Mia was confused and lost at my words. "Stopped being in each other's lives? What's that supposed to mean?"
I winced slightly as the pin I had been adjusting around a stubborn frizzy curl made every possible measure to poke my fingertips and, eventually, did succeed in bringing a gasp out of me. "I should've taken those little hints too, Mia. Considerable of all, when he decided to go on a separate path all by himself, most of which didn't involve we being together."
Mia looked at me with something akin to pity. Something that I loathe her for giving me every time our conversation loops back to him. "That was one heck of an immature decision on his part, Emily. You know you'd never mean anything less to him than-"
"I'm tired of meaning everything to him, and at the same time, just nothing to him. I don't know how long it'll keep going like that, Mia. How long are we supposed to play this game of a cat and a mouse?"
Taking the alcohol based cotton swab, I rubbed it against my blood-laden fingertip, lightly closing my eyes in a slight burning pain. "I don't have that confidence left in me to wait anymore. Just when will we eventually find the courage to speak out our grudges and pains comfortably with each other and be free of all these baseless ridiculous misunderstandings threatening our already spoiled friendship?"
Mia sighed, as she, for once, sat on the bed quietly, leaving her hairs half-untied. "Emily, " She sighed, as she said, "That's the question you yourself know the answer to. My question will be, just how much you'll want to be hurt more to stop ignoring the only solution you have with you, for all the misery you've been through so far."
I chose to remain silent at her too straight implication.
Discarding the cotton, and bandaging my finger, I went back to the previous but tedious task of dolling myself up.
"Don't try to avoid the direction where this conversation is going, Emily."
"I'm not avoiding it, Mia. I'm just over that path and I'd like to lock that solution within me for as long as I can."
"That would mean you'd probably never get the chance to confess your overly emotional and unique feelings towards him, even in the after-life too. Because that's the real damn stupid, naive, foolish, dramatic, stubborn and wailing excuse of a worthless woman you are!"
Stopping mid-way to my task, I gave her a side glare.
"When it comes to Edward, of course." She added in a haste, smiling sheepishly. "Jokes apart, I still believe he deserves to know what you've been keeping from him since forever. Maybe it'd work as a catalyst in his case for speeding up his tortoise shaped brain cells when it comes to his best friend, which, eventually, in a long run, will help him realize what a total loser he has been so far in handling his own feelings."
"That's the most common assumption I've been hearing for half of my life-"
"Then you, my girl, are some leaked broken product of a real stupidity for not even considering it once. 'Cause for all I know and I'm damn sure I'll be proved right, along with many others, once you do it my way, and, of course, the right way."
I looked at her with confusion, though knowing inside the rough outline of what she has been implying.
"That the stagnant status of your relationship will change as soon as you take the right time, the right place and the right words in your consideration, serious one this time, to speak out all to him, with everything you have in you, to make him understand it in a more bolder, more forward and a more broader way. Sometimes, probably, the most easiest way with the words works wonders too."
Sighing to myself, I pulled the drawer near me and picked a set of glittering red-blue earrings. "But that'd mean seeing him after all this time we've gone without-"
"Then that wedding ring placed so comfortably under your right drawer, that you still didn't find the chance and of course the right time, which you must know is the lamest excuse you use everytime, to hand it over to him till now. " I looked at her, as her eyes shone with sarcasm. "So, are you planning to keep it with you as well, for as long as you can, for, maybe, I've mistaken it as some kind of insurance policy oath you've habit of taking all by yourself, when it comes to stuffs related with him."
I narrowed my eyes at her. "I'm not planning to keep it with me forever. I just really didn't get the right time to return it without looking miserable."
"Then do both of you a favour, and be on your way. It's even his birthday today, such a cool timing, I must exclaim. After all, when will he be at his most happiest than to receive the lost ring from his ex-wife he didn't love, or as he claimed, and, that best friend whom he tied to a loveless marriage, just for him, whereafter, whom he had a break-up with in such a messy way, right?"
I rolled my eyes at her words. "You couldn't have put it in a more dramatic way. "
"Well, I can. Try me. I've more than enough juice from your story to keep it interesting for you as long as you want to hear."
Ignoring her rhetoric banter, I said, "But that'd be too rude of me to return him the ring on his birthday, Mia."
"Why not?, "She replied, " If he can gift you the divorce papers on your birthday while he comes back home after celebrating his girlfriend's birthday bash, totally forgetting about his own best friend's birthday which happened to be on the same day as her, then yes, you can do that to him too. No one will judge, I promise. No one will even want to, I bet."
"That's not about revenge, Mia. That time, he didn't know about my feelings-"
"Well, surprise, but after a whole fake marriage chaos, your mother forcing your way out of his place, the almost animosity erupted between the two families, that total disaster of the divorce paper signing event organised by your father, and the after-effects of these depressing three months for you, he still doesn't know about them. Poor him though. I'm sure he'll be guessing all sorts of weird possibilities the whole time you two have been apart, which I guess is the longest you both have ever gone without each other."
