman left.

"What mom?" I asked her. She had wanted the headache balm. God! And she had to KILL my conversation with a cute guy JUST because she had a headache? Jeez!
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I watched the clock again and again as I sat at my study table pretending to be doing my math assignment while actually drawing a manga girl. 2 minutes to go...1 minute to go...60 seconds...10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...and it was 4:30pm. Mom would come in any minute to remind me of the salsa classes. I was supposed to leave at 4:30 pm for the 5:00 pm class; but I was not going to budge unless someone would drag me out. But no one was coming! What was wrong with her? Already a minute had gone by. If she would not come quickly, I could be late! And that too on my very first class! Another minute went by, but there was go sign of mom. Why was I bothered anyway? It was not like I wanted to go. So technically, I should have been celebrating. Only, something was holding me back from exactly that...and I dreaded whatever it was. Oh wait, I had wanted to go to support Ashita and Aman's relationship. Right. No wonder I was not celebrating. It was obviously the fact that I wanted two meant-for-each-other people to get together. It never had anything to do with any crushes or anything of that sort. BUT WHY HAD MOM NOT SHOWED UP YET????!!!!!!

Finally at around 4:37 pm, she knocked my door and screamed for me to get the hell out of there.

"Just a minute mom!" I shouted back at her. I was trying to finish my drawing's hand.

"Hurry up! And why do you lock your door? It gets annoying...come out Priyanka! You know, another one of Ashita's friends is also going for the dance classes, you might know him."

"I know mom!" I yelled back as I drew the last line. Then, realizing what I had done, I said; "I mean, Ashita had told me that another one of her friends was coming. He's my math teacher's son."

"Swell," mom yelled back at me. "Now will you please get out of there Priyanka; or do you want me to break this door?"

"All right! All right!" and with that I hid my drawing in the closet and opened the door.
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The building in front of which the car stopped was sort of dirty, which did not do anything to help my nerves at that time. But when we walked into the building and entered the door that said 'Antonio Dance Studio'; we were awestruck by its utter whiteness. It felt like walking into heaven - and not even because it made you feel all pure and happy. It was the mere whiteness.

Ashita was already there. This, I figured out because as soon as we entered Ashita started waving at me. The sight of her delighted me, as usual. But all the delight went down the drain when I saw who was standing next to her. It was none other than Aman. To make things worse, he was looking good. Very good. And it wasn't like he was wearing weird formal outfits that all the chicklits I've read keep praising. No. He was wearing normal jeans and a plain white t-shirt. Which was almost exactly what I was wearing. Except my t-shirt was black.

WHY? WHY ME?

Actually, why NOT me???!!!!!

Then I reminded myself that he looked super good with Ashita and forced myself to look at the two of them together. Yeah, they DID make a super good couple. BUT WHY????!!!!

I hate you God.

Mom left with Ashita's mom after the teacher, or dance master, or whatever he was came in and asked for the parents to 'leave the kids alone'. Of course there were adults there too. But they were of the younger generation. You know, in college or just started working types. I, however, turned out to be the youngest. That became evident when we were all asked to introduce ourselves.

After the introductions were done, we were all asked to do a few warm up exercises. I noticed the ease with which Aman was able to bend and touch his toes. Ashita wasn't doing so badly either; which was expected if you were her. She was a great dancer as I had mentioned earlier. Unfortunately for me though, I stank at it. I could barely go beyond my knees; forget reaching my toes. That just proved to me that Ashita and Aman made such a cute couple. I reminded myself for the 100th time that I was going to bring these two souls together.

After we were done with the exercises, Sir; the easiest name for the teacher, or instructor, or master, or whatever he was, I could come up with; asked us to stand in pairs. I looked around in confusion at all the people walking around standing next to each other in pairs. I noticed that more than just one guy went and stood next to this really pretty girl who was doing 3rd year pure art called something like Kate or Katie or probably Kacy (Curse my poor memory!). Of course when they noticed it, they politely left and stood next to someone else. Sadly none of them actually came and stood next to me. Which of course did not come to me as a big surprise because; hello? Not only was I NOT the prettiest one around, but I was also THE youngest. But as I said, it hardly came to me as a surprise. However, what I had not thought of, or not noticed was that there were an odd number of us. And as luck would have it, the number of girls beat the number of boys by ONE; who eventually turned out to be, no points for guessing whatsoever; ME.

When everyone had selected their respective partners, I was still looking around at them...in hope for some random guy jumping out from behind the White drapes. But no one did.

I was still standing there, my face completely warm with embarrassment, trying very hard not to look in Aman's direction; when Sir came up to me and asked me in this weird accent I can not possibly describe(something between a French ,an American and an Italian?), that somehow, I had not noticed before "No partner?"

I sheepishly smiled back at him and shook my head in reply. "That is not a problem. I'll dance with you. Okay?" I just smiled back at him. What else was I supposed to do?

After that he taught us a step. We were supposed to bring the right foot forward, then move it back and then do the same with the left foot; all of this while holding our partners' hands AND shaking our hips - more like butt to me. But whatever.

We practiced that step for about half an hour. And since I was dancing with Benjamin, Sir - he asked me to call him Benjamin, not sir; I had to dance with him in front of everyone. As a consequence, of course, I saw Aman and Ashita's every move. They were pretty good. In fact, as far as I could tell, they were doing the best. Ashita had to be the best dancer there, but Aman wasn't bad; not bad at ALL. After that, he made the girls sort of fall onto the left side and the guy hold onto her and save her from actually falling. And boy did I NOT fall or what. I mean, Benjamin's pretty darn good. No wonder he was teaching.

