M A N I K

Fuck.

2pm. Yes, that was the time and I was getting bored with these idiots with no sign of Nandini. Why the fuck did this sleeping beauty like sleeping so much?

"That's it. Now I am waking her up!" Aryamman growled. Why the fuck will he wake her up? If anyone will do that, it's me.

I gave him a look and he sat back at his place with his finger on his lips. I am still the monster when it comes to Nandini. I don't like sharing things that are mine.

"Aryamman, she's been very tired. And she needs rest, let her sleep!" Abhi smiled at him.

Tired? Rest? Why? And why the fuck does he care? Was she serious when she said she was married to this jerk? Or was she serious when she said she was pregnant?

Fuck. I will go mad.

Suddenly, my eyes fell at her walking to us. Short red dress, straight long hair, black blocks. This didn't look like the Nandini I have known. She had changed so much, and I didn't like that. Not that she didn't look beautiful, but it felt that the girl in front of me was someone else, not my Nandini.

Or maybe she was never mine after all.

"She's wearing the heels we just bought together before coming!" Aryamman shouted in the air to no one in particular. Each passing day, he confirms he's Gay.

"Hey guys!" She chirped as she reached us. My eyes snapped at her immediately and she gave me a smile but I didn't reply anything as I looked away.

Jealous? Yes, you can call me that.

I pouted a bit and looked away. I bet I was looking mad, my hair messed and my lips in a pout like an angry bird. A giggle left her mouth looking at me.

"Sit Nandini!" Cabir called pulling her a chair as she sat between Aryamman and Cabir, her Karan-Arjun and I was exactly opposite to her with DhruLya on our one side and Mukti and Abhimanyu on the other.

"Oh Nandini, you're wearing my dress!" Abhi smiled from the other end and she smiled at him.

"Your dress?" Mukti asked, confused as Manik spat the water he was drinking, as all eyes snapped on him.

His dress? Did he just say his dress?

I looked at Nandini and the red dress she was wearing somewhat looked like a girls dress only, then how the fuck was this girls dress Abhi's?

"The dress I gifted I meant!" He corrected smiling sheepishly and I released the breath I didn't know I was holding.

I actually thought Nandini was wearing his clothes, which usually girlfriends and wives do. If it was so, I would have slaughtered this jerk.

Nandini's eyes met mine again and she asked me a What through her eyesbrows, smiling lightly.

I gave her a weak smile before looking away again. What was wrong with me?

I got up from there and left. They were all calling me but I didn't actually care to look back. What was wrong with me?

Why was I not being able to look into Nandini's eyes? Was the guilt actually taking over me?

Of course it should. How could I have fucked Soha? I actually don't deserve her love, I really don't. But what if Nandini is also married to Abhimanyu?

Shit! What was wrong with me? I was going mad, so mad.

Just then, my phone beeped.

1 new message from Gay.

I smirked as I opened it, I loved calling Aryamman Gay. I never want to agree it that he  is a sweetheart, so gay sounds better.

"I asked you to show Nandini you love her by showing her you have changed, not by ignoring her."

Frustration ran through my veins as I threw my phone back into the pocket. Nandini got her closure, didn't I deserve mine?

There were so many questions running through my mind and I needed an answer to all of them.

Just then, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"What the fuck, don't you understand I want to stay alone-......" I lashed without even turning back.

"Manik?" Her soft voice filled in my ears and I finally turned behind to see her angelic face.

"Nandini!" I sighed with a weak smile, "I am so sorry".

She smiled at me. "Kya hua Manik? Why are you so frustrated?" She asked.

How well she knows me, and this is once of the reasons I lo-.. yes, love her. This sounds so strange from my mouth, I never thought that I'd ever fall in love but that happened, this girl changed the impossible.

"Nothing Nandini! I don't know, I just feel helpless", I said honestly. I wasn't keeping anymore secrets, anymore lies from her. I had lost her once, and I wouldn't want to even think about that twice.

"Helpless?" She frowned. "Helpless about what?"

"I.. I don't know. It's been a year, and it's like I don't know anyone anymore. I know nothing about you, I know nothing about my own friends! We were Fab5, no secrets at all, and then suddenly, I make a few mistakes and I lose everything. I didn't even know whom my own best friend was getting married to!" I finally let it out.

I looked at her and she was smiling at me calmly. "Give things time Manik, time to settle down. Not everything is in our hands, jo gaya voh gaya, you can't change anything about it. But nothing is lost Manik, we can start over!" She said, shocking me.

"We can start over?" I asked in shock and she smiled, nodding her head in a yes.

Wasn't she the one who said this was our end last night, phir kya ho gaya?

"We can. We can always build new memories, forgetting the old memories. A new friendship, a new relationship, but this time, with no secrets and only a lot of trust!" She said smiling and I felt as if a burden was lift off my heart.

She was too good, too good to be in this world. If I would have been her, I would have never given a second chance to a person who slept with their ex and didn't even remember it until they wake up naked and see a video!

"Manik, stop thinking of the past! We're staring fresh!" She said keeping a hand on mine as if she had read my thoughts.

I looked at her with a black expression before a smile broke out on my face. Shit, I hadn't smiled in the past two years and this felt so good!

"Thank you!" I said from the depth of my heart and for the first time, meaning what I am saying as we both sat by the rocks, in a sheltered place.

"I promise you will see the change in me, I promise you'd not face any problem because of me!" I said honestly, meaning what I'm saying.

"I want to face problems because of you Manik, but I want you to be by my side in it, not against me!" She confessed looking into my eyes.

