A Short Story: Free Will To Love

'Oh my God, he looks so handsome in this blue shirt.' - Payal exclaimed.

'Who?' - Meera looked up from her book and asked.

'Who else? Parth. Look he is parking his bike.' - Payal said without pointing fingers.

'Oh okay. I see him now.' - Meera said as she located Parth.

Payal had a crush on Parth from the first day of college. She used to share her room with Meera in the hostel and they had become good friends so Payal shared her feelings about Parth with Meera. Gradually both of them managed to be his friends but Payal was too scared to express her feelings to him. She was waiting for Parth to express his feelings for her. The way Parth talked to Payal everyday for hours, it was obvious that he also  liked her. Parth, Payal and Meera used to hang out together everyday. Since Meera had only one friend, she used to stay around when Payal and Parth talked. She didn't talk much, mostly played Candy Crush on her phone while these two love birds talked. Payal and Parth used to bring her into the conversation once in a while but it was mostly Payal who kept talking on and on. As time passed, Payal was more confident that Parth likes her too.   

In the meantime, Meera had to go home for a week for her cousin's wedding.

'Use this time to get closer to Parth. Tell him about your feelings for him.' - Meera told Payal.

'I am scared. What if he is not feeling the same way.' - Payal was still not sure.

'Of course, he is. My calculations are never wrong. Can't you see he is so attached to you? I have never seen him talking to any other girl like this.' - Meera boosted her confidence.

'That's true. I will tell him about my feelings when you are gone.'- Payal was convinced.

'Yea, but you have to tell me everything that happens once I come back.' - Meera demanded.

'Of course.'- Payal assured her.

'I am already excited about you two.'- Meera already started daydreaming about both of them.

Meera was off to the wedding and she had lots of fun there. She forgot about everything else during that one week. She thought about Payal and Parth on her way back to the hostel.

'They must be a couple by now.' - She thought. She was happy but she was also sad that now Payal and her might not be so close anymore.

When Meera came back to the hostel, Payal wasn't in the room. She thought -'Payal would be dying to tell her everything. Maybe she went on a date with him.' She waited for her to come back till late night, called and texted her a few times and finally fell asleep. In the morning she saw Payal coming out from the next room.

'Hey Payal, Why did you sleep in Niharika's room? I came back last night.' - Meera told her as she saw Payal, thinking maybe Payal was scared to sleep alone in the room so slept in Niharika's room.

But Payal said- 'I don't feel like talking to you right now. 'And just walked away.

Meera was shocked by her behavior. She felt hurt but also got worried. 'What happened to Payal? It must be Parth.' - She concluded.

Meera went to the college. She saw Parth coming on his bike and Payal did not even acknowledge him.

'So I was right. Parth broke her heart.' - Meera thought. 

She looked at Parth. He looked very sad. Meera tried to figure out what might have happened. 'I think they had a fight. But then what's my fault? At least talk to me. Maybe she is too sad to talk to anyone about this. I will leave her alone.'- Meera thought and left her alone. Since Meera and Parth weren't that close, she stopped talking to Parth too.

Parth approached Meera after the class in the parking lot. - 'Meera, can I talk to you for a second?'

Meera stopped and stood close to him without saying anything.

Did Payal tell you anything about what happened when you were gone?- Parth asked her looking very upset.

No she didn't, but I can guess you must have hurt her by saying you don't feel the same way about her. - Meera said with a little anger in her voice.

Yes, you are right.- Parth couldn't look in to her eyes.

How can you not be attracted to her? It was so obvious. You two used to talk for hours everyday, you got along so well.- Meera attacked him.

She told me the same thing.- Parth said still looking down.

So? Why were you so friendly with her then?- Meera asked for his explanation.

Parth didn't respond immediately. He was figuring out how to word his response. After a few seconds he said slowly. - 'Because she was your friend.'

Because what?- Meera wasn't sure what he said.

I used to talked to her so I can spend more time with you.-  Parth rephrased his response.

This time Meera got it right. She couldn't believe her ears. -'What are you talking about?'

'I have liked you ever since I saw you. But I was too nervous to talk to you so I used to hangout with both of you. Payal is talkative so it was easy to befriend her. I wanted to tell Payal about my feelings for you but before I could say anything to her, she told me that she liked me.' - Parth gathered all the courage he had and said everything he wanted to tell her in just one breath.