And you know what; even though it was a little embarrassing that I had no partner, and that I wasn’t exactly very graceful; I had loads of fun. Whoa! How did THAT happen?
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That night Aman strolled into my window at around 12:00am. I wasn’t sleeping because I couldn’t. I had been listening to a random song on the i-pod when he jumped in. I had left it open that night because the breeze was good...okay fine, I had left it open in the hope that Aman would come. God, I was so pathetic! I had even stayed in my jeans for it!

That night we talked and talked and talked until I started yawning and he looked at the watch. It was 4:00 in the morning.

As he was jumping out the window, he said "Bye. See you tomorrow." I felt my face warm up for the hundredth time that day. And this time because it reminded me of how I had thought how good looking he had looked then; which in turn, made me notice him at that time. Yeah, he was too good to be true. Way too good.

After he left, even though I had been sleepy just a moment ago, I could not sleep; because I kept thinking of Aman. He was really way too good to be true. He was breath-taking good looking; he was cheesy, sarcastic, funny and smart. He was also great at school. And he, even though he was the topper, had taken up commerce with computer science; a subject that hardly any good student took up, like Ashita. She had taken PCM-E; which was one of the popular choices. To top all of this, Aman was a great dancer, and athlete, if what he told me was true. He had said that he used to play basketball. Gawd! He was perfect. How could anyone EVER be so darn perfect? How?

When I mentioned it to him, he told me that he could not write a poem if his life depended on it, and that I was lucky that I could write 'such descriptive and deep poems'. Honestly, how useful was that? I hardly got a 75% in English; forget becoming a poet. Then he told me that it did not matter how much I got in English when 'so many feelings were swimming in the sea of my thoughts'. That had been when I had raised an eyebrow and told him not to try and that I got the point.

I don't know when I actually did fall asleep; but the next thing I knew mom was trying to wake me up by banging on the door. Sheesh! I was getting up!
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He did not come the next night. But I figured that it was because it was a school night. I won’t lie, I was disappointed, but it ended up being a good thing, because I had been extremely exhausted after that day's salsa class and I still hadn't finished my homework.

The next week went by like a breeze with school and salsa classes everyday; beating all the energy out of me. I hadn't seen much of Aman except for this once at school when it had been break time and I saw Aman and a few other 11thy boys, one of them holding a basketball, walking back into the main school compound from the basketball ground; all sweaty. I know that it's gross, but he looked really good then.
STOP IT!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Friday, I saw him this other time during PT; apparently, we had a common PT period; standing and talking to a few of his guy friends; a few of whom I recognized. I knew the long haired guy and a short guy with short, but great hair. They were in the school band. I think the short one was Anshul and the other one was Vivek. As he was been talking; I saw Ashita come up to him and talk to him.
Oh yeah; nice time for me to have seen him.

Suman caught me looking then; and I got this huge lecture from her about how it was disgusting of me to be staring at a popular guy. She had thought that I had been staring at Anshul. I didn't say anything to her because; what was I supposed to say? That I wasn’t staring at the guy she thought I was staring at but at this other guy? Yeah right! But it turned out that I did not need to because she suddenly stopped. When I followed her line of vision, I noticed that she was staring at Aman. A wide smile appeared on get face. She turned around to look at me. "Oooooooooooh! Someone's got a CRUSHHHHHHHH!"
I rolled my eyes at her and told her that he was just my friend and that he was already in love with Ashita. Which was a big mistake. Again; why can't I just SHUT my mouth sometimes? Because when I told her that he was a friend she knew that there was something she had missed.

"What do you mead FRIEND? You KNOW him?!"

"Who does PK know?" Manasi walked in on us.

"No one" I said, much too quickly. Oh shit!

Manasi raised an eyebrow and Suman smiled. That was when I knew that I was going to have to tell them the whole thing. I sighed and asked them to follow me to the tree under which we usually sat during PT. And then I told them everything from when I first met him at Sujhata's house and the park and then about Ashita and how she looked great with him and then the salsa classes. I just mentioned the night time meeting and tried to change the topic. Sadly, both of them caught on to it.

"You let a BOY into your ROOM at 2 in the Night?!!!!!!" Manasi almost screamed with disbelief. I just shrugged back at her.

Suman then shook me with the shoulders and said "and you have been quiet about all of this?! How could you? That guy totally likes you, you ass! You complete ass!"
I argued with her and pointed toward Ashita and Aman laughing and talking with each other. "Besides; I don't like him"

"Yeah; and I'm the Queen of England." Manasi said, being sarcastic.
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That night I was sulking on my bed; my face buried in a fluffy blue pillow Suman had gifted me. I had just watched an awful movie - Bridge To Terebithia. The girl in that movie died at the end. I hated movies that did not have happy endings. Why did she have to die anyway?

It was as I was sulking into my pillow that I heard Aman's voice from my window.

"What's up?" He was sitting on the window sill. I was in a very bad mood and I was not at all in the mood to talk to him. The fact that Manasi had said that Ashita had a greater chance at Aman than me had not exactly made me want to talk to him any more than how much I did NOT want to.

"Don’t annoy me!" I groaned into the pillow.

"Who're you talking to?" he asked me.

"Leave!" I said looking up to face him.

"Priyanka, you look awful!"

"I'm not," I said, sitting up and placing the pillow on my lap, "in the mood for this in the middle of the night." I knew that I was being rude. But honestly, it wasn’t like he was going to ever like me more than the little ninthie girl even if I were nicer to him. He was way too occupied with Ashita.

