Chapter 14. Painting

🎶 Aise Kyun

Published on 31.05.2022

| AUTHOR'S POV |

Life is like a blank canvas which you've the freedom to fill with colours of your wish. The colours of your dreams, the colours of the people you want in your life, the colours of your choices and decisions, the colours of the various moments you live. When you start a painting, you've a vision of how you would want it to look like but it never turns out to be exactly a splitting image of your imagination. It either turns out to be better or worse than you had thought.

Life's like that.

It never goes according to your plan. If it turns out worse than you'd predicted, it means you've a chance to work and grow and strive for even better and if it turns out to be better than you'd expected, it means you're capable of bigger things than you give yourself credit for, you're way more than you think you're. It's all about perspective.

Perspective. A deluded concept. Varies from person to person. Can either make you see the good in the worst of situations or can make you point out the flaws in the best of them. It's scary, isn't it? How you can lead yourself to believe a completely false narrative, something that doesn't even exist just to confer upon yourself a little comfort or to make yourself anxious because you think that's what you deserve. But it's thrilling too. To have the power to steer yourself in whichever direction you wish to. To have the control of your own life, to let yourself be your own guide even if it's a bad one.

So when Ayansh agreed to his brother who wants nothing but revenge, he thought it's his chance, a sole chance to get Rahul's approval, love and brotherly affection that he had always craved for. It's wrong and in the back of his mind, he's aware that he'll never be able to do as told but it's the only opportunity he sees to get something that others get without asking, selflessly. Make Inaaya fall in love with him? Ridiculous, impossible, not happening at all in this lifetime atleast. Why will a smart, confident, talented, acknowledged, straightforward, brave girl fall in love with a shy, naive, awkward, scared, good for nothing, living in a shell person like him? Yet he agreed because he was desperate. And now, the idea of it, the decision to agree seems plain stupid. But he won't back out, he can't. Not when his brother has asked something of him, expected something from him. Not when his brother is finally approaching him, talking to him and not pretending as if he doesn't exist. He's finally seeing him. So Ayansh is going to cherish it as long as it lasts.

For now, he's just going with the flow. But that's the thing; humans are utterly fucked up. They never realise the gravity of a situation till they hit the rock bottom and feel completely helpless and wrecked up and are left wondering how did it come so far. He thinks, one month and it will be over. No more coming to the college for the stupid project, no more being pestered by his own brother, no more pretense, no more bearing the weight of silly expectations of a petty revenge.

Only if it was that simple. Only if it was that easy.

He doesn't know what mess he's getting into as he stands with the paintbrush in his hand beside the girl with mid-back length hair, deep black eyes, a frustrated expression marring her face as she watches the paintbrush in her hand and he tries to suppress his laugh at her state.

"I'm really, really bad at painting." Inaaya says, glaring at the brush in her hand.

"It really, really isn't much. You don't have to stress." Ayansh tries to conciliate her.

"I'm either too good in something or too bad. There's no in between."

"I'm average in everything. It's manageable. Trust me, it's not that difficult." He assures her. "We just have to paint these little models and not some masterpiece."

Inaaya looks at him with a doubtful expression while he gives her a hopeful look.

"Do we really need to paint?" She asks as she sits on her chair while he takes the chair opposite her across the table.

"You can always opt out and watch your other team members doing the job while munching on popcorn or something. After all, you're the leader." He says innocently and she narrows her eyes at him.

"Are you being sarcastic with me Mr Ayansh Mehra?" She inquires, solemnly.

Feeling self-conscious all of a sudden, thinking that he might have crossed a certain line, he mumbles quickly, "Sorry. I- I didn't mean to offend you. I just sometimes speak a little too much. I'm- "

"Shut up." She cuts him off, making a face. "It's okay. I was just playing along. I'm not that sensitive to get offended at everything." She says, feeling definitely offended now.

"I'm sorry- "

Inaaya glares at him and he sighs, doing a zipping motion and she nods at him curtly.

"These are oil paints. These aren't mine. So be careful while using them. Don't break the bottles or something." She whispers, dipping her brush in one of the bottles.

Ayansh hisses. "Why are you taking so much paint at once?" He inquires, gritting his teeth. "And first remove them in the palette."

Inaaya frowns. "How does that make a difference? I'll have to dip my brush again and again so isn't it better that I take as much as I could in one time itself?"

Ayansh stops removing the colours in the palette and looks at her in disbelief. "Haven't you ever painted before? In school?"

"Yeah. In exams. Because my books used to be completed by my brother or friends. Kind people, I must say." She answers casually.

"So you've used paints before even if it was just in exams. Then, you must be knowing that we use a palette and we don't take too much of colour in one stroke."