I felt so nice, she was really an angel, an angel in the monsters life.

"Nandini.....", I asked hesitatingly.

"Yes Manik?" She said giving me a comforting smile.

"Are you like-... like married to that gay-..... I mean guy!" I said stammering.

The smile of her face disappeared and she closed her eyes. I felt the burden of my heart returning.

"Yes Manik!" She said opening her eyes and I felt my heart tear apart into a few million pieces.

I knew it! Of course, I knew it! She was really married, she was actually pregnant with his child! It's okay, she deserves love and that's what she got.

A monster like me just dragged her into hell, breaking her. And she got someone who was her Prince Charming, who loved her until she forgot what pain was. She got the love she deserved.

I smiled weakly. "I'm happy you're happy with your love!" I said as I got up and started walking away.

Fuck. That was so difficult! That's the most selfless and difficult thing I have ever done, but it also made me happy. I let her go, I free her if the monsters clutches.

I stopped in my tracks as I heard loud laughter. I turned around to see Nandini laughing like a maniac.

"He.. is.. my.. brother!" She laughed but I was too blinded by my pain to hear anything.

"Yes, that's what I said. He's your husband!" I laughed a bit trying to show I was happy.

She got up laughing and she stumbled to reach me, still laughing as she pulled my cheek.

"He's my brother Manik, brother!" She laughed more.

BROTHER?

"Yes, brother!" She laughed.

Oh, did I say that aloud?

"Yes you did!" She answered my thoughts.

What the fuck? Is she a mind reader?

"No, I am not a mind reader. You're just predictable!" She laughed more and I pouted.

But then eventually, I ended up laughing with her. I was jealous of her brother!

Fuck. What was this girl doing to me?

Still laughing, I held her shoulders and I jerked her closer. She immediately stopped laughing and her eyes widened.

My hands travelled to her back and I held her close.

"Thoda aur has lo!" I said huskily in her ear and she nodded her head negatively, her eyes widened with the proximity we were sharing after one and a half years.

"But I don't like him, Abhi- or whoever he is!" I cringed and she looked at me confused.

"You're wearing his dress, Aryamman's shoes, what is mine?" I frowned. I might sound like a girl, but when I'm with her after one and a half years, I'm sure nobody wants to see the monster.

Her lips broke out into a beautiful smile. She brings out the worst and the best out of me and I'm just so unknown of that.

"This!" She said breaking out of my hold pointing at herself.

"This smile on my face, this is what you give me. Everyone tells me I have a beautiful smile, and I tell them this exists only when you are near!" She said looking into my eyes.

This was just one of the million reasons I was in love with her.

I thought she was flirting, but this was the most beautiful confession I have heard in a while.

I was smiling, and she was smiling too and we both looked like maniacs, but I don't care, because maybe this is what love does to the monster.

I held her arms once again as I pulled her and she crashed against my chest.

I put my hands around her, holding her protectively and possessively.

"Thank you for coming back into my life, Nandini!" I whispered in her ear as I scented in her hair after two years, feeling heaven.

"Thank you Manik, for everything!" She whispered back and that confused me but I didn't say anything.

Though we were never committed, I broke her promise, I cheated on her with Soha, it was because of me that Soha insulted her on national television and she had to leave. I am at fault everywhere, yet she chooses to give us a fresh start, and she has to say thank you to me? Why?

I didn't drag the topic much as we broke the hug.

"So, now what.......", she asked me, as she but her lower lip.

"Now!" I whispered huskily as I took a step towards her.

I held her back and our bodies touched, no space for air to pass too.

The redness on her cheeks, that blush on her lips and that shy eyes. That was something that I always wanted to see on her face, because of me, just me.

"Don't ever play jokes with me, specially if that involves you!" I whispered as I leaned forward, our noses touched as mine brushed with hers roughly, her eyes closed tightly.

"I would have kissed you now, but you know I have changed a lot!" I said with a smirk and her eyes snapped open, wide open.

I laughed at her expressions, I wondered if she could get any cuter.

"I want to win your trust!", I confessed kissing her forehead slightly.

The only thought that those gays or those jerks can have a chance on her scared me. Yes, I have made my share of mistakes but I didn't want to lose her. Not now, nor ever.

"happily ever afters exist, but it was just not us, baby"

"thank you for destroying my happily ever after in the worst way possible"

Her words from the letter she had left me echoed in my ears in her voice as I held her tighter.

We are all made of our own insecurities, I was made it out of my own. The only thought of she belonging to someone else made me mad, made me feel like vomit.

You can call me mad, but this is what I am, this is what is my love for her.

Our faces were close and our breaths mingling together.

"You are mine!" I ordered. She looked at me shocked.

"Tell me princess, you are mine!" I begged.

She closed her eyes as she rested her forehead against my chest once again.

"I am yours, monster, yours!" She breathed calming every cell of my body.

I knew I had found my ultimate solace. Right there, in her, in her arms which made me from Monster to Majnu?

"Manik?" She called me closer with her hands. I knitted my eye brows in confusion but I leaned forward anyway. She came closer too.

And the next moment, her lips touched my cheek and my body froze. That rosy lips, over my skin, after one and a half years. A shiver ran down my body and my goosebumps rose. I have never felt this way. Never before.

Maybe this is what love did to me. Or maybe, this is what her love did to me.

Either ways, it's only her. I'm hers. And I can't ever regret it.

~I found heaven in her smile. And for the first time in forever, the monster inside me faded, and the stars hidden in me begin to shine~

~•~