"Okay; so what are you in the mood for?"

"Being alone?"

"Sorry, not on the menu."

"Go."

"That movie sucked - I heard."

"You're bad at jokes. Don't even try."

"Look who's talking."

"I can too tell jokes!" I got to my feet.

"No you can not!" Aman jumped off the window sill and took one step forward.
"I can too!"
"Can not!"
"Can too!"
"Can not!"
"Can too!"
"Can not!"
"Can too!"
"Go ahead then." he said folding his arms across his chest.

"Fine," I said, folding MY arms across my chest; "why did the chicken cross the road?"

Aman rolled his eyes.

"To get to the side Aman! There. That's a joke. Ha!"

"No Priyanka," Aman said holding my shoulders and giving me a little shake, "it was probably because you were trying to crack your dumb jokes on the side the chicken was standing earlier."

I glared at Aman for a moment. "Just leave."

Aman let go of my shoulders, turned around, and raised his arms into the air. "Dear lord!" he said dramatically, "The poor girl has lost sight of the light! Please show her the path to happiness!"

"Get," I pulled on Aman's jacket and pushed him out the window, "out."
Aman fell onto the long, soft grass outside, got up on his feet, and looked at me. "You EVIL child! You have attempted to murder!"

"Not yet, Aman. Not yet." And with that clarified, I shut the window, turned around and headed for my bed. "I hate him."

"I heard that!" Aman shouted from outside.

"Shut up!" I shouted back; smiling.
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Have you heard of déjà vu? It's like you have a feeling that something that is happening has happened before. But can you call having a feeling that something is GOING to happen déjà vu? Well, whether you can call it that or not; that was exactly what I was feeling at that time. I mean when I was sitting in the car on the way to salsa class. Somehow, I felt that something important or extraordinary was going to happen that day. And boy, had I been right or what.

I walked in as usual; expecting to see Ashita and Aman deep in conversation. I had always been late. And when I went in; I did see them talking. They waved at me and I joined in...If standing and watching the two talk about Uncle Sam from Kentucky was called joining in, that is.

As I was standing there getting bored; I looked around at the usual crowd. Kate with her usual flock of admirers; Harish and Manya, the newly married couple; Fatima, Neerul and Payal, the three girls from 1st year engineering who I talked to once in a while...and a random, strange looking teenager leaning against the wall alone with his hands dug deep in the pockets of his jeans. He was wearing a shirt, with its first button open and sleeves rolled up. He had hair, slightly brownish, on the longish side. He had completely black eyes and he was WEARING GLASSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RIMLESS GLASSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He looked like Shahid Kapur from Jab We Met.

I always had this weird thing for glasses. And as a consequence, I kept staring at him.

"Hello?" some one tapped on my shoulder and woke me up from my fantasy. I turned around to see Aman look at me in a quizzical manner. "What are you looking at?" he asked me. I was way too dazed to reply. When I didn't answer, he followed my line of vision and saw him. I saw Aman raise his eyebrows; WAY up. "Who's he?"

I shrugged at him and said, "Do I look like I know?"

"He," Ashita said, "is new; I guess. But whatever it is, he's a bloody looker!"
You see? That was why I always liked Ashita. She actually agreed with me on most of the guy matters.

Aman shook his head disapprovingly. "THIS is what you girls keep talking about?"

Ashita shrugged and said "If guys can do it; why can't girls? Don't deny the fact that you guys check girls out too." Another proof of the fact that Ashita was really one of the rare intelligent seniors that we had. But I wasn’t listening to her. I was too busy looking at this new dude to hear how Aman replied. But I did understand that he said that at least guys did not do it in front of a girl.

Just then Benjamin came in and asked us to join our partners. Of course; I just stood where I was standing because I did not have a partner.

After everyone took their positions; by now we had positions - well everyone else did. Benjamin had not given me a position yet because I didn't have a partner and I could hardly do the steps properly with HIM; forget teaching me a few solo steps - if solo steps even existed, that is. All I knew was that I had not been given a position yet.

The new guy was still leaning against the wall. But now that I had been singled out; he was looking at me. Benjamin then told us that his nephew, David, was going to join us and that he was going to be my partner. There is no need for me to tell you that the new guy was David; or that Ashita was looking at me enviously and so was Aman, but I doubt that he was looking at me enviously.

Apparently, David had agreed to join in to fill in the place for my partner. We were going to have a show two weeks later and Benjamin did not want me to be 'left out'.

And so it came to be that my new partner was David, the "Super Hottie", according to Ashita.

Benjamin played the song and we started. And then I came to know that my new partner was a bloody great dancer. It turned out that he was a professional; and he had won about millions of competitions in all sorts of dances. And he was just three years older than me, which would make him about 17!

He took my hands in his, and literally guided me through the steps. He pulled me down in the dropping step and then placed his arm on my hip at exactly the right moment. Two things happened one after the other when he did that. One, my legs became limp and I almost melted in his arms; and two, Ashita tripped and fell onto the floor, taking Aman with her.

Benjamin stopped the music and everyone was looking at the two of them trying to get to their feet. Ashita started laughing; actually she had been laughing since she had fallen. As a result, everyone was laughing. Everyone except Aman, and me. I was too busy trying to help Ashita up and Aman was too busy apologizing for dropping her.

As I was pulling Ashita up, I think I stepped on her sleeve (which was long and flowy) and slipped. More laughter broke out from the crowd.

