"I want to be in a relationship where you telling me you love me is just a ceremonious validation of what you already show me."

- Steve Maraboli from Life, the Truth, and Being Free

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She - Suman Tiwari - has fallen in love with him, and Shravan Malhotra knew it...

She never told him in words, but she had shown him. He didn't know when it was that she had started to feel something for him. If it happened recently or has been there ever since he came back. But she was in love with him, he was sure of that...

When he thought about it, there had been a change in her attitude towards him ever since he came back from London after a decade of separation. Then he was too busy in nursing the wounds given by her ten years ago to notice it. But he realizes it whenever he looked back at those initial days when she was all ready to do anything he asked for his forgiveness, to do everything to please him. Arrogantly, he had credited it all to her guilt and only that. Never realizing that maybe it wasn't only him who had missed their friendship, she did it too. That she missed them too...

The probability of her thinking of them together in any kind of relationship, in any quality other than friendship, was so new to him. And it made him smile every time he thought about it. He wasn't the only one who thought of them as 'us', she did it too...

It was only when she was able to recall everything about him that he was left astound, stupefied, and overwhelmed. She, Suman Tiwari, his 'Sumo', remembered him and every little detail about him. She knew his favorite place to hang out, how he liked his 'chai', his favorite dish he could have any day, and that moong daal halwa was the desert he would do anything for, she remembered. She remembered everything that was there to remember about him and more...

And he couldn't resist falling for her again. Whenever she surprised him with his favorite dish during lunch or made sure he didn't work till late in his office, he fell in love with her all over again.

She cared about him... 

It didn't matter how much he told himself not to fall in love with her again, no matter how much he chastised himself, no matter how much he had reminded himself that she was only being a caring friend, his heart hadn't listened to him. And it had happily gone ahead and fallen in love with her thousand times more. Because whenever she did anything for him, anything, even just softly smiled at him with the warmth of fondness in her eyes, he felt loved and taken care of...

Whenever she called him at nights, and she did that regularly now, he felt as if she wanted to end the day with his voice as he wished it was her voice to which he heard before going to sleep. On those nights, whenever he had heard her voice, laying on his bed in the dark, he had felt as if she was right next to him, lying beside him. With her voice ringing in his ears, he had not stopped himself from wishing for the day to come when she would be actually laying beside him, talking a mile as he half-listened to her, too busy in staring at her.

He could imagine that happening and could predict her reaction: she would shove and whack him, whine and complain that he never listens to her till he would start to pay more attention to the words and less to the lips that formed those words.

He couldn't recall when and how it has become a habit, but they had started to talk at nights, just before sleeping. Every night as he laid in his bed, he waited for her call and she would call him every night after getting ready to sleep and then they would talk till at least one of them fell asleep, only then the other one, if awake, would end the call. Many a time he had fallen with her voice ringing in his ears, accompanying him in his dreams too...

A smile always formed on his lips whenever he recalled the dream alike episode once happened during one of their night calls - Just a few days back, he had somehow fallen asleep while listening to her rant about something, and then he had that dream, so vivid it was. It still appeared as if it really happened: he had felt her voice close to him as if she was near him and when he had turned around to his side, he had found her lying next to him, so close. Laying there on the side of his bed that he had always thought of as hers. There was a smile on her face when she had looked up at him. The warmth coming off her body and the scent of her perfume, it all had felt so real. He had gone ahead and tried to reach out to her with the need to assure him that she really was there, only then the spell had broken and he had woken up with a start, wishing it to be the reality. Their reality...

She hasn't told him if she felt the same, but the way they behaved was not at all 'Just childhood friends' alike. They took way too many liberties, they invaded each other's privacy way too much, stood too close to each other and walked together without realizing, they thought of having too many 'rights' on each other to be just friends. Whenever he forced her to spend their weekend in the same way they had spent it years ago, or when while making plans, she forced him to agree on something, they were not being just friends, but more...

These days, he didn't feel as if they were 'just' friends, but that didn't mean the comfort and frankness that their friendship was missing. She still was his 'Sumo' and he still was her 'Qutub-Minar', but there was something more between them now. A warmth of its own kind and an awareness of each other that friends didn't have...

It did something to him know that - the awareness of 'more' that he had felt for ages between them - now she too felt the same...

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