Greetings everyone! Ananya here. A big thank you to each one of you for your love and appreciation of my stories. Happy reading!
Twinj: It’s Always Been You: Episode 13
A quick recap: Twinkle’s friends begin acting on their plans, trying to make it appear like Twinkle is seeing someone else, successfully making Kunj jealous. Aparna confronts Kunj and tells him to do something before he loses Twinkle completely if he actually loves her.
“Nope. It isn’t working!” Twinkle told Aparna on the phone as she sat in her chair the next day, observing how Kunj seemed to ignore her. “He’s ignoring me!” she complained, staring at him when he suddenly looked at her. She immediately turned away pretending that never happened while Aparna assured her that it was working and hung up. Kunj, on the other hand, couldn’t stop thinking about Aparna’s warning the previous day. He knew he couldn’t let Twinkle go, but his guilt had been eating him up on the inside, and this conflict prevented him from making a move towards her. He watched, burning with jealousy as another bunch of flowers was delivered to Twinkle. They were orchids that day. “I hate that guy!” He said, unintentionally loudly, confusing the people sitting in front of him to get some papers signed. He quickly sent them away, asking the last one to stay on further thought. “Does she receive flowers everyday?” He asked that guy, who had been his friend in college and was now working under his father. He giggled at Kunj and nodded, telling him that Twinkle seemed way happier recently. Kunj dismissed him bitterly, crushing a paper in front of him angrily. He couldn’t stand someone else being the cause of her happiness at any cost.
Kunj was pleasantly surprised when a couple of days later, Twinkle had turned up at his house. She smiled at him and walked in even before he welcomed her. He smiled to him as he thought, “Like she owns this place!” However, his smile faded when he saw Yuvi come in behind her. When he closed the door and turned back, he saw Twinkle bringing Usha out of the kitchen, telling her that they had come to speak to her. “Yuvi wanted to apologise!” She explained, when Usha and Kunj sat down opposite to her and Yuvi. Yuvi spoke for about five minutes about how sorry he was that he had beaten up Kunj, that he really didn’t want to fight with him, but Kunj was evidently not paying any attention. He kept looking at Twinkle, who seemed to be listening to Yuvi and Usha’s conversation keenly, smiling to himself as he watched her talk cheerfully, laughing at something someone had said; he realised how horribly he had missed all that. “Are we cool then?” Yuvi asked Kunj, but he had obviously not heard him, so he looked embarrassed when Usha asked him where his mind was. He wished he could answer that honestly, but wasn’t really sure of its consequences.
Kunj nodded gladly looking at Twinkle watching him expectantly when Yuvi repeated his question. “That’s great. Twinkle really insisted on this, saying it was important to her!” Yuvi said, expressing his relief. Kunj saw Twinkle whisper something to Yuvi that looked like her disapproval for saying that. “I’m still important to her!” Kunj thought to himself, his heart leaping with joy, but he felt it being crushed when he heard Yuvi say, “We should get going then. Twinkle will be late for date otherwise.” He was sure he had seen Twinkle look at him momentarily when Yuvi said that, as though she wanted to know if it made any difference to him. He wished he could stop her, even if it meant having to plead before her, but she certainly looked happy for the first time since she was back, and he didn’t want to snatch away her smile. So he stood quietly as Usha saw them off, a tear rolling down his cheek when she closed the door. “She’s happy with him, Kunj!” Usha told him, carefully observing his expressions as she added, “The last time I had seen her so happy was when she had come home that day to tell me about her big conference that was supposed to happen that fateful night. All I could think that day, however, was how happy she seemed every time she spoke of you. It was the glow that being in love brought her!” Kunj turned to Usha, recalling that day, and realised that Twinkle’s smile wasn’t the same today. It didn’t seem real, it didn’t brighten her eyes. It gave him the hope that he hadn’t lost completely yet, she hadn’t gone too far away, he still had the chance. Usha smiled when she saw the determination in his eyes, hoping it would bring them together.
