|Chapter Twenty|

Shuffling on her feet at the Deshmukh's doorstep, Aisha fiddles with the strap of her shoulder bag which carries the few Maths textbooks, stationery and notebooks. The weekend has been pretty silent and Aisha ain't complaining. After the madness which unveiled last night at Payal's birthday party, this peace was indeed much-needed.

The door flings open to reveal a mop of wild, brown hair framing that slender face, hazel eyes peering at Aisha, resembling the beginning of summer –neither too cold, nor too scalding, just the right bit. Clad in an ashen T-shirt and tracks, Vivek leans against the doorframe with a small smile gracing his lips, glancing welcomingly at Aisha.

"I really thought you'd be skipping today's tuition," the boy speaks, watching Aisha with surprise.

"Why?" Aisha asks, tilting her head, "because I hate maths?"

"Just the fact that Veer's puked thrice since morning and is locked in his room, hungover," Vivek explains, "I just assumed you'd be facing similar situations."

"Oh," Aisha blinks, feeling pity surface for Veer. But at the same time, wasn't this something she was expecting anyway? The boy had literally soaked himself in those drinks –doesn't matter whether intentional or not –and such an outcome was confirmed anyway.

"Come on in," Vivek holds the door wide for her to walk in. Smiling, Aisha hops her way into the house and makes a beeline for Vivek's room. Though he's smiling with warmth and communicating breezily, something about Vivek has been off and Aisha can feel it. This air about him that feels counterfeited surrounds him, altering his usual aura altogether.

Settling over the floor, near the coffee table, Aisha places her bag over the wooden surface and leans back against Vivek's bed. Her eyes silently trail Vivek's tall figure stroll inside, closing the door behind him before he seats himself in front of her.

"Where's everyone?" Aisha asks, trying to start a conversation like always.

"Mum's out to attend a relative's wedding and dad's accompanying her," Vivek responds, his hazel hues fixated upon the pages of the mathematics textbook.

"So it's just you and Veer at home?" Aisha points, earning a silent nod from Vivek.

"Okay, so about the trigonometric ratios-" Vivek begins with a determinate tone, failed attempts of keeping casual clearly evident on his face.

"Are you okay?" Aisha finally asks, her eyes assessing Vivek's face with concern. The boy pauses with what he's doing –his pen hovering over the blank page with contemplation –his eyes still set over the calculations.

"Vi?" Aisha asks again, her anxiety rising with every beat of silence.

"Yeah, it's good," Vivek speaks, resuming with scribbling over the page resolutely.

"You're sure there's nothing you wanna talk about?" Aisha asks, recalling the phone call which Vivek had had last night at Payal's place. Why didn't Vivek want to be home? Who caused such thoughts to evoke within him? Who was he talking to?

Questions seem to be the only solid element as of now; with none answered yet.

Sighing, Vivek peers up at her with those hazel eyes. "Yeah, it's all good," he repeats, a sense of conclusiveness lacing his gaze and Aisha wonders whom he's trying to persuade into believing that statement; Aisha, or himself?

Nevertheless, Aisha thinks it's better to let go for now. Poking the boy ceaselessly, pressurizing him to speak out, would do nothing positive. She's barely about to nod and tell him to resume with the session when the shrill doorbell echoes across the house, bouncing off the walls and forcing it's way past the closed doors.

Aisha furrows her brows with worry when Vivek snaps his head up, looking at the closed bedroom door with wide, dreaded eyes and stance still as a stone. His fists are clenched tight over the book, knuckles whitening with the force, causing Aisha to fear if he'd break a few bones.

"Whoa, hey, hey, Vi? Listen," Aisha speaks up, reaching out and placing her hand over his forearm. She retracts her hand the moment it touches the icy cold skin over Vivek's arm and the boy flinches back at the contact as if yanked out of a trance.

"Huh...?" he mumbles, clearly disoriented.

"It's just a visitor," Aisha tries to pacify whatever uproar has risen within him. "I can check who it is, if you're not feeling like answering the door," she adds thoughtfully.

"No, it's...it's fine," he waves off, eyes darting away from her face as he pushes himself off the floor and practically runs out of the room, leaving Aisha further confused.

The boy returns with a calmer demeanour after answering the door. Aisha peers at him questioningly, demanding who it was. "Apparently mum forgot to take the wedding gift with her, so they came back for it," Vivek explains, settling back and resuming to the calculations.

Aisha's left partly relieved that Vivek's visibly relaxed but the other half is still worried, concerned about the unspoken issues he's struggling with.

___________

The deafening sounds of hairdryers working and scissors snipping is all that surrounds Aisha as she focuses her eyes over those dark, long auburn tresses. Holding a nervous breath, she shakes the metallic can in her hand before spewing a considerable amount of hairspray over the floral hairstyle which resembles a bunch of little roses. It's a bridal hairdo and Aisha can only hope for the judges to give her decent scores for such an experiment.

"Time's up, contestants!" the shrill voice of the host echoes past the aisles of styling stations and silence befalls as the hairdryers go mute and the scissors cease with their endless nipping.

