~Sanvi's POV~
Why was he bringing the kiss into this? He knew it was his fault in the first place. I absolutely loathed his fixation on that accidental, and mind you, a rather non-consensual act.
Why was he so hell bent on exposing the effect he had on me after that kiss? Did he want to inflate his ego even more with that information?
Of course, he did.
He was a self-centered jerk afterall.
And yet, I couldn't figure if I too had the same effect on him.
The thought itself frustrated me. He wasn't affected in anyway in my presence, was he?
He didn't feel that hollowness in his stomach. He didn't feel squeamish when our eyes locked. He didn't sweat like a pig whenever our hands brushed against each other.
He was such a pig for intending to extract that effect out of me in that manner when he himself wasn't a tad bit moved by our closeness.
Blatantly unfair.
"Shut up." I barked angrily and distanced myself from him with an elbow jab on his chest.
"Ow." He winced but didn't entirely loosen his grip on my waist.
"Not ready to talk about it yet, Dixit?" He joked, massaging the hit area of his chest.
I scoffed.
"But you're ready to take on the greatest Championship of our school with a worthless stranger like Aakash? Tch, gotta give it you for your naivety." He added, his smirk vanishing in seconds as he locked eyes with me.
Wow.
The unprecedented jab hit me right in the face.
"Tch, I don't expect anything better from a loser like Aakash. However, I didn't expect you'd be so eager as to register yourself into the loser club by pairing up with Aakash! I hope you two friends win the loser trophy for being the biggest suckers in the Championship." I shot him a dirty look at his sour words.
"Well? Where's your new oh-so-adorable partner? Didn't come to see off his 'love'?" His half-smile conveyed sheer bitterness.
I was initially taken aback and rendered speechless at his sudden attack. I stood rooted to my spot, stammering to collect words for a just reply to all of that.
What exactly was he agitated about? Me being with him in the team? Ignoring him for the past month? Or pairing up with Aakash, another infamous enemy of his?
It took me a couple of minutes to stumbled upon a far-flung possible conclusion.
Was the great Rishabh Singh Rathore jealous?
I was rather puzzled at the conclusion I came onto. And needless to say, it was rather unbecoming of his personality. But after the humiliation of being the only one left from being approached for a partnership, it didn't seem like a baseless conjecture.
But there was his best friend, Dhruv, as well. Why didn't he act the same way towards him when he strutted away with Sanaya?
Was his jealousy only towards my partnership? His two enemies huddling together in a partnership conjured his sudden envy, then?
I rolled my eyes when I perceived the pettiness in his own disposition, if that indeed was true.
I stood there, analysing the issue thoroughly. My eyes were almost bulging with surprise, deep in my thoughts, until Rishabh shook me out of my trance.
I shot him an incredulous look.
"Do you really have to be this petty, Rishabh? What's with you if I pair up with anyone? Why are you clogging your brain with this?" I narrowed my eyes, cocking my eyebrows at him as he stared at me with a poker face.
I could depict from the change in his demeanor that he was surely taken aback at my charging question. He scratched the back of his neck and looked away from me.
"I am not being petty. I have a rational standpoint on this,- a thing that all of you baboons lack and—", I cut him off sharply.
"Does your rational standpoint encourage you to insult me when I had absolutely nothing to do with Aakash's spiteful behaviour?"
"Look who's talking! You literally fed him the fuel that elongated that jerk's tongue!" He spat angrily, pulling me behind the car upon hearing loud cackling voices coming from the school courtyard.
"What the hell did I do that would vouch for Aakash's pettiness against you?" I whisper-yelled as we ducked behind the car.
"Shh..." He peeked to make sure that the voices had retracted back to the building.
Looking down at our hands entangled together as I crouched on the ground behind the rusty car, Rishabh sighed exasperatedly.
"You literally took a stupid online compatibility test to form your partnership. Dixit, tell me, are you really that dumb? How can you rely on that random thing for such a significant decision? Of course, you've always lacked that analytical mind. But I didn't think you'd be this dumb."
Alright.
So I wasn't the only one who found the idea so so stupid.
Rishabh often astonished me with the similarities in our perceptions. My lips curved up slightly at his words, completely ignoring the fact that my nemesis was calling me dumb to my face.
"Why the hell are you smiling like a lunatic?" His rebuke immediately curved my lips back to poker.
Idiot.
"You handed him the stick to beat me with! He saw that the Good Girl Sanvi Dixit is siding with him so why shouldn't he go all out against me... basing the entire thing on your mutual hatred towards me? Why shouldn't I hold you accountable for it then? Don't you hate me equally?"
He stood up and placed his hand on the roof of the car, behind my shoulder.
