This is the tenth and concluding part of a novella “The Confession”.
Read the rest of the novella here
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Priya had always been somebody that David had been fascinated in as a person almost from the time that Ram had introduced her to him around three years ago. The fact that they shared the same taste in books, music, movies and the kind of people they liked to hang out with meant that their wavelengths matched to a very large extent. Their personalities complimented each other at a level which was quite rare, and the fact that both of them took their lives and all their relationships quite seriously meant that neither of them were frivolous to treat their friendship lightly.
However it was only when Priya’s parents started looking for a suitable boy to get her married off to that she realized her true feelings for David. At first she dismissed these thoughts as the result of the nervousness of the prospective groom hunting and the entire ‘circus’ that inevitably accompanied it. But the more she thought about this feeling, the more she was convinced that David was the one person that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, he was the one she wanted to grow old with, share her memories with, walk into the sunset with.
But then there was the complication that David was her brother’s best friend and a good friend of hers too. She didn’t want to give rise to a situation where he would be put on the spot in front of her brother and their friendship would suffer as a result. She also didn’t want a situation where she would have to forgo her friendship with David as well. She knew she was wishing for too much, but then when it came to affairs of the heart, even a rational sensible girl would behave irrationally, wouldn’t she.
She finally mustered up enough courage and on one of his frequent trips to Chennai with Ram, she asked David to take her to Elliot’s Beach at Besant Nagar. The Schmidt memorial there was one of their favorite haunts and they used to frequent the café immediately opposite the memorial to enjoy their view of the sunsets and discuss literature, poetry, movies and a host of other myriad topics. They had always enjoyed their conversations there, but today was going to be different for her.
When she first popped the question to David as to whether he was ‘interested’ in her, he didn’t quite know how to react. It turned out that he had also been harboring the same feelings for her, but hadn’t found the guts to talk about this to her for the fear of being labeled as somebody who took advantage of the prevailing situation and had hit on his friend’s sister. Therefore, when she actually asked the question, he was beyond himself and for the first time hugged her as somebody he well and truly loved as a person, as an individual, as a soul-mate rather than just those platonic hugs they had shared so far.
After a couple of months of courtship where they talked about their futures together, David decided that the time had come to formalize it. He took his mother’s old locket from his safe at home, replaced his parents’ pictures with his and Priya’s (knowing fully well that his parents would approve of his choice), drove down to Chennai all alone, and took Priya to the same café on Elliot’s beach.
Once there, he ordered her favorite chocolate latte and black forest pastries. He then went down on his right knee and said “Priya, I know I probably am being totally inappropriate in asking this favor from my best friend’s sister. But the fact remains that you complete me. Will you marry me?”
While Priya had known that a proposal was forthcoming from David, she hadn’t quite expected it to be this dramatic and for sure, she hadn’t expected it to happen before he spoke to Ram. But given the romantic way in which he had proposed, she had accepted and they had sealed the deal with a hug then and there.
The next day when David was back in Bangalore, he decided that it was high time that he let Ram know of his and Priya’s love and the fact that they had decided that they were going to spend their lives together. He made up his mind to tell Ram that very evening itself and immediately messaged Ram “Dude, let’s order Pizza tonight. I have something important to confess to you.”
Although it was an easy task to type out an SMS and hit on the Send button, talking to Ram was something that David was not particularly looking forward to. Thinking about how he would broach this topic, he didn’t happen to notice the couple of street dogs that ran across the road, and when he therefore suddenly swerved to the right, he was hit by an auto rickshaw and hit his head on the pavement. He was lucky that he was wearing a helmet and got away with only a minor head injury.
Although he didn’t know it at that time, but his confession would have to wait.
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This novella started off with the Write Tribe Festival of Words 2 where the first seven parts dealt with the seven prompts for the Festival.
This is the tenth and concluding post in a novella “The Confession” that I am writing.
Read the rest of the novella here
