The Begining

I felt as if I was run over by a truck. For a moment I had no clue where I was. And slowly the familiarity of my bed room started hitting me. I sighed with a breath of relief that I was nowhere else but in my own room.
I looked for my cell phone. It was under the bed. There were nine missed calls. Three of them were from my mother and five from my father. The last one was from Rebecca, my friend who I was supposed to be hanging out with the previous night. Just then I realised that I had no recollection of the previous night. Vague images of a dance floor, DJ and lots of alcohol flickered in my mind.
Hi, I am Steve. Stephen George, born in a Christian dominated district of Kerala. NRI from the very beginning of my life, I had no discontent or unsatisfied desires. Rich parents, top of my class and to top it all girls naturally flock towards me.
When I called Rebecca back, she was furious. I had no idea why she was so mad at me. Being my best friend for the past 5 years, I had figured it was okay to stand up on her once in a while. After all last night was an unavoidable emergency. The girls at the cafe badly wanted me to join them for their friend’s birthday party. Since I consider myself as a generous and helpful person how could I just refuse. Plus you could just be retarded to not grab an opportunity like that.
It was in high school when I first met Rebecca. Since I had already attained the required amount of popularity to be considered cool, I had never taken much notice of her. To me, Rebecca Sanders was just another girl of no social importance.

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Damn, I hate the sun. I just wanted to hide under the blanket and never get up. The world is so nice in my dreams. Plus I don’t have to worry about my so called jerk of a best friend. I must have been stupid to completely trust him last night. This was not the first time that he stood me up. After all he is the biggest self obsessed, arrogant person I have ever met in my life. I thought he‘ll change. But just as always I end up making the wrong decisions.
Hi, I am Rebecca Sanders. My origin is a little strange. Something I am not so proud of. My American parents decided that India is the place that they want to settle leaving behind all the luxuries of the world dominating economic giant. Born in India, I was glad that they didn’t decide to give me one of the funny sounding Indian names. It was in high school that my dad got transferred to the Middle East and hence I ended up here. Don’t take me wrong. I am not complaining about the life in Dubai. It’s as close as I can get to the western culture.
It was during my friend’s party that I had seen Steve for the first time. We had a mutual friend. Of course, it was Steve. Every girl in the school wanted his number. From the first time I saw him, I developed an intense hatred towards him. It was kind of an unexplainable feeling. I simply couldn’t stand him. It was kind of unfortunate that my close friend developed a huge crush on him and used to drag me along to make conversation with him. To make matters worse, Steve didn’t even acknowledge my presence. I have never seen so much attitude in a guy.
That was our beginning.

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When you get a call at the middle of the night from an unknown number, you generally don’t bother answering it. But that day I thought, “What the hell. How bad can it be”?
Well. I had a paranoid girl on the phone who I have never spoken to in my life, but somehow she managed to get hold of my number from a mutual friend’s phone. The situation was not as bad as she thought it was.
Rebecca was ranting on about how her irresponsible friend managed to get drunk and she had no idea how to handle the situation. Now why did she decide to call me? To that question I still don’t know the answer. Anyways I decided to help the poor damsel in distress. I took her address and drove down to the bar. Apparently at a friend’s birthday party earlier that evening, her friend had gone a little of her limit and ended up sloshed. Damn these girls have no idea of self control when it comes to alcohol. And the worst part is that these same girls keep on advising us, the so called “uncontrollable” guys, on the ill effects of drinking. I was glad that at least Rebecca had the presence of mind not to get drunk. But the poor soul never thought that it would ultimately get this ugly.
With a drunken girl at the back seat and hours of awkward silence between me and Rebecca I reached my house. I was sure that Rebecca still didn’t trust me completely and hence I told her that I’ll put them up with my sister who is very supportive and wont rat out on me to my parents.
Before the break of dawn, I woke up. This must have been the first time that I saw the clock strike 6. I didn’t know if should have been proud of myself or be worried about that fact that I have two stow away girls in my sister’s room. I quickly packed some sandwich, woke up the girls and sneaked out of the house. I didn’t want my mom waking up and finding two girls that she has never met in the house.
After half an hour of listening to how embarrassed she was and profuse apologies, I finally dropped them at their houses. I saw a grateful look in Rebecca’s face. I guess she was really glad that the night passed by.
Now I had a bigger problem. How do I explain to my mom why I am out of bed so early? I guess she’ll be proud of me if I tell her that I went jogging. After all I am a smooth talker.

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How could I have been wrong about him? I am usually good at judging a person’s character. But last night Steve completely caught me off guard. I never realised that inside of his attitude clad exterior, he was actually a nice and caring guy. I agree that I have always thought he was the biggest show off ever to be born, but I guess there is more than that to him.
I guess it was all my fault. I shouldn’t have formed opinion about him without actually getting to know him.
When I decided to get to know him more, the surprise was entirely mine. We both were complete opposite in nature. Him being a regular party goer, and me usually shunning away from the dance floor, our tastes never agreed with each other. Ironically we co existed peacefully and understood each other completely. He knew how exactly to bring a smile on my face and I unknowingly found myself leaning towards him when I was in need of a shoulder.
I could feel something special within him.

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I woke up with a startle to the familiar ring tone of my phone. The clock on my side table showed that it was three in the morning. A feeling of déjà vu crept into me. Praying to god, I answered the phone.
As always it was Rebecca. I was glad that it was just another of her social calls. But at that time of the night, it was a bit awkward. The girl was not in her usual mood. She was very unsettled and restless. She wanted to tell me something but words failed her. Nevertheless, I decided to entertain her call.
There was a time when I had thrown everything out to the wind. The very next second of my life was unplanned. In other’s eyes, I was enjoying life to the fullest. But in spite of all the enjoyment and crazy nights, I had always felt something missing. And unknowingly that void was no longer present.
I knew I was not the perfect guy in this world. And I knew that I was not someone any parent would advice their daughter to hang out with. But slowly I began to feel that the girl I was talking to was the same girl that I would like to spend the rest of my life with.
With much difficulty I managed to get her to talk. She was telling me about how empty and lonely she was feeling. She told me that she didn’t know what was happening to her, but at sight of all adversaries, she unknowingly found herself leaning on to my shoulders. The days that I am not able to talk to her she feels completely lost.
I was the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.