Yours Lovingly: A Collection of Short Love Stories

From The Editor’s Desk

Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing ‘Yours Lovingly’, the exquisite anthology of the love stories from our very talented writers. As I present this beautiful collection to you, I feel excited and pleased to take our initiative, to provide an encouraging and supporting literary platform to the budding writers through YourStoryClub.com, popularly known as YSC, to a next level by publishing our writers’ works in eBook and paperback. When a house wife, who was happily married with two children, decided to start a publishing house, not many thought any success in her journey. But when you believe in yourself and have a dream that does not allow you to sleep, everything is possible! I continued to live my dream challenging myself to do everyday something better than what I did yesterday towards my goal. The result followed, firstly, when I launched YSC and secondly, now, when I present this book to you. This book is a significant milestone in the journey of YSC and for its writers as it opens a new avenue for the writers to showcase their talents to a wider reader-base.

Before I conclude this note, I thank all readers and writers of YSC for their unconditional support and absolute belief in our mission. Without them my dream would have never taken off. I also thank my relatives and friends for their encouragement to rear YSC. I extend my gratitude to my loving husband and sweet children who always understood and supported me in my journey.

Hope you like the love stories in this book. I also invite you to visit and contribute by your literary work to www.yourstoryclub.com. Do send your feedback and suggestions to admin@yourstoryclub.com. Wish you all the best and once again thank you for choosing this book for your collection.

Sincerely yours

Soumya Tripathi

Chief Editor, YourStoryClub.com

Love Note After Twelve Years

Pranava Tripathi

Life had changed for me. I never realized. Moonlight walk had changed into late night strategy workshops. Candlelight dinner had turned into business meetings. Sweet and short phone calls from her had transformed into long hours teleconferences. Exchanging gifts was no more priority now—there should be some tangible return on whatever we invested, after all. Spending even 5 dollars on the bouquet for Valentine’s Day seemed meaningless—one would lose at least half an hour searching parking space in the downtown.

Overall there was no respite from the hectic job and the future planning. Whenever she, in a very mild attempt, tried to express her feelings, I had a predefined answer, ‘These all I am doing for us only, darling’ and she used to be quiet for a month or so.

Recently I had to go to Holland on a business trip for a week. I was working on an important assignment. I hadn’t even five minutes to talk to my parents who travelled more than fifteen hundred miles just to meet us. I called her that day to inform that I had to leave in the evening. It was not new for her. It had happened many times, and every time, in evening, I found her standing at the door, smiling, with my suitcase packed with all the necessary stuff.

I checked in to Crown Inn in Eindhoven. It was 3pm. I wanted to rehearse my presentation before my meeting with the senior management. I was sure that she would have kept the file. In past she never missed what I needed, never ever. But I could not control my anger when I opened my leather cased Samsonite and the file was not there!!!

I took out or rather threw clothes, one by one, on the cosy floor of Crown Inn.

‘Here it is. Phewwww . . . what a relief.’

I knew she never missed even my minute taste. And for this one, I had specifically asked her. I opened the file. There was a pink envelop, something similar to what we used to exchange, long time ago, before our marriage. It had been more than twelve years. Those days, loves were not made at Internet.

I opened the envelope. It had our family photograph—I with her and our two little ones. We all were smiling. There was a pink greeting card with red heart printed on it. Inside it, it read,

‘Miss you my dear Teddy Bear!’

After a week, when I was returning, at Schiphol airport I purchased something for her… , after many years, just for her… a pair of diamond earrings.

The Missing Petals

Adwitiya Borah

A sharp pain seared through my head, as if it just got stabbed a million times at one point on my skull. I couldn’t open my eyes, they burned. And I felt suffocated by the smell of my own blood, burnt clothes and flesh. The skin on my arms seemed to have disappeared, and moving them was excruciatingly painful. My ears still felt numb from the deafening sound of the blast.

I yelped when four hands picked me up and made me lie down somewhere, probably an ambulance. I still preferred to keep my eyes closed. I didn’t know if I was crying or if it was blood pouring out of my eyes. I heard the door shut and the thing moved. Sirens blared loudly all around. People talked, shouted and made frantic phone calls.

A few minutes later, the vehicle stopped and we got down somewhere. Hospital. I was wheeled around on a stretcher, a person shouting ‘Emergency! Out of the way!’ People rushed about, as the person ordered them to fetch certain things that he would need. Then slowly it all faded away.

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I woke up to the voice of my mother calling my name and her warm hand gently caressing my forehead. I felt no pain at that time, only I knew I was draped in bandages. My both eyes were heavily bandaged and I couldn’t open them.

‘How do you feel now?’ she asked. I couldn’t see her but sensed she was crying.

‘I’m okay mom,’ I said. And then my thoughts drifted to the incident of the previous day. ‘Where’s the kid?’ I asked her.

Her hand stopped moving and she sighed. I knew the answer.

In my mind, I could still remember the face of that little girl in the car, eyes soaked with tears and wailing loudly. Nobody dared to go near it.