"Are you all right?" David asked me; lending me a hand.

I said that I was and took his hand as Aman helped Ashita up. I don't need to tell you how touching his hand felt like someone was sending electric shocks into my fingers; which was why I had almost blacked out when he had held me. And if it were not for Ashita's dramatic fall; I probably would have fainted for real.

While we were walking out; Aman had remained quiet for most of the time, smiling to himself. Which was really weird. Honestly, why would a normally talkative boy suddenly stop talking and start smiling to himself?

I was just getting into the car after Ashita; we always went back together; when David passed by. I noticed him and said bye. He waved at me and said "By the way, you're very good with your fall. I think we could practice the feet and the spin tomorrow? Before Benjy comes?"

I could not help but be amused at him calling Benjamin Benjy. "Benjy?"

He laughed back good naturedly and said "It's what my mother calls him. Annoys him a lot. So I call him that. You should see his reaction when I call him Benjy."

"Anyways, sure." I said, "Besides, it's not every day that you get to practice with a famous dancer."

"Aw come on!" But you could completely see that he liked being called famous.

Before I could say anything else, Aman knocked on the window. "Sorry to interrupt you, but we have to leave."

I said bye and sat in the car. And as soon as the car started pulling away, Ashita started telling me that I was the luckiest girl ever. Boy did she act blind well or what. I mean, MY first crush, EVER, was in love with HER; and I was lucky?

"He HAS got class though;" Aman commented. That was when I completely lost hope. I mean, you would expect a LITTLE jealousy? And apparently, even his knocking on the window and asking me to stop wasn’t done out of jealousy. His driver had to rush (we were using his car that day; the last day it had been my car). I know that because I asked him.

I know, I know; how desperate can I get?
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The next day, I went early; for the practice David had been talking about. I walked in to see David already there; leaning against the wall. I swear; my knees went weak. Oh yeah; alone with a cute boy. Finally.

I couldn’t believe my luck. Sometimes God was nice to me. Wow!

"Hi." I greeted him; all cheerfully. He smiled at me and nodded. Okay; I completely would have tripped and landed on my nose if I had not grabbed the door's handle in time.

"Ready to practice?" he asked me.

"I could never be more ready." I replied. I knew that it was lame of me to say that; but I forgot all about it when he said "Now this is what I like in you. Your spirit is superb."

I grinned back and said "Well you'll see a load of my spirit then." Which was equally lame. But honestly; my brain was hardly working at that point of time.

"That will just make me like you even more then."

I just blushed. I swear to God; I had never blushed before in my entire life. And now I was blushing!!!!!

But I was not just going to stand and let him watch me blush. So I waved it off saying "Can we dance now?"

"Sure," he said in this; there was no other word for it, so sorry; sexy tone. I blushed even more as he moved toward me...and then held me.

Okay, I felt like molten wax; there is no other way I can describe what I was feeling at that time. Because he just HELD me, and then swayed a little; and there I was, swaying with him like someone was molding me.

He held my hand up and started twirling me around. Then he stopped and pulled me toward him; I almost fell into him; but before that he twirled me around and I landed on him on my back. After that; we held hands and did the butt-shaking step. Till then I had sort of been in control of myself, at least a little. But at that point, when he suddenly slipped his arm around my waist and leaned forward, making me bend backward; slowly, very slowly; until his other hand, which I was still holding; outstretched my arm and then bent it to my back; I lost complete control of my senses. My other arm was just hanging in the air because, frankly, I hadn't the faintest idea of what he was doing. But I sure knew that it wasn’t salsa. Had he forgotten that we were supposed to be doing salsa and not some other sort of dance? Because it looked like he had suddenly switched to another style - it was too slow to be salsa.

He was swaying me and then holding me and swaying me. I could hardly breathe at that point thanks to him constantly touching me. Now that I think of it, it sort of freaks me out; thinking about how closely we were stuck to each other. And really; in a dance, the closer you get with your partner, the better. But we weren't even doing the dance we were supposed to.

That, of course did not occur to me at that time. I was just too stunned; and awed to an extent. Well, hello? You would be completely floored too if the guy you were dancing with danced so freaking well!

It was while he had completely wrapped me up with my face tilted up, only half an inch away from David's (a point at which I was sweating with nervousness - what sort of a dance was this anyway?); that the door opened and someone came in.

As soon as the door had opened I had turned my neck to see, of all people, Aman. When David noticed that I had turned my head around, he looked at who it was that I was staring at. When he saw Aman, he released me and said hi; all casually. I could not have opened my mouth for the love of me.

Aman nodded to David, turned to face me and then said "Hi Priyanka". But he did not say it as cheerfully as he normally did. I gulped, yes, I actually gulped; and then said "Hi."

There was an uneasy silence when I decided to break it. "So...Where's Ashita?"

"She must be on her way" That was all he said. So I tried to make some more conversation.

"We were practicing..." Okay, I know that it wasn’t exactly the best way of making conversation; but what was I supposed to do, huh? Too much pressure on a 14 year old; okay? Not to mention the utter embarrassment of it all.

He simply nodded back. "I saw you that day on the basketball ground. I didn't know you played - that too so well."

I was bluffing. I had just seen him leaving the basketball court. So I had no idea he even played.

He just nodded again and said "Yeah...I play a little…"

Thankfully Sushant, a fellow salsa mate, enters right then.

When class started that day, I was hardly paying attention. That was because I kept looking toward Ashita and Aman. Of course, as a result I ended up almost stepping on David's foot. Almost, because he was too good a dancer to have actually let me step on his foot.