She shakes her head as if he's the wrong one here. "I used to sit with paintbrush in my hand during exams. You know pretense and all," she widens her eyes, gleaming, "but it were the people around me who did the job. I just dealt with the drawing part."

He stares at her with a blank face. After a moment of silence, he speaks. "You must have some really good friends then." He first dips his paintbrush in water, wetting it and then takes a little bit of yellow colour from the palette. "Follow me and take the black colour." He directs her calmly.

Inaaya does as she's told.

After sometime, Ayansh shrieks.

"God! Inaaya. It looks as if you're scribbling."

Stratled, the paintbrush falls from her hand.

She looks around to see everyone had stopped their work and were looking at them. "What?" She glowers. Nobody says a word. "Continue." She orders and then whips her head towards Ayansh. "What's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" He asks back, flabbergasted. "What's wrong with you?" He points at her. "You're randomly just moving your brush all around and at the same place again and again. The shade isn't even."

"Not my fault that it isn't even." Inaaya defends herself timidly. "I told you I don't know this!" She complains.

"And I told you to follow me." He argues back, staring at her pointedly.

Inaaya stares back, her lips puckered, eyes narrowed, cheeks puffed slightly, forehead creased. She resembled a whiny little kid and if Ayansh wasn't frustrated at the moment, he would've laughed at her sullen look.

He huffs defeatedly. "You just need to keep stroking in one direction and you don't need to move your brush over one place again and again. Watch me and then do accordingly. Okay?" He says patiently, gazing at her softly.

"The paintbrush fell down." She retorts in a monotone and bends down to pick it up.

Ayansh too bends down to pick it up at the same time.

Their hands brush against each other. Everything seems to stall for that significant moment.

And it reels them back to the very first time it happened, to the very first time they met each other. But something's different this time. The feeling so familiar yet so uncannily foreign. It demands to be taken notice of, to let the feeling sink to their very bones, to pause and reflect but at the same time, it nudges them to get away from each other. The feeling so sacrosanct that it calls to just float away like a fleeting moment before anyone could catch it and try to taint it. Let it be intangible, a secret that doesn't need to be unravelled. It doesn't need to be understood, just felt.

Their eyes meet and they instantly retreat their hands back. Inaaya gathers her brush as she gathers her scattered, blurry thoughts as well and gets up. Ayansh follows the lead. The rest of the time nobody says a word as they continue painting. Inaaya following the way Ayansh showed her.

It's almost done when Inaaya decides to stretch her hands in front without looking and ends up knocking the palette of colours. The palette falls and the colours get smeared on one side of Ayansh's white shirt and black pants. He freezes and she gasps. There's a noise as the palette hits the floor and everyone once again turns their attention to the chaos being caused by the two dysfunctional people.

There's pin drop silence.

"Fuck." Tushar curses and everyone hears as his eyes fall on Ayansh's shirt.

Ayansh lifts his gaze slowly to meet Inaaya's petrified ones.

"I'm- I'm sorry." She mumbles.

"Where's the washroom?" He asks instead in a small voice, his voice not giving away any emotion that he's feeling but she could sense the irritation beneath the sheathing.

"Right end of the passage." She answers, looking at him wearily.

He nods curtly and gets up, walking towards the door.

Inaaya lets out a frustrated sigh and follows him.

"Be careful while using them. Don't break the bottles or something." Ayansh mimics her, wearing a scowl on his face, walking ahead as she lags behind.

"Sorry." She pleads.

"What- what are you doing?" He inquires still walking.

"Look. I'm sorry for spoiling your white shirt." She apologises desperately when they stop. "But on the brighter side, your shirt doesn't look bland anymore." She blabbers and facepalms herself mentally. Both look at each other, Inaaya in mortification and Ayansh in horror. "No, no, I- I didn't mean that."

Inaaya can't believe that she actually said that. She wished the earth could swallow her right there and then. It's frustrating. It's frustrating how she ends up saying the stupidest shit in front of him. It's him, always him. It's like an alternative personality of her crops up because the Inaaya she's aware of is sane and collected and not a mess.

"It's okay." Ayansh mutters quickly.

Inaaya squints her eyes. "Really?"

"You should go. It's men's washroom." He says urgently.

"It's inside." She points towards the closed door. "We're standing near the sink. And you should wash away the paint before the stain gets deeper."

"What if someone sees us?" He looks at her.

She stares back, amused and shrugs. "Nothing. Turn the tap to the right, the water will flow through it and then use that water to clean the smear." She offers politely, her gaze darting towards the sink.

"You don't have to instruct me as if I'm a child." He grits and moves to the sink.

Inaaya leans on the wall behind, crosses her arms and stares at him with narrowed eyes, wondering something.

