A High School Crush #6: A Leap of Faith

There were some important things that happened close to the beginning of our final semester. First and foremost, Aarush got accepted to a rather reputed company. He was also offered an intern position which he could join while still not having finished the final semester. The only condition, he would have to go back as a full time employee once the final semester exams were over. I on the other hand was still appearing for a multitude of interviews, both within the college and outside. For some reason, I was just not getting the urge to land myself a job as quickly as possible. There was one organisation though, for which I had put in a lot of effort. And as it was, I was waiting with almost a bated breath for a response from them.

"Are you planning to join the intern program?" I asked Aarush one day out of curiosity.

"I think so, I haven't yet decided."

"But if you go, you'd be pretty much bound to that organisation for a whole year once you actually graduate. Don't you think there could be better companies out there with not such tight strings attached."

"I have considered that. And that's why I'm saying I haven't yet decided." he said. "What about you? Have you heard back from Kreativision PhotoArts yet?"

"Actually yes." Kreativision was a brand that specialises in digital art and marketing of any kind. Be it marketing campaign posters, product photography, graphic design, multimedia and a whole lot of other things that are needed for the modern day large scale industries. They supported large companies to reach even greater audiences. And I, being an art nerd, was very much interested in getting accepted there.

"What did they say?" He asked, looking at me with eyes filled with anticipation and positive curiosity.

I took my sweet moment to tell him, "I got the job."

Everything happened extremely fast. I saw his eyes turn to saucers before I felt myself being lifted off of the ground. I couldn't help laughing as he twirled me around once and put me down. I don't know if anybody else could share my excitement like Aarush did. The fact that I could tell that he was genuinely happy for me made me just that little bit more proud for having landed the job.

"Oh my goodness. That is amazing. I am so happy for you!" He said, holding my shoulders. "Now I don't have to feel guilty of landing a job before you. You are going to the place where you wanted to go."

"I am. And guess which city I am being positioned in." I said, teasing.

He frowned, but then his eyebrows shot so high I felt they might disappear into his hair. "You're kidding, right?"

I shook my head. "We're going to the same place."

"Wow, that is huge. Seems like we're stuck together for life."

Those words made me catch my breath once. "You make it sound like a bad thing." I laughed despite myself. He let out a laugh too. "But seriously thought, I feel good."

"You definitely should. Tell me, have you told your parents yet?" He asked.

"I have. And they seem ecstatic."

"They should be. I have seen how much you struggled to study stuff out of our course for this job. Ruhi you deserve this."

"I don't know about that, but I think we should celebrate. Don't you think so?"

"Yup, let's go to someplace nice today."

"Okay, how about the Wok Guys? My treat!" I suggested.

"Of course it'll be your treat."

The Wok Guys was a Chinese restaurant that claimed to serve authentic Chinese food. And since there was nothing to verify their authenticity, and there was no other place whose name seemed Chinese, we considered it the best Chinese place in the city. They did serve some dishes whose names were taken from authentic Chinese cuisines too.

Over dinner, we talked about a lot of things. How life would be once we joined our respective jobs. What the organisations would be like. How we'd spend every Friday with our colleagues and each other like they showed in all those office-themed TV shows. Of course all this talk from people who were just about graduating from college was nothing more than pure conjecture and speculation. Yet, it felt relaxing enough. It made me feel like the four years of college were worth it.

Once we were done, I asked if we could take a walk. It was already half past nine, and I just wanted to remember this special day a lot more clearly. Catching a city bus would only make time go by faster, something that I didn't want to let happen at all. While we passed by a small fountain, I remembered the last few weeks of high school. In more ways than one, this was a similar time.

"You remember what I said before we joined college?"

"Yeah, college is just a medium, it's only job is to make your paint brighter."

I nodded with a smile. He remembered. "Yes, it's the concept that matters. It's the vision that should count."

"Amen to that."

"But Aarush, I've learned something new in these four years as well."

"What's that?"

"The artist can come up with great concepts only if they're in their proper place."

"So you're saying that the college you go to actually matters?"

I shook my head. "No, the college itself doesn't matter. The people in it matter. The people who stay by your side, who talk about ideas, who talk about stuff that you can improve and the things you should temper a little. Aarush it's completely irrelevant where the artist is. All that matters is who else is there with them, and are they the right people to trigger the ideas within them."