"I asked him to give me distance, Mia. For some time. For some space, without him being in my life. To be away from each other for as long as I want."
"Creating a distance doesn't feed you with miraculous solutions, Emily. Taking action and doing it right, and doing it yet again if not done right the first time, well, these two things sure do help you in the long run."
"Then what do you propose should I do now? I'm at loss of what to decide next."
"First of all, do something about that gift that you wrapped so beautifully and with so much care that it really doesn't deserve to be stuffed so back-way inside your shoe-cupboard, among those used footwears."
I grinned shyly at her choice of words. "You sure remember most of the things you shouldn't."
As I opened the cupboard doors, and pulled out the gift, I could feel Mia's growing curiousity poking my inetstines now.
"Are you sure you're not dying to tell me what's inside this really romantic looking box?"
Face-palming at her words, I said, "Just because it's wrapped in red doesn't mean it looks romantic. It's just a color, Mia."
"You still look you're dying to tell me what's been placed inside it."
I smiled. "Take your tricks over the train, Mia. I can tell your pregnancy is getting on your brains."
"Oh really. For a brief time, I totally forgot I was three months under. That really defines the intensity of my curiosity to know what's inside it-"
"It's a script. And some photos. Nothing much."
She scrunched up her nose and asked, "Script?"
Sitting on the bed, I placed the gift on my lap as I opened the ribbon, to reveal the dull yellow colored old looking papers whose edges were slightly torn, withered and loose.
"It's an old script for a theatre show. I remember once our homeroom teacher asked each of us to take part in the club, be a member to increase the points from our extracurricular activities for our report evaluations. Edward took part in sports, music, literature, theatres, and indoors. I didn't have any specific interest of my own as I was little bit good in everything but not fully versed in a particular thing. So, I wasn't left with much choice but to follow him to those clubs and, as usual, I ended up becoming a member of The Arts and Theatres Club for many reasons I don't quite remember properly."
By this time, Mia was intrigued enough to know more as once I stopped speaking, her eyes urged me to go on with my ancient anecdote. "So, we had this weekly assignments we used to get in the meetings presided over by the Club's President. That day, I got the plot of writing about Untold Tales, for which among several sub-topics, the one I chose to write the script on was, The Friendship and the Blurred Boundaries."
"So you must've topped that assignment with all the material you could've loaded on a single sheet of paper, about you being the queen of being friend-zoned-for-eternity while Edward continues to be oblivious for anything related to his best friend, where in reality, those non-existent boundaries between you two were already started to blur the moment you fell in love with him." I sighed to myself as her words condensed on my eyelashes in the form of moisture.
My reaction didn't go unnoticed by Mia while she added more to her sentence, "Or to be more distant in the timeline, when he started dating Lara."
I nodded as I adjusted the lace of the dress which was starting to get loose around my figure. "That's why I decided to atleast even try to put an end to my misery. I didn't get to submit this script that day because one of the judges happened to be Edward's best mate in the Basketball. I was too afraid to take the risk as unconsciously my hands had penned down our own childhood tales of laughter, growing up, moments of each of our own immature crushes, milestones we both crossed to become the honest ones who had known, understood and accepted the world little by little, but not separately, as we hardly had any recollection of being alone in any crisis, without that homely smile, warmth and the helping hand of the other."
Putting the script back into the box, I started wrapping the box, saying "And so, maybe my inner conscious was too overwhelmed to keep those little pieces of special memories we both shared with myself only. I admit I had been disappointed with everything that happened thereafter, maybe we both had different perspectives towards life, people and things or maybe we just grew up being too much immersed with each other that we didn't separately get a chance to consider the other as the partner for the future too, even to the nearest possibility of zero to one."
Mia intervened. "But you did consider him as your life partner to the whole possibility of hundred, and dare I say, infinity."
"That's putting just too much weight on a single side."
"Well, that's because you didn't officially confess to him yet, which may I add, can change to the whole possibility of atleast fifty percent if you ever decide to."
"Why add fifty percent already-"
"Well I could've rounded that off to some solid unwavering numbers of seventy percent, but that would be putting too much weight on my own opinion, and of course, the opinions of every other sensible person I had met and hear their own opinions on, regarding your matter."
Shaking my head at her optimisim, I made my way towards the cupboard to pick the footwear of the night, among the newly carved crystal heels which my mother stocked on my old cupboard, replacing ever single thing she ever despised about my tomboyish life.
My past life.
She thought if she got rid of things related to my past identify, she could throw away those broken yesterdays too, which, according to her, would ease my pains, wounds and hidden scars too.
That being said, her idea wasn't working much as it instead put me in difficulty with going on with my whole three hundred and sixty degree changed life.
---
How was the Part Two? I know it was too wordy without any progression of the plot, but next chapter may contain a big resolution.
Thank you for bearing with my Writer's Block so far.
Part Three of Epilogue will be posted soon.
Do tell me if you liked this chapter or not by expressing your views on the comment section. I'd love to hear anything!
Thank you for having me as your author. ♥