Ayansh senses it but he doesn't say anything. It was already awkward for him to be with her alone outside the men's washroom. But after a while, it gets impossible to bear it.

"Is anything wrong with me?" He voices out.

She shakes her head. "I'm just wondering something."

"What?" He asks, removing the handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at his shirt.

"It's really difficult to wrap my head around the fact that the person who confessed his so called feelings to me when I didn't even know him, asked me for a date and the one standing in front of me are actually the same." She chuckles.

His movements stop and his gaze get fixated on the tiles below. It was like she could see right through him, decode him and for a moment, it terrified him. He cranes his neck, looks straight into her eyes and lies. "It was a rash, impulsive behaviour." He says guiltily, grimacing remembering that.

Lying wasn't difficult for him. He had lied a million times to his brother, he had pretended to be fine when he was hurting. He knew how to put a mask upon his emotions but never did he feel so guilty for doing it as he felt now. Technically, he wasn't lying. It was indeed an impulsive behaviour. But what he had said to her that day? I like you? Love at first sight? Lies. Bullshit.

"Still, you know, it just feels so unlike you." She says, frowning. "Anyways, for my sanity, I will pretend to forget that incident ever existed."

"Me too." He says, relieved as they start walking back to the hall.

"Are you clumsy?" He finally asks, the thought bothering him from a while.

"No." Inaaya denies, confused by the question.

"Then you just randomly keep spilling things on people?"

Inaaya stops walking and looks at him. "I don't spill anything on people." She says sternly.

Ayansh raises a brow at her response, challenging her. "Coffee? Paint? Don't I belong to the race of humans?"

Inaaya suppresses a sheepish smile at that and looks forward, walking again. "Maybe you're an exception." She murmurs, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

Ayansh sighs and rolls his eyes but a miniscule smile still manages to pull at his lips.

Everyone is already leaving when they enter the hall. Samson comes to her.

"We've kept everything in its place so you can just collect your things and leave." He says with a smile.

"Okay. Thank you." Inaaya smiles back and he walks away.

Ayushi comes to Ayansh when he's zipping his bag.

"Thank you." She says with a wide grin.

"For what?" He asks in confusion.

Inaaya stops drinking water and watches the scene from a distance.

"For helping me clear my doubts. You were really great at explaining things over the call and then over text as well. It was really helpful." She expresses her gratitude.

Ayansh looks a little uncomfortable. He's bad at receiving compliments. He always wondered how should he react to them. A reaction that matches the other person's enthusiasm. "You don't need to thank me. You already did that over text. Anyways, it's not much what I did."

"Now, you're just being modest." Ayushi chuckles and hits his shoulder playfully and he freezes. Inaaya stifles her laughter looking at his rigid self. "I had to thank you personally."

"Alright." He forces himself to say because he doesn't know what else to say.

"Okay then I'll leave. Have a good day." She looks at Inaaya who pretends to be busy. "Bye Inaaya." She says cheerily.

Inaaya looks up, feigning surprise. "Bye." She smiles and waves at her.

"Bye." Ayansh mutters and falls back on the chair, breathing out in relief when Ayushi is out of his sight.

Inaaya too sits on the chair near her and laughs her heart out. He looks at her, annoyed. But that's the thing about her laugh; it doesn't let him be annoyed! It softens something inside of him. The mellow sound is nothing less than a caress and no sooner he knows, he's laughing alongwith her on himself.

"That was so fucking awkward." He says feeling embarassed, covering his face with his hands.

"It was." She agrees, still laughing. "You should've seen your face when she hit your shoulder." She covers her mouth with her palm as she laughs even more.

He pouts helplessly. But to her, he looked a little too adorable. Slightly messed up hair, white shirt with colourful stains, he was far from being tiptop and proper but she would be damned if she said he didn't make up for a sight to be behold and stared at.

Inaaya straightens her face. "Maybe you should write letters to her as well. It might help to clear the awkwardness." She tries to keep a straight face but ends up laughing in the end.

"Yaar," Ayansh groans. "Remind me not to write a letter to you ever again."

"How many times have you written letters to others?" She asks, cupping her face as her cheeks hurt from laughing. When was the last time did she laugh for so long? She doesn't remember.

"I don't write letters." He answers with a frown. "And I'm never writing letters again." He adds grumpily.

He indirectly admitted that he wrote letter for the first time and it was for her, which also reminds her that she too wrote a letter for someone for the very first time. Inaaya ignores the way her heart fluttered at his reply and says chuckling, "I hope not."

***

The quote is perfect, isn't it!? Haha. New month from tomorrow; hope it's good for all of us. I love the chapter *grins*. It made me smile so much while writing and I enjoyed it throughout. Looking forward to what y'all have to say. Hope y'all like it too and lots of love and warmth to everyone :)

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