Aman and Ashita danced really well that day, as usual; and seemed to be having fun, as usual again.
Period.
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That night, Aman didn't come. But I did get a phone call. And no, it wasn’t from Aman. It was from Manasi.

I took the cordless to my room and locked it. This was how the conversation went:

P-Priyanka; M-Manasi

P: Hi
M: What're you doing?
P: Nothing. Just lying down on the bed and staring at the fan. Oh, and talking to a nutcase.
M: Very funny. What happened to Sujhata's son? Didn't come tonight.
P: He normally comes at 12:00 in the night. It's just 11 right now. Even though I doubt he's going to come today.
M: Why?
P: I don't know...

I told her all about the dance with David and how half way through he switched to some other sort of a dance. I told her about how close we were standing and how I had completely lost control of my senses; which had been when Aman had come.

M: PK, you are the stupidest moron he met in my entire life.
P: Why? What did I do now?"
M: It is so obvious that he likes you. He got completely jealous when I'd saw you with another guy, that too such a good-looking one, according to you, anyway; why are you such a moron?
P: Manasi; get this straight. He likes Ashita. You should have seen him when he was with Ashita. He had this glow on his face every time he is with her. And besides; she is so much prettier than me. Why would anyone like an ugly toad like me?
M: …You are never going to believe me are you?
P: What do you mean?
M: Who, on earth told you that you were ugly?
P: Er, excuse me? But as surprising as it may seem to you, I happen to have a mirror. And besides, how many people have complemented you on how nice you look on Children’s' Day when you come in your fantastic clothes? Loads of them. But how many people complement me? None. Except, of course, for mom. But moms don’t count! Are you trying very hard to flatter me and failing miserably at it?

On Children’s' Day, we normally had a carnival at school and we were allowed to wear anything we liked.

M: PK, do you think that I have any sort of a reason to be flattering you? No one complements you because you have the dressing sense of a crow. You wear nothing except black. Which is good, but there are so many nice ways to wear black. And who said that looks even matter?
P: Of course looks don’t matter. Not when you're in dream land. But in real world, they so do.
M: Either way, PK; you are pretty and no matter what you say, it's going to remain that way.
P: Are you trying to force me into believing I am something that I am clearly not?
M: Take it that way if you like.
P: Whatever.
M: Actually, you know what? I'm coming over to your place tomorrow. You free?
P: Sure; but what happened?
M: Nothing. I just realized that you are a bloody dolt and you need my desperate help.
P: What?!
M: Bye PK...

And before I could say anything; she hung up on me.

I threw the phone onto my study table and switched off the lights, leaving the bed-side lamp on. I decided that I might as well read the chick-lit I had borrowed from Ashita.

At around 1:00am the phone rang. I ran to pick it up before anyone woke up in the house. The caller ID said that it was Suman. I pressed the 'Talk' button.

P: Suman?
S: Hi! Sorry to call you so late. But I just spoke to Manasi. She told me that you thought Aman would not come today because he got jealous over David. Is it true? Did he come or not? Oh my God, is he there right now?
P: He is not here. (I was literally hissing into the phone). And no he did NOT get jealous over David. God, where does Manasi get her ideas? In fact, he was pretty much enjoying himself with Ashita.
S: Well, I'm coming tomorrow too. I really need to have a good look at this boyfriend of yours.

I could not utter a word after that. Boyfriend? BOYFRIEND? This was going too far.

S: PK?
P: Suman, he is not my Boyfriend.
S: Well, he is going to be anyway.

I rolled my eyes. After stating that lie she hung up on me and then I flopped onto my bed. There had been too much of excitement that day for me to handle.
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The next day, Suman and Manasi arrived at around 10:30 am and as soon as they came; they dragged me into my room and messed up my entire closet. Manasi picked the most girlie top there was and Suman picked the smallest skirt she could find. Thankfully Manasi threw the skirt back into the cupboard when she heard that I had not touched that skirt since I was in the 5th standard and that I only used it at night even then.

They emptied the bag they had brought along with them and there was an avalanche of make up products right there in my room.

After that I just sat like a dumb doll while the two of the lunatics were giving me 'pedicures' and 'manicures' and 'facials' and new 'hairdos'. I swear, I had never heard of such funny words in my life.

I had let them do whatever they wanted...till they dug out the girliest and most 'in' outfit for me. And they found that in MY closet; and I had no idea these clothes even existed. It was fun watching the two idiots fuss over me with all the weird liquids they were carrying with them. But I was NOT going to wear hideous bitch clothes.

Ultimately, they forced me into it. Darn, I really needed to work my will power. What was worse, they intended to make me wear that to the salsa class that day. Yeah right. I was not going to wear those skin-tight blue jeans I remembered mom had bought me once, and that pink and grey stripped long dress-like top with a HUGE neck cut; I'm front of so many people. I mean, I could handle the bitch pants, but what was up with the extra bitchy top that the chicks the dudes dig, wear? Sadly, my own mother back-stabbed me and told them that they had done a good job. Oh boy...

What was even worse, they had even opened my shoulder-length hair and put on some kohl. I drew the line at lip gloss.
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Manasi and Suman accompanied me to class after which mom was going to drop them home. I was literally sweating when I entered the room. Aman was already there. Ashita had not arrived yet. I spotted David talking to Kate, and I thought better than to disturb them.

I walked to Aman, who was staring at me. Okay, it wasn’t like he was STARING at me like guys normally do in movies. He was just looking at me in a weird way.

