"What do you mean how does she know your name? You are an Asian games gold medallist; Of course she knows your name." The brown leather jacket girl scoffs and moves a hand through her hair.
Misha glares at the girl with such vehemence that the girl actually shifts in her seat. Asian games gold medallist!?
Her eyes move to Aakash, and he keeps staring at her in that weird way, as if she was a math problem he couldn't solve.
She stares right back at him, she isn't a coward. Yes she made a mistake, yes she is sorry, but that doesn't give him the right to disrespect her and not even acknowledge her.
Something on her face makes him laugh suddenly; it's a deep throaty laugh, the one that sends tingles down her legs even when she is supposed to be angry with him. She sets her face into nondescript expression and then decides to go hell with it and glares at him with all her form. [ro1]
His dark brown brows come up and then his hands clutch his stomach and he laughs even more loudly than before, the sound reaches straight to Misha's chest, his black and gold eyes moving around her face, and Misha doesn't know what is happening, the brown leather jacket girl stares at him as if he has gone berserk.
Misha thinks, baffled, she may as well share the same expression.
He continues laughing and gets up from the booth unexpectedly, Misha's heart beats so loud that she feels it jumping to her brain, making her feel all heady and gooey, and stranded.
He comes close to her, laughing and Misha forgets how to breathe because there is that smell again, that smell of lake, coffee and lemons, the smell that she has preciously savoured in a blue Kitsch box, like a total maniac.
Her nose acts on her own and it inhales so sharply and fast that Misha feels the smell reach to her throat, she feels like she can breathe. It's the smell of mountains, lakes and coffee again, the smell of home literally. How can he smell like mountains?
She's been finding this smell for a year, craving.
She looks up at him and he is still laughing, oblivious, his eyes glittering and she is inhaling like a wet dog desperate for breaths. He turns towards the shocked and staring brown leather jacket girl and says in a breezy tone, "I will meet you in ten," then he turns towards Misha and laughs again, "Will you?" he says, motioning towards the door at the entrance of the coffee shop.
Misha can't believe in her luck, she just nods her head feverishly and her eyes meet across Sammy's, who stares at her with double sized black eyes, dunking her head in a dazed state towards the glass of cappuccino which Misha ordered, then coughing out the coffee ten seconds later, glaring at Misha as if it was Misha's mistake.
***
They walk outside the cafe with an awkward silence.
Aakash has stopped laughing, and there's awkward quietness between them and in the night. The monochrome and Broadway streetlights are hanging off in lanterns shapes and poles, making their shadow reflect in white washed walls of passing cafes and stationary shops in blue monochrome open 24 hours.
Misha sees Aakash following her, his elongated shadow merging through her, her trainers squelching in the wet path, his boots clicking, waiting.
Misha knows she has to be the one to make it all right, so she stops halfway across the road and turns to him, he stops walking and almost bumps into her. She takes a deep enormous giant breath for courage, and opens her mouth, I am sorry, I don't know why I didn't remember you but I should have, I don't know what happened but I didn't pretend to not remember you, I really didn't, but what comes out of her mouth is, "Would you like to have an ice cream?"
He tilts his head, a habit of him, she thinks and she gutters out the first thing that comes to her mind, "I mean I saw you drinking iced coffee back there, a lot of people don't prefer that in winter. What I mean to say is," her nostrils flare and his eyes gleam as if he was having fun, "I mean, not a lot of people have something cold in winter, so would you like to have ice cream?" She asks perturbed.
He grins with a dimple on his face, and that grin reaches inside Misha's stomach, doing a little twirl. "Yes, I would like to have an ice cream."
****