Used to the drill now, Aisha places all her equipment back in place before wishing a bright good luck to her model as she skips out of the aisle with the rest of the contenders.

"How did it go?" Veer asks with a grin as Aisha reaches her group awaiting her in the audience section.

"I tried to fuse in three different methods of floral hairdos and it looked amazing, so," Aisha leaves it there, shrugging uncertainly.

"So basically you're gonna kick some ass today," Payal adds with a grin, making the rest of them to smile and laugh.

"I hope you came up with something original rather than copying my work, Medhi," a smug voice seeps into the group's range and they turn to find Tarika Mehta strutting off to her group of seven, her strawberry-blonde tresses bouncing about with identical arrogance.

"I hope you find a place which accepts bitches like you, pink phony," Payal calls after, ready to jump into a fight. Vivek reaches out and holds the spectacled girl back before she heads off to pounce on the former.

"Ignore her, the models are coming to the stage," Aisha waves off, averting the group's attention to the uplifted platform where the judges have been waiting since the very beginning.

The models begin to emerge out of the backstage in a coordinated line, pausing at the end of the stage and flaunting their hair before waiting for the judges to assess each one of them.

"There's the floral style Aisha's talking about!" Veer is quick to spot as he excitedly points at the fifth model who walks in.

"Yeah- wait... no, what?" Aisha begins with a beaming smile but it pulls into a confused frown as she spots the face of the model. "That's not my work," Aisha says, unable to recognise the woman who is apparently posing the exact copy of her hairdo.

"You sure?" Vivek asks, sensing the panic in Aisha's voice.

"Yeah," Aisha nods fervently, "I mean, the style is exactly like mine, but the model is different and she's got those red highlights that just bring out the design more strongly..."

"I think that's Aisha's one then..." Payal mutters as she points at the seventh model who walks in. Aisha nods in positive when she recognises the woman.

"Another coincidence?" Veer asks, his brows furrowing with worry.

Aisha can't seem to fathom words to express her bemusement. She had worked so hard for four hours straight, trying to come up with a new hairdo to compete against the others. But yet again somehow she's ended up making a replica, the way Tarika likes to put it.

The three judges too seem perplexed when they come to realize that the fifth and seventh models have got the exact hairstyles. Shaking their heads, they scribble down their scores.

"Seems like we've got another coincident pair if hairstyles today," the host speaks as she glances at the names of the contestants. "Tarika Mehta and Aisha Medhi have come up with identical styles."

"Why am I not surprised?" Payal groans, throwing a glare in the general direction of Tarika who is apparently shaking her head with disappointment at Aisha.

"Tarika's gonna be a few scores ahead of me now," Aisha mutters, causing her friends to glance at her with worry.

"How are you so pessimistic?" Payal asks, trying to cheer her up.

"It's called being rational," Aisha argues, "Tarika's hairdo has got those extra highlights which add colour to the whole thing. Mine is just bland auburn. That's a huge alteration."

Sighing, Aisha glances down at her feet with defeat while her friends go on arguing with one another about this strange coincidence. Aisha knows she should also be a part of this confused discussion but all she can feel is a sense of drowning into misery. She feels a gentle hand wrap around her wrist and the next moment, Vivek's leading her out of the crowds, towards a secluded corner.

Reaching the desolate space, Vivek let's go of Aisha and steps back to look at her with his hazel hues which speak volumes even when it's nothing but silence which exists between them. "Aisha, think," Vivek says after a moment, "who all are the people that knew you were going to combine three iconic bridal hairdos before you stepped into that styling station?"

"It was just you, Payal and Veer," Aisha answers, sighing as she leans back into the wall behind her.

"Aisha, think harder," Vivek probes, his brows furrowed. "Wasn't there anyone else who knew about your ideas?"

Biting her lip, Aisha nods hesitantly as she watches Vivek's brows quirk up questioningly. "I talked to Jayden and Shweta while we were skimming through the styling equipment," she tells a very furious Vivek.

"For God's sake, Aisha," Vivek sighs, "Why?"

"Vi, relax," Aisha defends uselessly. "They conversationally told me first what they were gonna make. So it was only logical of me to tell them what I was planning. Besides, if Jayden or Shweta had to use my hairstyles, wouldn't they use it for themselves? Wouldn't they want to win this?"

Sighing, Vivek shakes his head as if the argument makes no sense to him. His response ticks Aisha off in a way she wouldn't want. She realizes that while Vivek gets to bottle up his issues and goes on drowning in his worries, he expects Aisha to provide an explanation for every single thing she does –and blatantly disapproves of her doings as well.

"They are gonna announce the scores now," Aisha mutters before pushing her way past Vivek, striding off back to the crowd, ignoring the intense gaze focussed on the back of her head.

_______________

Author's Note:

A very late update, I know people! Don't bother committing homicide over this poor little author *ties up her shoelaces in case she has to run*

What can I say? Exams pretty much answer everything, eh? I mean, I hardly got time to glance anywhere else!

See y'all at the next update!

Love,
Arhana <3