"Hi," I said, not looking into his eyes. I was too embarrassed because of all of that eyeliner and those dumb girlie clothes.

"Hi," he said in this funny tone, "...What...what happened to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don’t know..." he said vaguely; "you look different. Did you get a nose job done or something?"
I laughed at that. "Oh God!" I said, "You think I got a NOSE JOB done? Where do you get your ideas?" suddenly I forgot the makeup and the clothes.

"Well, you DO look different…"

"Yeah..." I was reminded of it again. WHY???!!!! "My friends forced me into these clothes. How do I look though? Is it too awful? I never wanted to wear this stuff. It's way too girlie for me..."
I know, I was half asking him how I looked and half justifying myself.

"It is true," he said bringing his dramatic act on again, "that the fair lady looketh beautiful beyond words..."

"Really?!" I was a little more than taken aback by his words. Then he added, "...and it is also true that I am an established liar of sorts."
I punched him on his arm. "Ow!"

"How rude!" I said.

Ashita arrived a little while after that and then Benjamin came in. When David and I got to our positions, and after I said "Hi," all cheerfully; he said that I was looking good. I was surprised, pleasantly, I guessed; and thanked him. I then added that he always looked great so there was no point in me telling him that he looked good. He simply smiled, trying very hard not to look flattered; but it was easy to see right through it. Yeah, he loved it when people complemented him all right.
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I was lying awake in my bed, my lamp switched on; thinking of what colour I should pick for a monocolour painting that I was thinking of doing. It was around 11:15pm then. There was a sudden knock on the window. I almost fell off the bed.

"Aman?!" To say that I was shocked would be the understatement of the year. He NEVER came on a school night! What was wrong with him?

I opened the window and Aman jumped into the room. "Hi," he said. I looked at him like he was crazy because, well he WAS crazy.

"What are you doing here?"

He looked at ME like I was crazy. "Standing, evidently?"

I exhaled out loud to bring down my excitement. "I meant, it's a school night. You never come on a school night."

He looked at me suspiciously, "I don’t?"

I just blinked at him. "All right, if you really want me to leave..." he reached for the windowsill when I grabbed his arm."

"Oh God; seriously now!" I exclaimed.

He stopped and then said "Can I ask you something?"
"What?"
He looked into my eyes very seriously, took a step toward me, bent a little down so that his face was at level with mine, making my heart beat like it was a rocket; and said "Do you happen to have an extra pen?"

I looked back at him, my heart beating at its normal pace again. "You came here FOR A PEN?!?"

"Er yeah?" he said like it had been so bloody obvious all this time. But his stupid, goofy grin said otherwise. "Right." I said, heading toward my bag.

"I can't find my pen and all the shops are closed now; so I thought I'll get one from you." he explained to my back as I struggled to find my pencil box, cursing him. I finally found the dang thing, found an extra pen and threw it at him. Sadly, he caught it and said "Thanks! Whatever would I do without you?"

"Do you know that you're a pain?" I told him.

"Yeah..." he sighed, "a pain you are not going to get rid of very soon."

Yeah, I wished. Of course, I didn't say that out loud. All I said was "Now can I please get back to my bed?"

"You want me to tuck you in?" he mocked me. Okay, THIS was war. I picked up the nearest pillow and threw it at him. He blocked it and ran onto my bed. He had left his shoes on the floor. He then picked up another pillow and threw it on me. I caught that pillow and threw of back onto him. And then began The Pillow Fight.

At one point in the pillow fight, I sort of slipped on the carpet and almost fell onto the bed. Aman had been ready to attack me when I fell on top of him, bringing him down with me.

I landed on top of him and he was struggling under me. I placed both my palms on the floor and attempted to push myself up. Unfortunately, my hands slipped again and I fell bang on his chest, injuring my poor nose.

"Ow!" I screamed with pain. Aman was laughing. Moron! "What are you laughing at?" I grabbed the nearest pillow and hit him with it as he continued to roll with laughter.

I lifted the pillow high above his laughing face. But I couldn’t bring it down on him. That was because I had seen him laugh his head off right there; lying there under me. My heart got faster and faster and faster, louder and even louder than ever until it felt like an elephant sized fist was banging against my chest, as I stared at him, dazed. His smile was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and his laughter the most beautiful sound.

He suddenly stopped laughing when he noticed that I was staring at him. I came out of my daze, threw the pillow at him and jumped off him.

"Ow!" he was taken by surprise. I was standing now; I turned around, facing my back to him, and said "I think that I have pretty much established the fact that I can tuck myself into bed. Thank you. And so your assistance is no longer required." I sounded really calm, but I could hardly breathe.

I heard him get to his feet and climb out the window. "Thanks!" he shouted as he jogged away.
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The whole of next week, I tried my best to ignore him without making it obvious. Manasi was very pleased to know that Aman said that I looked nice. And Suman was pleased that he had not stopped taking to me 'out of jealousy'. Boy, were the two mistaken or what.

Of course, the two and their reactions only made things worse for me. Here I was, trying very hard to make myself stop liking him; and continuously STARING at him; and there two were going on about how he was so jealous of David.

God, when would they ever learn?
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Tuesday and Wednesday classes went on normally, and David was proving to be an excellent partner and Ashita was proving to be completely awed by him, but still not leaving Aman's side.

With only about three classes left for the show, we had to practice very hard. The show was going to be on Sunday; and all the relatives and friends of the participants were invited; and everyone wanted to do their best.