Aarush thought for a moment. "Ruhi, for once in my life I am not following what you're saying."

Well this is going to be a little tricky, I thought. Are all boys this dumb? "It's you Aarush. It's always been you. You push me to try harder at everything. You give me hope when I start losing it. And I don't want to imagine a time where I have to do all of that alone. I want you in my life. Always."

"Ruhi...I don't..." He began. I stopped walking, he stopped too. I was so close to tears I could barely hold myself together.

"No, stop. I know what you're going to say. You've said it before and you're going to say it again. I know you see me just as a friend. But I don't. I see you as something a lot more. Always have. And maybe always will. I don't want to pressure you into anything, but I do want you to understand what you mean to me."

He stared at me for just a couple of seconds. "Ruhi, I don't know what to say." he put his hands on my shoulders, which made me tremble slightly. "I had no clue about any of what you have said to me just now." He must have felt me shiver, "Ruhi, I understand completely what you are saying. But I want to tell you something as well. I never actually got around to seeing you as something other than a friend, and you already know that. Ruhi I do not want to hurt you, but I need time to think. Do you understand? I am not saying no, and I am not asking you to wait for an answer, I just need some time to process what you've told me just now."

I could only nod. Somehow, even though he didn't give me the response I wanted, I was feeling a little lighter. I knew I had flung our years of our friendship into a firepit at this point, and hoped it came out unscathed, but I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to get it off my chest. I couldn't imagine a life where I hadn't at least tried once to get what I wanted from him. To be honest, I did not want to wait for an answer, but like he said, he needed time to process all of it.

Aarush walked me to my hostel, we did not say a single word to each other for the fifteen minutes or so it took for us to reach there. I waited for him to say something at the main gate. He didn't. He looked at me for a long moment. I tried desperately to read his expression. For an instant, I even thought of just blurting out, 'say something.'. Just before leaving, he wished me a good night, and left. As for me, I went into my room and asked Disha if she could leave the room all to myself that night.

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

"Yeah everything is fine, can you just, I don't know, stay with Akriti tonight?" Akriti had the next room to the left of ours. Disha got off her bed and came to me.

"Ruhi, I will leave you alone if you want me to, but I just want to tell you that you can share everything with me, you know that, right?"

"Yes, and thank you." Disha quietly picked up the stuff she needed for the night, and left.

I locked the door after her, then came back and sat on the bed. Half baked thoughts swarmed my mind. I couldn't fathom what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn't thinking anything. The time for thinking had long gone after all. Like they said, you have to switch from a reason that observes to a reason that acts. And I acted. A little recklessly, sure, but I had acted nonetheless. An hour went by and then it hit me.

It was too sudden. I had simply dumped a crap ton of emotional shit on Aarush without the slightest buildup. Okay, maybe talking about the past was a buildup but it was nowhere enough. I had no idea about any of it. He had said. Maybe if I had dropped a few more hints, a few more obvious signs that something like this was about to come from me, the blow would have been lighter on him. But no, here I was, adamant to tell him my side of everything. What did he want, what did he feel, I didn't care at all*.* And then the rabbit hole I was diving into took another dark turn. What if he decided to say no? It would be the end of our friendship. Even the thought of that made my throat dry. I won't be able to handle that. I should call him. A part of me said.

I decided to ignore that voice inside my head. I changed into shorts and a top, and took a large gulp from the bottle of water at the desk. I opened my cupboard, and rummaged in the bottom drawer. After five minutes of searching, I found what I was looking for. A diary. The last entry was from a year and half ago. The day my parents left after that awful incident at the Friday Mischief.

That day I made another entry, and titled it, Leap of Faith.

I woke up to a loud knocking on the door. I had thought sleep wouldn't come to me after the events of the previous night, but apparently my body had other plans. I had no idea when I fell asleep, but I did. When I opened the door, Disha was standing there.

"Are we late for class?" I said instinctively trying to divert her attention from anything that would give away what was really on my mind.

"Ruhi, it's one in the morning." she said, matter of factly.

"What?" I said, flicking my eyes across the room at the table clock we had. Sure enough, one-fifteen am. I hadn't turned off the lights, that tricked me to believe it was morning. "Oh."

"Ruhi, I know something happened. And you're not alright. Will you please let me at least try to help you." She walked into the room.