I looked away from him at our rather intimate position.
"I didn't want to take that stupid test!" I admitted through my teeth and groaned loudly at my own stupidity with handling Aakash.
"Aakash's persistence wearied me down. And yes, our mutual hatred might be equal for you but I would never stoop to the level of Aakash's petty maliciousness." Rishabh scoffed expressively at my words making me shoot him a stink eye.
"I don't care how you hate me personally. But I cannot tolerate you going around making clubs with your friends just to hate me together."
A sudden silence engulfed the atmosphere as I tried to interpret his words. The softness at the end of his speech almost amazed me.
"He's not my friend!" I was almost too eager to clear that out in front of Rishabh. But the intent was rather unknown to me then.
"I don't care." And he was back with his cold voice.
"The Championship is a very important engagement for me. And I won't let you baboons ruin our chances of winning it this year, for the sake of my own as well as our school." My eyes were strained from rolling back and forth at his consistent dramatic declarations.
He truly was a drama king.
"I would have been the sole representative had the Committee not dropped that stupid clause for this year. If I had participated alone, there wouldn't have been any of such issues that we're facing right now and on top of that, the school would've had a sure shot at victory, relying only on me. Me!"
Wow, talk about a tantrum.
He carelessly leaned against the car beside me with his fists in his pant-pockets. His words made me scoff outloud as I stared at his face, in disbelief of his arrogance.
"Wow. Do you even listen to these selfish words in your mind before you just spew them out?" I nodded my head to and fro in passive exhaustion.
The jerk simply shrugged at my sarcastic remark.
He stared straight-on, looking at nothing in particular while I couldn't help but admire his beautifully structured side-profile. That jaw could cut through a chunk of butter in a smooth swipe.
He might have been lamenting over the loss of his dream regarding the Championship and although I absolutely hated how selfish his desire was, I couldn't help but feel a teensy bit of pity for him right then.
I would've been devastated too had I been in his place but I wasn't an egotistical hyper competitor like him. I shook my head to bring myself back to address the subject at hand.
"Tell me, Rathore. What does your brilliant mind suggest we do in this sticky situation? If you suggest I quit the team, then you better make it worth the very last words you speak on the face of this earth."
While he frowned deep at my warning, I couldn't help but notice how he almost leaped up at my question, as if he had been waiting for this turn in the conversation for a long time.
"Uhm.. For the starters, I think both of us should stick to obeying Father's punishment. I don't wanna risk my graduation due to your mistake."
Whaaaat?
How did he manage to make it all my fault when he was equally responsible?
He stood there, scratching the back of neck, almost making me feel like a stupid bimbo for feeling pity for him on two whole occasions. He deserved what he got.
I knew what he was indicating at. But his tone wasn't one with his proposal. I attempted to pry at his weak nerve a bit more.
"Whatever do you mean, Rathore? We are talking about the Championship here. Father didn't direct us to carry out our punishment alongwith the Championship, did he? We're already so busy."
He turned to look at me with a frown.
Hehe.
I loved every bit of that interaction then.
"That doesn't mean that he won't be expecting our utter diligence towards his order. This includes the Championship as well. Don't tell me that you've not noticed the way he looked at us during his speech in the Cafeteria?" Rishabh's frustration was evident in his urgent voice.
"You've been going around ignoring me throughout the past month and we've barely interacted, let alone participate in something together. Don't you think Father would have noticed that, especially when he had clearly specified that he'd be watching us for the entire session?"
I twisted my lips while pondering over his words. Quite honestly, I was also worried about Father's punishment.
Father was a man of his words, and his strictness would surely push him to expel us in the end of the session if Rishabh and I didn't recover from the detrimental consequences of our disputes by then.
He had directed us to participate in everything together and the word 'together' itself was a big threat to my unstable mind back then when I was fresh out of the trauma of losing my first kiss to Rishabh.
Right then, Rishabh's argument seemed fairly justified.
However, just for the fun of it, I tried to probe a bit further into his standpoint.
"Then what are you suggesting, Rathore?" I was clearly enjoying the frustration in his demeanor right then.
"Bimbo! Which part of my speech can't you comprehend? I am... propo...saying.. that we should pair up together..."
I almost couldn't decipher the last part of his speech because he was rather fumbling with his words, almost making it seem that he was having a good deal of difficulty in choosing his words.
"I am sorry, come again?" I poked my right ear out towards him in mockery, much to my own stupidity.
"I SAID I WANT US TO BE PARTNERS!"
Advancing my ear towards him was honestly a bad action on my part. I flinched away from him and massaged my ear while looking at his annoyed face with an even more annoyed expression.
But...
He said...what?
I was thrown out back.
**************
To Be Continued.