However, in all of this excitement, on Friday, Ashita did not come...and neither did David. Apparently, David was "busy with other responsibilities". Of course, I knew the REAL reason - I had heard him talking over the phone the other day. He kept saying "...On Friday honey...sure sweets...yeah baby...yes, I'll be there..."
You get what I mean.
Ashita's teacher was giving her a test on Organic Chemistry. And so she was busy studying at her place.

And so, due to the absence of our partners, Aman and I were forced to dance together.

He walked towards me, smiling. I smiled back at him. Thankfully, the excitement about his smile had worn out by then...or so I thought; and I was pretty much ALMOST unperturbed by the fact that I was going to dance with him.

We held each other’s hands. Sadly all of the wearing out his smile had undergone had been compensated by his touch. I had thought that David's hands were like shock treatments. If it was that, then Aman's hands were like ice. Heavily frozen ice straight from the Antarctic. It was not that they were cold. Oh no... FAR from that. They felt like ice because they sent shivers through my spine. And this time, I wasn’t imagining the shivers like the electric shocks. Oh no, I was ACTUALLY shivering. Thankfully; the music started playing before Aman could notice and we had to start dancing to the very fast music.

Aman was not as good a dancer as David, but somehow, it felt a lot...nicer...dancing with him. Because in between he would suddenly crack dumb jokes or make faces at Benjamin when he would tell us that we needed to do our steps a little more carefully. But when he made the faces, he did it in a nice way; not in an insulting way.

Then the beat went slower and we had to do the spinning and falling step...for which we had to stand REALLY REALLY close. My heart started banging against my chest again as he drew me closer and closer and closer. I was too dazed to be aware of what I was doing. Aman was doing all of it, I guess. I don’t know. I was just looking into his eyes, and he must have been looking into mine, because I could see his pupils and I was sort of lost in those pupils. But I was not so rudely interrupted when he lifted my hand into the air and spun me...and then I dropped into his other arm. I know that of sounds horribly cliché, but there you go; his arm felt like it was made to fit me into it.

Whoa! I had been Reading too much romance! It was either that or I was living a fantasy...a very very sweet one.
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That night Aman jumped into the room when I was Reading my most favourite chick lit. It was the part when the guy and the girl finally realize that they loved each other all along. He came in at exactly the part when the boy gifted the girl garlic flowers just because Dracula had been her favourite book of all time and she had never actually seen garlic flowers. He had sent a card along with the flowers saying 'I finally read that book of yours and I wish that you turn into a vampire.' The girl had been annoyed by this. But there had been another note attached to it that said 'If you turned into a vampire, I'd allow you to bite me just so we could be together forever. By the way, yeah; please look out the window.' And when she had looked out the window, she saw a giant sign that said 'I love you'.

Aman was not exactly very pleased by it when I told him though. "What was so great about garlic flowers?"

"Don’t you see?" I tried reasoning with him, "She had always wanted to see what they looked like..." when my attempts went completely futile, I said "God, you are so unromantic!"

"And how can you be so sure?"

I sighed. "What do you mean?"

He thought for a while and then said "You want to take a walk outside? We could pay a visit to the park?"

I decided that he had officially lost it. "Are you mad? What if my mom walks in?"

"It would be safer than her finding me here." he said, "Moms get a little weird when they find boys in their room."

"And you speak by experience?" I mocked him.

"No, just common sense."
I frowned. "Very funny Aman."

"Thank you, now can we go?"

"How can I trust you?" He just stared at me with a raised eyebrow.
"All right, all right; I'm coming. Just let me find my shoes."
Once I was done struggling with my shoes, the laces of which I had not bothered to open; we jumped out my window. I had made sure that the door was locked.

As we were walking on the quiet street, we hardly spoke. We just walked, enjoying the nice breeze.

As we approached the park, a small conversation started. We were just randomly taking about salsa classes and school when the conversation suddenly turned to David. By then we were in the park, sitting on my bench.

"You guys seem to have come really close..." Aman said. I got a weird feeling that he was not quiet liking what he was saying and it quiet excited me.

"Not too much I guess..." I replied vaguely.

"Not too much?" he looked incredulous, "You two seemed to be pretty close to me that day."

Was I fantasizing or did he actually sound jealous? "We were practicing..." I said, biting my lower lip, "even though, I really would not mind it if we actually got that close...he IS pretty good-looking..."

He looked thoughtful for a moment and then said "I think that he's a little too old for you."

"Really?" I was enjoying this, a lot, "and how old do you think is right for me?"

He looked really thoughtful; very very thoughtful, then looked straight onto my eyes and said "How old do YOU think he should be?"

I frowned a little in thought and then finally said "Ah, whatever. He's already got a girlfriend."

"Really?" he said looking (could it be?) a little relieved. I then told him about the phone call.

"What if he had not had a girlfriend?" Aman asked me, looking at my eyes again…

I smiled and looked back into his eyes. "Why are you so concerned?"
He didn't reply. He just kept looking into my eyes, and I kept staring into his. It was like time had suddenly stopped and there was nothing else on this earth except for his eyes, staring into the depths of mine. And like his eyes were magnets, pulling me towards them, or a black hole. I don’t know how real it was, but somehow, I think our faces were getting closer and closer and closer... when there was a loud beeping noise. I jerked my head away instantly. The noise had come from my digital watch indicating that an hour had gone by. I checked it, according to my watch it was 1:00am.

"I-I think I should up back...it's too late to be outside" I was stammering. Exactly what I needed at that time, NOT.