"I told you, I'm fine."

"I don't believe that for a second." she folded her arms across her chest.

"Okay fine, everything isn't alright. But Disha, I do not want to talk about it. Please don't force me. I just cannot talk about any of it right now, at least not today."

She gave up, "Okay, if you don't want to talk about it, it's fine. But you're not staying alone. I don't trust you enough to not drive yourself crazy with whatever it is. And secondly, I don't want to listen to Aakriti talking cheesy shit on her phone at one in the morning."

I sighed. "Okay."

She went to her bed and I laid down on mine. We turned the lights off. I laid there on the bed, staring at the dark ceiling for some time, but eventually, sheep claimed me again. Was my mind so scared that it just wanted to hide away in the bottomless pit of fantastic dreams?

Aarush didn't come to class the next day. And it was the worst day of my life so far. My mind was overwhelmed by thoughts about the previous night and our conversation. I need time to think. His words kept ringing in my ears as if someone had etched them into my mind. The lectures passed by and I didn't notice them. A couple of the professors remarked on my distractedness. I apologized as humbly as I could. In the end, I decided it was not worth it. Once lunch hour started, I went straight to my hostel dorm, and locked myself in.

At four in the afternoon, my phone rang. It was Aarush. "Hi Ruhi." He said.

"Hi," I replied. I wanted to ask where he had been. But held back. Better to let him talk right now.

"I need to talk to you. Can you come to meet me?"

"Where?"

"The bridge."

"Sure. you want me to come straight away?"

"Yes, if you can."

"See you in fifteen minutes."

He didn't say anything before hanging up. That couldn't be a good sign. Nonetheless. I changed into something a little more presentable than what I wore to class. A different hairband, and different shoes. I locked the door with my key and out through the main door. I took a cab and within ten minutes, I was at the bridge. Another two minutes of walking took me to the bench where we usually sat with our friends.

I walked up to where he was sitting. He seemed relaxed. He was looking out into the distance, as if focused on something that was happening far away but looked intriguing.

"Hi." I said.

"Come sit." He tapped on the bench. I obeyed wordlessly.

"Do you see that?" I assumed he pointed to the hill in the distance.

"The hill?"

"Yes."

"What about it?"

"In January, the sun sets precisely behind the hill." he started. I couldn't understand what the path of the sun in January had to do with anything. "And for that reason, you don't see when the sun crosses the horizon. However, if you think about it differently, you can consider the hill itself to be the horizon, and the sun dipping below it a little earlier than it's supposed to."

"Aarush, I don't follow."

"You see, if you want to see the sunset precisely when it is supposed to happen, you have only one option. You have to get to the top of the hill. From there on, you can see it clearly. The beautiful sunset, the purple sky, all without the obscuring shadow of the hill. All you have to do is climb up to the top of that little hill, and it all starts looking a little more beautiful. But climbing the hill, that's the challenge. It scares you. What if you get lost on the way, what if you don't reach the top on time, what if the path uphill is not fit for traversing?"

"Aarush, what are you saying?"

"Ruhi, I'm scared. I want to say yes to you. I want to love you the way you want me to. You are the only person who understands me the way every person wants to be understood at least once in their lives. But I do not know if I am ready. You are fierce in everything you do. You listen to nothing but only your heart. If you were in my place, you'd start climbing the hill in a heartbeat. But I can't. I am scared for what the future would hold for us if I say yes to you. I see so many things at stake here. What if it doesn't work out? What if we decide somewhere down the line that we're not right for each other? When we were with other people and it went badly, we had each other. But what if we don't work out? Who would be there for us then?"

He turned to me then. His eyes looked tired. Has he been here all day? I wondered. But more than the tiredness, I saw fear. He was genuinely scared. "And yet," he continued, "I feel the urge to see the sunset in January. I want to climb to the top of that hill. With you." He was looking at me without blinking.

"Aarush, are you..."

"Yes, I'm saying yes. I want to learn what it feels like to be in love with an amazing person like you. And I ask for nothing more than for you to promise me to not leave me midway."I did not know what to say. And so I didn't say anything. I just hugged him. The kind of hug that is supposed to say, if we tumble and fall on our way to the top of that hill to watch a January sunset, so be it, but we'll do it together. And it really felt good when he hugged me back just as close.