‘It may explode any moment now,’ they said. The mother lay unconscious in the front seat. Fire trucks hadn’t arrived. And people were running as far away from it as possible.

‘Don’t go!’ my friend had shouted when I ran towards the car. I had to save the girl

‘I’m proud of you, son,’ my mother broke into my thoughts.

She shouldn’t be, I felt. I couldn’t save either of them.

The doctor visited me a number of times that day. He told my mother they would open the bandages on my eyes in the evening. ‘We’re very unsure,’ I heard him saying. I didn’t really understand, but prepared myself for whatever was to come. I knew my mother was doing the same.

A team of nurses stood inside my cabin when the doctor arrived for opening my bandages. My mother clutched my hand tightly. It made me nervous.

‘Very slowly, open your eyes,’ the doctor said. ‘Slowly…’

I opened my eyes a little, just a little, and then shut them again quickly. It was dark. I exhaled deeply and tried again, with more concentration this time. It was still dark. I blinked. Complete blackness. My heartbeats were so loud that I could almost hear them. My chest began to hurt.

‘I can’t see,’ I said to no one in particular. I heard my mom’s stifled cry. She left my hand and probably went out of the room. The doctors began asking me questions and uttered certain medical terms that I didn’t really understand. I didn’t want to talk to them. I tried so hard to concentrate. My eyes were open and yet it was dark for me. Too dark.

‘Go away…’ I told them. But they continued with their stupid work. Asking stupid questions and speaking words that made no sense to me. I was angry.

‘GO AWAY!!!’

Night arrived. I could tell because my mother had set up alarms in my cell phone after every one hour so I knew the time. I knew which button to press to cancel the alarm. It was frustrating, initially, as I had the habit of throwing my cell phone anywhere on my bed. And groping under the blankets in the ‘dark’ can be maddening. Once or twice I yelled out to the nurse to shut the damn alarm. I cried many times; not that I was weak. But when I spilled many things while trying to find one and I just couldn’t retrieve a thing once it was lost, it got annoying.

The door suddenly opened and somebody came in. Nurse?

‘You were weeping last night. I heard you.’ She spoke candidly. There was no greeting or introduction from her side.

‘So what?’ I spat at her.

‘I thought you might need some company,’ she offered. ‘It hurts to hear a man cry like that…’

‘I need no one! I’m strong! I can take care of myself.’

‘Of course you can,’ she said nonchalantly.

‘I’m a martial artist! A fighter!’

‘Yes you were screaming that too last night.’

I hated the blunt way she spoke. What the hell did she think of herself?

‘I’m strong… I’m strong…’ I told her. Or maybe I told myself. ‘I don’t need anyone’s help to survive. I’m strong.’

‘I know.’ Her voice was cool.

I replied nothing. Who was she anyway? I wondered.

‘You wanna talk about it? Venting out feels good.’

‘GO!’ I yelled out loud. I could imagine her horrified expression at that moment, or maybe she was still sitting there coolly.

I felt a whiff of air as she rose. Then I heard the door open and shut.

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I woke up late the next morning. Everything felt like a puzzle to me. With the help of sound, smell and movement of air, I tried to deduce what’s happening around me. But I was never sure. And it was maddening to be not sure. I felt insecure and vulnerable. I didn’t like to feel that way.

‘Hello my angel,’ I heard a man’s voice from the adjacent cabin. No one responded.

‘You look beautiful today, you know,’ he continued. ‘I’ve brought roses. I stole them from the neighbour’s garden early in the morning.’ He laughed alone at this.

‘We’ll have a beautiful rose garden in our house after we’re married, okay?’ he said. ‘All kinds of roses for my angel. Every colour you’d like to have in there… I’ll plant it myself. You’ll marry me, won’t you?’

I found the conversation odd, maybe because it wasn’t really a conversation. He was speaking alone, and with full gusto.

‘And by the way,’ he continued enthusiastically, ‘we performed beautifully last night. The audience went crazy for us! I got it recorded. Let me play it for you.’

A few seconds later, I heard Westlife’s ‘I Wanna Grow Old With You’ playing beautifully.

‘It’s for you, love. You like this song, don’t you?’

There was never a response.

I lay awake in my bed at night. I badly needed to go to the bathroom, but didn’t want to ask for help. I tried to remember the exact position of it. Outside my cabin, if I walked ten steps at an angle on thirty degrees, I should be there. But the ladies and gents washrooms were located next to each other. What if I entered the wrong one?

Against all rational logic, I got up from bed and headed for the door of my ‘dark’ cabin. I found it, opened it and stepped outside; only to trip over a doormat and fall down! A moan escaped my lips; I remembered not to scream out lest someone should know. But I realised I wasn’t too successful when a woman’s hand helped me get up on my feet.

‘I’m fine,’ I told the nurse. I was grateful, but didn’t say so. It would make me look weak. She said nothing but walked me up to the bathroom. When I came out, she was still waiting to take me back to my cabin.

‘Good night,’ she said when I reached my room, and I recognised the voice immediately.

‘It’s you!’ I cried out.

‘I heard you fall,’ she said coolly.

‘I was fine!’ I had to control hard to not scream at her. ‘Go away!’

