My cousin Riya is sitting beside me and ranting about some school drama going on between her classmates.

I half listen to her while scrolling through my phone and nod along occasionally. 

The doorbell rings and soon Rehaan bhaiya enters the living room. He is still in his football jersey and he drops his backpack by the door before plopping down on the sofa next to us. 

“ Ma, juice please. I'm so tired.” He calls out to my aunt and rubs a towel over his face. 

My twin brothers scurry over to Rehaan bhaiya with a plate of samosas, “ So bhaiya - “

“ Did you win ?!”

Rehaan bhaiya stares at them with narrowed eyes while the twins eagerly hold their breath and look at bhaiya with eyes full of anticipation. 

“ What do you think ? Of course we won ! “ 

“ YAY OO LALALA” The twins scream out in victory and nearly jump over Rehaan bhaiya. 

“ Where's the trophy bro ?”

“ It's with the coach. But I have pictures.” 

“ Show us.” Arsh says excitedly. 

“ First, do some work. Fetch me that tomato ketchup.” 

Arsh immediately scurries away like a minion and completes the order, handing the bottle to Rehaan bhaiya. 

Rehaan bhaiya squirts some ketchup in the corner of the plate and enjoys the samosas while showing the twins the pictures from his football game.

“ Arzaan, Arsh- go away, let Rehaan rest first.” Ammu orders the twins as she passes by .

The twins scowl but obey her orders nevertheless. 

“ Show us the pictures too.” Riya says as she gets up and sits on one side of Rehaan bhaiya. 

I follow her movements and sit on bhaiya's other side. 

We watch the pictures from the game. There's one picture of Rehaan bhaiya hoisting up the golden trophy alongside his teammates. And then a single shot of bhaiya followed by a group picture of them throwing up their coach in the air in celebration. 

“ Wow, it seems fun.” Riya mutters and bhaiya smirks. 

He then changes the slide to another group picture. 

“ Let me see more clearly-” Riya says as she tries taking the phone from his hand.

“ No ! Watch from here.” Rehaan bhaiya moves away the phone just as Riya’s fingers zoom in on some random people. 

While they're caught up in a fight for the phone and start bickering, I manage to take the phone and observe the picture. 

My eyes fall upon a guy with jet black hair who seems quite familiar. I slide the picture towards the left and when I see the dark brown haired boy beside him my heart starts hammering very fast. 

It can't be - 

“ Oi Arya ! Why did you take the phone now?” Bhaiya exclaims as he reclaims his property from my hands. 

-

That night when everyone fell asleep, I start my mission. 

I sit on my bed with my ipad in front of me, with a steaming cup of chocolate milk held in my hand to give me energy to get through the night.

I open Rehaan bhaiya’s profile and go to the recently uploaded post full of pictures from today's match. 

Sure enough, all of his teammates are tagged. 

Now I just have to go through each of their profiles. 

After an hour of searching I finally take a break. 

I know this is too good to be true. 

What are the odds that the cute stranger I saw at the restaurant on new years eve would turn out to be my cousin's teammate? 

It was the same guy in the picture right? 

I couldn't be completely sure as it had been three months since I saw him after all. I just remembered a vague outline of his face and how I had felt when I saw him. But I obviously didn't remember his face clearly. 

I took another sip from the cup in my hand. The glucose gave me energy to start searching again.

There were only five profiles left to see now. 

I could have asked Rehaan bhaiya about that guy's name directly instead of going through so much trouble but what would I have answered him if he had asked me how I knew the guy or why I wanted to know about him ?

He would have definitely made a chutney out of me if he knew what I was up to. 

I clicked on the next profile which showed a guy with curly hair holding up a cat.

 No , Mr.Cute  didn't have curly hair. 

So I skipped him and clicked on the next person. 

This profile had a football field as the profile picture. 

XIraadX

This guy had his feed filled with funny memes. 

I took some time to go through the memes and I must say he had top notch humor. 

I don't know what I was thinking but a sudden rush of adrenaline came over me and I sent this profile a friend request. 

This was an account I used to post book reviews of my favorite stories anonymously so there was no chance of the boys finding out my identity. 

To my surprise, I immediately got a notification and saw that someone had accepted my request. 

But then I finally saw a picture of him wearing sunglasses and posing in an infinity pool. 

This wasn't the guy I was looking for either, but he looked very familiar. I was sure this was one of the friends of the guy I saw in that restaurant. This guy was there too that day.

This meant I was very close to finishing my mission. 

Some people may call this stalking but I prefer the term research. 

