Regret filled her heart that day.
She sat crying on the pavement.
She had bunked her college, lied to the HOD about an emergency at home and left the college premises in a hurry.
She wanted to see off her best friend as a surpirse since he was leaving the town. They wouldn’t be meeting anytime soon. So she wanted to see him one last time before he left.
Her friends encouraged her to go meet him at the bus terminal as a surprise. She and her friends came up with the plan to inform the HOD about the emergency at home. The HOD agreed to let her go for the day.
After leaving the college premises, she rushed to the bus terminal hoping to see off her friend.
On reaching the bus terminal she couldn’t spot her friend. He was nowhere to be seem. She searched for him everywhere, in all possible buses. He wasn’t there. She had confirmed that his bus would leave at 4.30pm. It was already 4.10pm and she couldn’t find him anywhere.
She called him to check where he was. He didn’t answer the call. She called him again after sometime. Again, there was no answer. She called him countless times, but there was no answer.
She began to panic. She wondered what would have happened to her friend and why he wasn’t answering her calls. She felt dejected and lost. She couldn’t help but cry.
She sat on the pavement and cried. She regretted bunking college, regretted lying to the HOD and regretted rushing to the bus terminal.
It was 5pm when she decided to stop looking for him. His bus had left and he didn’t board the bus. He hadn’t come. There were no signs of him, neither did he call back.
She left the bus terminal and returned home.
Around 6.15 pm she got a call from the guy. He asks, ‘What happened? You called me 19 times back to back. What’s wrong, tell me’, he said sounding concerned.
She got angry and said, ‘Idiot. Where the hell were you? Couldn’t you answer the calls? Why did you call back so late? Why didn’t you board your bus? Are you alright? I had come to see you off. You stupid’.
He said ‘I was on the way to the bus terminal and suddenly realized that I left my phone in my room. So I had to go back and get it, because of which I got late and missed my bus’.
She then empathized with him and narrated the story of how she had skipped college for him. He was deeply grateful that she had taken such efforts for him and felt bad that he couldn’t make it in time to meet her.
She still regretted that she couldn’t see him one last time before he left.
Three years later, that regret slowly vanished as he gently kissed her cheek, when she was seeing him off at the station before he left once again for his town. 🙂
4 Walls to Freedom 