I spent the night tossing and turning on my bed. I would close my eyes for some time and then open them again. It made no difference. Darkness. Now and again I would scream out of frustration. ‘I’m a fighter, I’m strong,’ I would tell myself. ‘I’ll never fight anymore,’ a voice from inside would retort.

And I wept myself to sleep. The next morning went the same. The same man talked aimlessly to no one in particular in the next room. Doctors came, checked on me and left wordlessly. A male nurse helped me walk up to the bathroom whenever I needed. My mom kept trying to cheer me up and get me talking, but in vain. Exasperated, she left by noon.

‘You were screaming again after I left last night,’ I heard her voice. It was past 2a.m. and I was lying awake in bed. Somehow, her company in these lonely nights was annoyingly comforting.

‘Do you eavesdrop?’ I asked.

‘No, not really. I was woken up by your sobs.’

I squinted at the word ‘sobs’.

‘I must have awoken the other room’s patient too,’ I said, remembering the man’s voice from the morning before.

Strangely enough, she laughed when I said this.

‘What’s so funny now?’ I asked.

‘Well they would be very happy if you could do that, you know… wake her up…’ she said. ‘The poor girl has been in coma for sixteen months now.’

‘Girl? I heard a man’s voice last night. He seemed crazy.’

‘He’s her fiancé,’ she replied. ‘He has been coming here every day for sixteen months. They say that there never was a single day that he didn’t come… he just doesn’t give up, that man.’

I chuckled softly. ‘Things don’t work out that way. She won’t come to life just because he believed she would. Those things happened in movies. It’s useless shit.’

‘It’s love! It’s always worth your time. A flower with a missing petal is still a flower.’

‘It’s incomplete… a handicap. That missing petal will never come back.’

‘It won’t. You’ll just have to learn to love it for the petals that are present.’

I took a moment to digest the concept. ‘Are you a nurse?’ I asked.

She laughed. I didn’t understand her irritating habit of laughing at anything and everything. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m just another patient.’

For me, it was hard to believe that she was sick or injured in any way. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Nothing much. I’ll be off this place in a couple of days.’

‘You’re lucky. Go move on. Lead a normal life. I’m just stuck with this!’

She was silent for a few seconds, maybe thoughtful. ‘It’s challenging,’ she said.

‘I’m a martial artist,’ I told her. ‘But I’ll never fight anymore.’

‘Hmm… you got an even bigger battle to fight now,’ she said.

‘You think it’s that simple?’ I barked at her.

‘Of course not. But I know you’re tough. You’re strong, aren’t you?’

I gulped, not knowing what to say. ‘I don’t like to take help from people,’ I said. ‘It… it makes me feel weak. Dependent. I don’t like that to happen. I don’t like to be pitied.’

‘There’s nothing wrong in that,’ she said. ‘I heard what you were trying to do when the accident happened. You’re a brave man. Feel proud.’

She’s kind, I thought. ‘I know… but I’ve always been… the strong guy, you know. The Champion. Girls went crazy for me.’

She laughed again when I said this. I felt angry. Who was she to come over and lecture me anyway?

‘You find it very funny, don’t you?’ I blurted out. ‘Poor blind guy, so desperately trying to prove that he’s alright… hopeless…’

‘I didn’t say that,’ she defended.

‘Look. You’ll be out of here in a few days. So will I. Only my suffering won’t stop after I leave. I’ll be stuck with this. Blind. Darkness all around me. Do you know how it feels? Try groping your way out of the room with your eyes completely shut. And then imagine doing that forever!’

‘I understand,’ her voice was steady. ‘But you can’t just be angry with everyone around you for that.’

‘Go away!’ I yelled. ‘You’ve no idea what I’m going through.’

She was silent. The movement of air told me that she got up. I heard the door open.

‘You’re not the only person in the world who has problems,’ she said.

I heard the door shut.

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‘Happy birthday angel,’ an enthusiastic voice from the adjacent room woke me up the next morning. I opened my eyes, and instantly felt angry at the darkness around. Someone had placed flowers in my room and they smelled beautiful. I guessed my mother had come in early that day with fresh smelling flowers.

‘Guess what,’ he said excitedly. ‘My mom sent this lovely book for you. It’s a collection of short romantic stories. She said you should like it. I was so happy, you know. It’s for the first time since ages that she actually supported me being with you.’ There was a pause, as if waiting for a reply. ‘Good days are coming,’ he said, his tone softer, ‘I hope these months of separation haven’t made you forget me. You’ll marry me, won’t you?’ he asked the question he always did and laughed softly to himself. ‘And you know what; I met your brother the other day in a mall and…’ He stopped talking suddenly.

I wondered what went wrong. Was he crying? Or did he just forget what to say? Pin drop silence. Seconds ticked by. I waited.

Suddenly he gave a cry of joy. ‘O God! I can’t believe this!’

‘I knew you would be here when I wake up,’ I heard a girl’s struggled voice. I strained my ears to listen, my heart racing.

‘Thank you, for never giving up on me. And yes, I’ll marry you.’

The man