After all, it's just to satisfy my curiosity. 

I open a new profile and my heart quickens upon seeing the profile picture. 

Zihaad is the username.

It is that cute guy. Finally.

But There's two boys in the picture. 

One is who I am looking for and the other is his dark haired friend who I also noticed in the restaurant, bringing the pizza to their table.

How do I know which of them the profile actually belonged to ?

I nervously opened his profile and scrolled down.

I saw a picture of the dark haired guy with pale skin strumming a guitar in a cozy background. 

This wasn't my target either. It was again one of his friends.

I clicked on the comments and saw his friends had left a number of praises. 

Writing a song for me aren't you - Saad 

I clicked on Saad’s profile and my heart started beating uncontrollably. 

This was it. The profile picture showed the person I was looking for posing with a cute kid in his arms. 

Adrenaline coursed through my veins and my lips turned up in a victory smile. 

“Saad”

I lightly whispered his name out loud. 

His latest post was from a few hours ago where he posed with the trophy with the green field stretching for miles behind him.

His back was turned around and the number 10 was imprinted on his jersey. 

I scrolled up and clicked on the comments in his profile picture.

Some girl called Naomi had commented -

“ My son with a tiny human.” 

Saad had replied to her with - “ No, your son with your grandchild.”

Immediately my mood soured.

He had a kid ?! How was that possible?? He must be around Rehaan bhaiya’s age so Saad must be around 22-24 at most. 

How come he has a child ?

But then I saw another comment from some random lady, “ May the bond between you cousins always remain steadfast.”

I finally let out a breath of relief, it was his cousin. 

I spent the next few minutes scrolling through his feed and came across a picture of him standing on a podium with his arms outstretched on both sides while his friend Zihaad held his torso in the famous Titanic post.

The comments under this post was next level.

“ How come you're cheating on me?” - XIraadX

“ Why did you leave early? Missed all the fun” - Zihaad

“ Just to make it clear Zihaadi that girl was calling you bhaiya and not me” - Saad

“ Shut up Saadi, we all know I'm the better looking one.” - Zihaad

“ You guys wouldn't have stood a chance if I was there and what's with all the ‘i’ after names” - Iraad

“ Are you feeling left out Iraadi” - Zihaad

“ We also saw our future bhabi there” - Saad

“ The heck ? Shut up y'all” - Iraad

“ What are you idiots talking about?” - Iqra 

“ Now where did you come from ? Mind your own business!” Iraad

“ You wait and watch I'll put insects in your bed tonight.” - Iqra

“ Oops- twin battle.” - Saad 

I found myself giggling after reading their messages. They sure seemed like a tight knit group of friends. 

It is said that people are more emotional after midnight. It may be true because I don't know what possessed me to send a friend request to Saad. 

My heart rate quickened and pessimistic thoughts put up their stations in my head. 

What if this is a wrong decision? Well he doesn't know who I am anyway.

I put away my ipad for now and tried to go to sleep. But it was to no avail.

The Fajr azaan sounded in the background and I got up to pray, pouring out all my worries in my prayer. 

As I rolled up the prayer mat and took off the scarf around my head, my ipad pinged with a notification. 

I opened the device to see the words 

“ Saad accepted your friend request.”

and 

“ XIraadX sent you a friend request” 

Glowing on the screen. 

Seems like they're all night owls like me.

✨

Author's Note

I know this is long overdue and my sincerest apologies for that !

Life got in the way and also - I had actually written a few new chapters for this story but my Google doc somehow got deleted and I lost all my writings. That's why I was too sad and tired to rewrite everything. Today all of a sudden I was missing these characters a lot and decided to try writing again and here's the end product (:

This part may feel a bit rushed. I feel like my previous writing was more detailed but since I lost it , the wounds still come up here and now.

Anyway I don't even know if anyone is gonna bother reading this but I feel like I should at least introduce the names of the male lead and his friends - Saad, Zihaad and Iraad.

I have each of their stories planned in my head but no idea when , if ever they'll turn into actual books. ( In Sha Allah someday )

But if I have active readers for this story then I may consider continuing with Saad and Arya's Journey further.

Till then they will all live on in my heart and mind XD

Another thing is that I don't want to rush anything . I want to take time to properly plan out all these character's journeys because this particular story " Accidental Crush" is actually inspired by my own real life events and hence hold a very special place in my heart .

Till next time , love A.M.K

P.S. I've started writing other proper books "Ghost- Struck" and "The Eid Cute" which are also stories I'm sure you'll enjoy so do check them out on my profile!