If I Had A Love Story - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I was lying on my cot with my phone in my hand. It was way past my sleep time.
"I should have atleast waved her a bye. I had screwed it up. Now what would she think of me?" my thoughts wandered unnecessarily.

I opened my whatsapp, went to our class group and searched for her number. I found her number. "Diya", her username read and her about had a lamp emoji. Her dp wasn't visible as we hadn't saved each other's numbers yet. I clicked her name and selected message. I typed a Hi! with an introduction and a sorry for what happened today message. My thumb hesitated. "It's rude to message a girl whose number I took from a group" my thoughts warned me. I backspaced everything I had typed and decided that I would speak to her tomorrow in person and get her number. I locked my phone, put it to charge and was going to sleep. My phone beeped, lighting up. Ignoring it, I removed my specs, lied on the bed and made myself comfortable wrapping myself with my blanket. My phone lit up again a few more times. Yawning, I got up and reached for the phone to see who it was. I saw three messages.

I didn't know where my sleep went but excitement crept in from nowhere. I didn't want to reply instantly and also couldn't contain my excitement, I opened her messages right away. Her whatsapp DP was visible now. It showed a yellow minion laughing at me. I texted a Hi! and a "yes, I'm awake" back to her before she could go offline.

I used the time between her replies to save her number (The minion in her DP was still laughing at me, when I clicked it to get a glance of her profile pic in full screen).

I sensed a deep feeling of care. Discarding all other thoughts, I went to sleep. We had started exchanging Hi! s whenever we met and started chatting occasionally during our breaks. After the classes, we walked together to our hostels.

Soon, we had our first cultural fest of the academic year - Agni in our college. Some had already planned to pack their bags to go home. This was also a perfect opportunity to hang out with friends till late night. There was too much fun in store for three days. Popular celebrities would be making it to the fest and the entire college would be lit. It was the second night of Agni. My friends and I were hanging out near the Main Gallery at the sports ground. I sensed someone calling from my back and turned around. I saw Diya at closeup with her scary face, enough to jerk me. I was scared to hell for a moment. She then comforted me trying hard to stop chuckling and finally we sat to talk. She schmoozed about her school life, her crushes and love stories. Then we all sat in a circle and played months (That January February game, I don't know what's it actually called). It went on till the RCs came and shooed us and we decided to retire back to our hostels to avoid any more trouble.

I could still remember the first time we went out. One day, she turned up for the class with reddish and swollen eyes. I looked up Google Maps for nearby eye hospitals and found one at Adyar. We reached the hospital and they did almost all the tests available with them and gave an eye drop and some medicines (The health centre at college was no better though they would have diagnosed cancer for a conjunctivitis case). We returned back to college hoping that the eye drops would make her feel better. My first official day out with a girl was done. I didn't have much of feelings for her then except for the feelings of concern for her, she had looked really awful with her red swollen eyes and I wished that she would be alright soon.

She got well soon. We started hanging out more. Our favourite place was Odyssey at Adyar rummaging the store for gifts and other stuffs there. She used to get exhilarated on seeing Teddy bears and minion dolls (The normal girls stuff, I presumed). During one of our visits, a huge yellow teddy bear caught her attention. Enthralled, she stood near the bear holding one of its hands. I clicked a picture of her and burst into laughter. She was wearing a yellow chudi and dupatta and when she was standing near the bear, I couldn't tell them apart. I ridiculed her that we had found her identical twin. She scorned at me after which she had started explaining me how cute the photo was and my poor taste for these dolls. After the havoc we wrecked there, we stopped by Sangeetha restaurant to fill our stomachs. We feasted on a cone dosa devouring it piece by piece and finally fought for the last piece. She won the final piece and ate it putting up a gleeful face, mocking me. I acted like I was angry though I was smiling inside. I would have given it to her even if I had taken the final one. We then relished our falooda to the last spoon ending our feast. But then I was starting to enjoy her company the most of all.

P.S.: The screenshots of the chats are included only to engage the reader and are fake.