11
The rest of the week was a suffocating, unbearable blur.
Adhira moved through her classes like a ghost. The heavy, suffocating dread of the upcoming weekend sat on her chest like an anvil, completely starving her of oxygen.
Every time her phone buzzed with a text from her mother, reminders about the outfit she was supposed to wear, updates on what sweets they were ordering for the 'guests' her stomach churned with violent, nauseating anxiety.
By Thursday afternoon, the lack of sleep and the agonizing emotional whiplash had ground her nerves down to a frayed, exposed wire.
She was sitting in the quiet section of the campus library, glaring down at her laptop screen.
The code compiling on her screen was a mess, but it was nothing compared to the absolute chaos inside her head.
Beside her, Shreyash was quietly reading a textbook.
He was close enough that she could smell the faint, clean scent of his soap, close enough that if she shifted her knee just an inch, it would brush against his.
Every tiny movement he made, the sound of him turning a page, the soft clearing of his throat, the way his long fingers pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose felt like salt being rubbed directly into a raw wound.
I'm going to belong to someone else, a cruel, relentless voice whispered in her head. I'll never get to touch him again.
"Adhira?"
His deep, soft voice broke through the suffocating static in her mind. Adhira blinked heavily, snapping her gaze away from the blank wall to look at him.
Shreyash was leaning closer, his dark eyes looking at her laptop screen. "Your compiler is stuck in an infinite loop," he murmured gently, pointing a finger toward the bottom of her screen. "You initialized the variable outside the bracket. If you just move this line up..."
"I know."
The words snapped out of her mouth before she could stop them. Her voice wasn't just sharp; it was laced with a harsh, brittle venom that echoed loudly in the quiet library.
Shreyash flinched. He pulled his hand back instantly as if the keyboard had burned him.
Adhira's chest was heaving. The crushing weight of the past few days suddenly boiled over, transforming her unbearable grief into a blind, irrational rage.
She couldn't stand his gentleness. She couldn't stand how perfect and calm he was while she was actively drowning in the terrifying reality of losing him.
"I was going to fix it," she gritted out, slamming her palms flat on the table. "You don't have to tell me every single thing to do, Shreyash. I am not stupid!"
Several heads turned their way from the neighboring tables. Shreyash stared at her, his eyes wide and completely bewildered. The faint, warm smile that usually rested on his lips had completely vanished.
"I... I never said you were," he stammered, his voice dropping into a tight, quiet whisper to appease the library rules. He shifted away from her, his posture instinctively curling inward. "I was just trying to help, Adhi. You've been staring at the same block of code for an hour."
"Well, maybe I want to figure it out myself!" she hissed, her eyes burning with unshed, furious tears. "Maybe I don't want you hovering over me all the time! Just... stop looking at me. Leave me alone!"
The silence that followed was deafening.
Shreyash looked at her, truly looked at her, and the raw, undisguised hurt that flashed across his face made Adhira's heart stop completely. He didn't argue. He didn't defend himself. He just swallowed hard, the muscles in his jaw ticking as he slowly nodded.
"Okay," he whispered. The word sounded hollow, entirely stripped of its usual warmth. "I'm sorry."
He pulled his textbook closer to his chest, averting his eyes and shrinking back into his own space, putting an impenetrable, freezing wall of distance between them.
The guilt hit her with the force of a physical blow.
Adhira stared at him, her lips parting, the desperate urge to apologize clawing up her throat.
But the tears were already spilling over her lower lashes.
If she stayed for even one more second, she was going to break down entirely, and she refused to fall apart in the middle of the engineering library.
Without a single word, Adhira slammed her laptop shut. She shoved it into her backpack, the zipper aggressively loud in the quiet room, and practically ran out of the double doors, leaving a completely stunned and deeply hurt Shreyash sitting alone.
She didn't stop running until she pushed through the heavy door of the deserted stairwell on the fourth floor.
The moment the heavy metal door clicked shut, the fierce, angry facade completely crumbled. Adhira dropped her backpack on the concrete landing and sank down against the cold wall. She pulled her knees to her chest, burying her face in her arms as a ragged, agonizing sob tore out of her throat.
She cried until her chest physically ached. She cried for the harsh, unfair words she had just thrown at the boy who had only ever treated her with absolute reverence. She cried for the terrifying, suffocating future her mother had planned for her.
But mostly, she cried because the truth was finally, undeniably staring her in the face.
She wasn't lashing out because she was stressed about college. She was lashing out because she was fiercely, possessively, unconditionally in love with Shreyash, and the thought of some faceless stranger walking into her house this weekend to claim her was completely tearing her apart.
She loved the way he remembered her coffee order. She loved the way his dimples showed up when he tried to hide a smile. She loved his quiet brilliance, his absolute humility, and the terrifyingly electric way his skin felt beneath her fingertips.
I can't do it, she thought, wiping angrily at her tear-stained cheeks. I can't sit there and smile for someone else.
A new, fiery resolve suddenly sparked deep within her chest, burning away the last remnants of her passive grief.
Adhira was headstrong. She was a fighter.
She had spent her entire life building walls to protect herself, and she wasn't about to let an arranged marriage tear them down just to hand it over to a stranger.
She dragged herself up from the concrete floor, her breathing shaky but her dark eyes completely dry and burning with a fierce, absolute determination.
She would play the game. She would wear the clothes her mom picked, sit in the living room, and act the part of the obedient, respectful daughter.
She would serve the tea and listen to her parents cause no matter how much she liked Shreyash, she didn't want to embarrass her parents who were only doing things for her good and had never in these years forced her to do anything she didn't want.
And she knew they wouldn't force her to a stranger either.
After the meeting was over, she would tell her mother her feelings for Shreyash the same way she had told her countless stuffs since childhood, her mother was like her bestfriend. She was going to fight for Shreyash, and she hoped her mother would support her in this battle.