"Er, yeah; I'll walk with you..."

I let him walk with me and said goodbye to him at my window.
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The next day, I was sitting at my desk trying very hard to solve a math problem and failing miserably. That was exactly what I was going to do on Monday, when Sujhata, Satan herself, I decided; was giving us a test. If it was just another one of her useless tests, I would not have bothered. But oh no, if I flopped this one, I was going to stay back every single freaking day! My God! And to think Aman was HER son!

It was around 2:00 pm when mom came into my room with a confused expression on her face. "Do you know anyone called Aman?” I noticed that she was holding the cordless phone. I felt the blood leave my face...had he actually CALLED? I did remember giving him the number...

"Er, yeah...he goes to my salsa classes," I replied, "he's Ashita's partner. Remember? He's my math teacher's son?"

My mother, after hearing this just threw the phone at me and walked away muttering something about how I got more calls in the house than my dad, who got a hell lot of calls, by the way.

P: Hello?
A: Priyanka?
P: Aman? Hi.
A: Hey! What're you up to?
P: Nothing, just struggling with math. Again.
A: Want me to help?
P: And how do you think you're going to do that?

How was it that, every time, I sounded completely cool when I was completely not and possibly having a heart attack out of hypertension?

A: I could come over if you want.
P: THROUGH THE WINDOW??!

Trust me, I was way more scandalized than I sounded, and I sounded VERY scandalized.

A: Of course not! I'll come through the door. Just tell me your house number.
P: Er; number 24.

I had not been too sure that I wanted to give him the number or that I wanted him to come. But I thought it would be completely rude to be all "I don’t want you to come!"

Then there was this part of me that was going YAY! AMAN'S COMING!

Yeah...........I am really pathetic.


The door bell rang around fifteen minutes after that. Thankfully I had told mom why he was coming home or mom would have completely thought that we were going out or something. Moms are blind really, which is why she would have never figured how ugly I was and how Aman would never ask someone like ME out. He was just helping because his mom was my teacher and he probably wanted to help her out or something.

But whatever it was, I could not help but be reminded of Michael and Mia..................Could it really be? I mean, could he really like me? As in, LIKE like me?

No way! Not happening on THIS planet.

I went and opened the door and stopped breathing. OH MAN! I had so completely LOST IT!

There he was standing looking so tall and nice and so, so freaking good-looking. No wonder I had stopped breathing.

Sigh...

Sadly, my staring at him had to stop and we had to head to my room to study math.
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I could not sleep all night. And thus time, it wasn’t even because of Aman. I had had a fun time with him. And we actually finished the freaking chapter! Can you BELIEVE that?

After that, we left for salsa class together.

Why I could not sleep all night was because that day, it was the last class. On Sunday, we had the show. And I was sweating with nervousness, and the ac was on full speed!

But the amount of nervousness I had been having in the night was nothing compared to what I was going through backstage right before the shoe. EVERYONE was there. Mom, Dad, Suman, Manasi, SUJHATA, Ashita's parents, and even my uncle from New York.

I was biting my nails and Aman, Ashita and David were trying their best to keep ME calm.

"But what if I suddenly fall?" I asked, biting deeper into my nails.

David grabbed my bare shoulders in frustration. I was wearing a black sleeveless dress like the other girls. "You don’t have to worry about THAT Priyanka," David said, "I'll handle that."

"Priyanka, you'll do fine yourself." Aman said, eyeing David's hand on my shoulder. That sort of made me feel happy, but not enough to forget my nervousness.

But somehow, somewhere I felt that things would go perfectly. Just like in Princess Diaries. Because, this was a dance. And I was there. And Aman was there. And he looked great. And the stage was waiting for us. And Benjamin was announcing us. And we were going to go on stage. And I and David were right in front. And the whole crowd was there. And the whole crowd was going to see me. And suddenly the feeling that everything was going to be fine vanished.

WHY DID BENJAMIN HAVE TO PUT ME RIGHT IN FRONT??!!!
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The show went GREAT. Manasi and Suman thought that I looked the best of all the girls, they were just being nice, and they thought that David was the handsomest. Which basically implied that we made the best pair, and danced the best thanks to David. After us, Ashita and Aman were the best. I thought they were THE best, but everyone else thought that I and David were better. Oh well, they could have all just been trying to be nice to me.

Whatever it was, it was the best night EVER!

I was standing there, surrounded by mom, dad, Manasi, Suman and my uncle who was saying something about how I should go and live with him. But the person I was looking for was nowhere to be seen. I excused myself and went to look for Aman.

If this really was the Mia moment, then it had to have Aman in it. Because, Michael tells Mia that he loves her and had always loved her from the beginning at the dance at their school.
And after that they kiss. I normally don’t like the kissing parts in books, but this was one of the rare ones that I kept and kept Reading; again, and again.

And I was well... You know....hoping....you get my point don’t you?

I found Aman in the green room..............and it really, REALLY was the true Mia moment. But not for me. It was the perfect Mia moment for Ashita. And this time, I was not assuming.

I always had this weird déjà vu thing. And this time, I was not too happy about it. Because this time, my déjà vu was coming true much too accurately.

I had been right; the two of them had the best friends falling in love thing going for them. And I guess that my first thought had been right all along. Ashita was his girlfriend. The one he had been talking about.
Either they had always been going out from the beginning or he had just proposed to her and I had just missed it.

Because this was no proposal. Oh no it wasn’t. It was a kiss; a full blown kiss.

Just like Mia and Michael...
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