“Wow! Really? I could do anything to go on a date like that one!” Kunj heard Aparna gushing excitedly to Twinkle, sitting in front of her the next morning. He rolled his eyes, beginning to wonder who the guy that Twinkle was going out with actually was. He saw Twinkle whisper something to Aparna that made her laugh loudly, his thoughts now going back to the guy who had dropped Twinkle the day he had returned to work. That guy had seemed familiar to Kunj, but he just couldn’t figure out who he was. A striking feature though, was that the guy seemed to have very similar taste in clothing as himself. He followed Aparna out of the room when she got up to leave and stopped her in the corridor. “She’s dating someone who is like me?” He asked, doubts beginning to pop up in his mind for the first time. “I told Yuvi that would be a stupid move!” Aparna cursed Yuvi mentally, but told Kunj, “Someone who is better!” Kunj glared at her, not believing it, but she wouldn’t give in either, and kept staring back at him. “So is this war?” He asked in his best challenging tone, making her chuckle. “You are no match, Kunj! But if you insist, we could call this a little battle!” She said, seeming uninterested. “War. Him versus me. You’ll know pretty soon that I’m better!” He replied, rather like a declaration, and gave her one last angry look before walking back. Aparna smiled to herself, calling up Chinki and Yuvi to inform them that it was time to drop the big bomb.
“Twinkle, I know we need to hand this in tomorrow, but I really need to leave, it’s an emergency!” a member of Twinkle’s team requested the next evening when it had already been decided that the two of them would finish the work that day and hence the rest that left, except for Kunj, who seemed a little too busy since he had returned after talking to Aparna, Twinkle had noticed. Finding no other go, Twinkle permitted her, calling up Aparna to inform her that she would be late, explaining the circumstances. Twinkle thought she heard Aparna say “Perfect!” just before she cut the call. However, she dismissed that thought and get back to work, since her work load was now doubled. She decided to take a break after an hour and walked wearily to the glass door, glancing at Kunj, who hadn’t budged from his place. She knew he wouldn’t leave till she did; he had begun that practise from the beginning of that week. She tried to pull the door open, but it didn’t move. She tried to open it with more force this time around, but it still didn’t open. She bent a little to see that it had been locked, probably assuming that there was nobody inside. She tried banging on it, but perhaps everyone else had left, since she got no response, except for a gentle tap on her shoulder. Kunj had walked over to see why she was freaking out like that.
Twinkle looked at Kunj helplessly as he tried to open the door, but in vain. “I’ll call up Papa!” Twinkle said, realising that was the last resort. RT told Twinkle that the keys would be in his cabin which was locked too, and that meant he would have to come back from the other end of the city where he had gone for a meeting. “An hour!” she informed Kunj who simply nodded at her. “I wonder who locked us in!” He said, and right then the lights went out too, making them curse their ill fortune. Kunj reached out to Twinkle, making sure she wouldn’t trip over something or hurt herself by crashing into something in the dark, realising that being locked with her didn’t seem like such a bad idea either. Twinkle immediately put on the flash light on her phone and held it up so that there was at least some light in the room. Kunj took it from her and placed it on a shelf nearby so that she wouldn’t have to hold it up for an hour. She smiled gratefully at him, and he smiled back, wondering if it would be alright to tell her that she was only his right then. But just then, Twinkle’s phone began to ring, leaving them in darkness as she answered it. Kunj had just turned on the flash light in his phone when he heard her say, “I know, could you tell him I’m stuck here? I don’t think I’ll be able to make it!” Kunj simply placed his own phone on the shelf, lighting up some place around them and went back to stand in front of Twinkle.
“Date night, huh?” Kunj asked as Twinkle cut the call. She shrugged her shoulders, neither a ‘Yes’ nor a ‘No’, not making any eye contact at all. “Do you love him?” He asked her, his mind already a mess as he prepared himself to hear an affirmative. “How does it matter to you?” She asked him instead, leaving him spell bound. He had just managed to recover a little from that jab at his heart and say “It does matter. A lot.” but she didn’t seem to be in a mood to stop. “You don’t seem to be even slightly affected by the fact that I am going out with someone else!” She protested, looking at him disappointedly. “Does that mean that you’ve been doing all that to test me?” He asked, staring at her as he took painfully slow steps towards her. “No!” She muttered when he was just an inch away. “Really?” He asked, lifting her face by a finger under her chin so that she would look at him. He had just leaned in close to her, their eyes welling up as all the walls that they had built intentionally or otherwise beginning to crumble, their hearts beating in sync when the door was opened with a thud and what they heard next shook them to the very core.
That’s it for now, guys. Lots of love!