'Are you serious? Then how come you always ignored me, and you were so mean to me that day when I answered Payal's phone when you called, to tell you that she went down to do a laundry. I thought you got upset to hear my voice instead of hers.' - Meera was still baffled.

'I wasn't mean. I was not expecting to hear your voice. I was just dumbstruck, I couldn't think of anything to say so I just said okay and hung up.' - Parth explained.

'Oh man! This is a mess. And you told her about all of these? Is that why she doesn't talk to me?' - Meera figured out why Payal was rude to her.

'Probably.' - Parth said, hoping Meera would come back on track and talk about Parth's feelings for her.

But Meera was still thinking about Payal. -'But what's my fault? '

'I don't know. But I'm glad now you know about my feelings for you.' - Parth said hoping she would say something to him about her feelings for him.

'I have to go talk to her.' - Meera almost ignored what he said and left.

At the hostel, Meera found Payal swinging in the garden. She saw Meera coming towards her and got up and started to walk away.

Meera stopped her. -'Payal, listen to me. I didn't know about his feelings.'

Payal stopped and turned to look at her. After a second, she said- 'Are you going to go out with him?'

'Hell no! He broke your heart, besides I never looked at him that way.'- Meera responded immediately.

Payal looked away in the space for sometime and finally said- 'I think I have to be alone right now. Please leave me alone.'

Meera was very frustrated that Payal wouldn't even talk to her. There was a tornado of thoughts squirming in her mind. Her bigger concern was still Payal not talking to her, than the fact that Parth liked her, not Payal.

Parth texted Meera that night hoping he can make Meera see his side of the story.

'How's everything?'- He started with a benign question.

Meera didn't respond for a few minutes but she needed to talk to someone about this. She was bursting of anger, confusion and frustration and there was no outlet since Payal refused to talk to her. She replied to his text by saying- 'Payal is still not talking to me.'

'I feel really bad that I lost two of my best friends in one day.' - Parth texted regretting this whole idea of telling Payal and Meera about his feelings, clearly none of them cared how he felt.

'Are you trying to fool us? I think you planned all of this to get rid of both of us.' - Meera texted.

'Wow! You have quite an imagination. If I had to plan a lie in order to get rid of both of you, I would have come up with a much better plan than this. Besides, if I knew I would lose you by expressing my feelings to Payal, I wouldn't have done this at all. But honestly, this is what it is. I really like you and I really hope that we can work something out and this goes somewhere.'- It becomes much easier to express your feelings on a text than in person. Parth would have never been able to say all these to Meera to her face.

Parth waited for her response. Meera lying on her bed looked at the text. She thought for sometime. She looked at Payal sleeping in her bed. Parth was really a great guy. Meera might have fallen for him if Payal didn't like him.

'Parth, just look at the whole situation neutrally. You used Payal to get closer to me.'

'I did not use her. I still value her friendship and I feel guilty that she is hurt because of me.'

'So did you do anything about it?'

'I apologized to her so many times. I don't know what else to do.'

'Do you realize that if she finds out we are talking like this, she will be more hurt?'

'She has to understand. I never saw her that way. I can't change my feelings for you to make her happy.'

'I understand but you also need to understand that she needs her friend to be with her in this difficult time. So please don't try to talk to me. I am sorry, I know I am hurting you, but this situation is so complicated that one of us is going to end up hurt anyway. '

Parth held the cell phone in his hands as he read Meera's last text. He didn't respond to that text just kept looking at the words on that text blankly.

Meera put her phone away and got up to go to the bathroom. Payal was just pretending she is asleep and got up to check Meera's phone.

'So she was chatting with Parth.'- Payal thought as she read Parth's name on the phone. She opened the inbox and read their entire chat. She put the phone back and went back to her bed pretending to sleep again.

Payal couldn't sleep the whole night. She kept thinking about Meera and what she told Parth in those texts. She spent the night trying to put all the pieces together because none of these made sense to her. She got up the next morning looking determined. At college, she found Meera and told her- 'Meera, Your friendship is more important to me than my feelings for Parth. I want all three of us to be friends again.'

Meera was surprised. Payal took Meera to parth and told Parth- 'Hey Champ, can we be friends again?'

Parth looked at her and Meera in quick succession. Both of them were smiling. He smiled too. Payal had waited to see that smile on his face for a long time.

'Now everything makes perfect sense.'- Payal thought and felt extremely peaceful for the first time after very long.