Stolen Strawberries
The road to Mahabaleshwar curled through misty hills like a ribbon, and Saarth leaned against the car window, his hoodie pulled tight around his face. He wasn’t sure why he had agreed to Rishi’s invitation. Maybe because the city had become unbearable. His nineteen-year-old life was becoming a burden. Every corner reminded him of Aarya, the girl who had left him for someone, she claimed understood her better. He had replayed their last fight a hundred times: her voice trembling, his silence louder than any scream. She had accused him of being too detached, too lost in his own world of music and unfinished poems. He had wanted to tell her that detachment was the only way he knew to survive, but the words never came. Now, every song he wrote felt like a ghost of her, every line a wound he couldn’t stitch. By afternoon his group reached Rishi’s sprawling farmhouse and almost immediately all of them stripped and jumped into the pool. Saisha arrived at the farmhouse later that e...