The tick in Mahika's jaw was becoming more prominent with every ticking second.

She was sure that if there wasn't so much noise around her — the music with unnecessarily heavy bass, the screaming, the people talking too loud, you get the gist of it — the entire room could have heard how hard she was grinding her teeth in pure annoyance.

Now don't get her wrong, she was more than happy for her best friend for finding someone she loved enough to get married to. But she wished that weddings came without the extraneous package.

Mahika was clearly not a people's person.

Neither was she a party person.

Or... a wedding attire person, really.

Because the drawing string of her lehenga was currently digging into her skin hard enough to probably leave a thin, angry line under her navel. The darn thing had made her look pretty in the mirror for a total of twenty minutes before she had realized what a pain it was.

Right then, she wished she wasn't a person at all.

The dress was a dandelion shade of yellow with extremely intricate gold embroidery on it, and it made Mahika feel like she was supposed to step out of a chariot and have two people already holding out their arms to escort her into a ballroom. She might have fallen in love with how it looked on her, but she wasn't exactly the biggest fan of how heavy it felt on her body after a few hours into the wedding reception.

Taking a deep breath, she looked around the unnecessarily large but overwhelmingly full room again, the grimace on her face this time only slight as she took in the shockingly huge number of smiles around her, the decor that probably took a day, and a hundred people's worth of work to arrange but would definitely be thrown away the second all the guests left, and the giant, pretty, but very useless fountain in the middle that people were more likely to collide with than appreciate.

She had to resist the urge to raise her feet up on the chair so she could massage them. Unlike Cinderella, nothing about her dropping her heels was going to be accidental. If anything, she wanted to slide them off and chuck them into the very same fountain that she was waiting for people to collide into. Maybe that would make things a bit interesting.

Why is it like, right in the middle of the hall anyway?

Then again, there were a lot of questionable things that happened at Indian weddings that she had the misfortune of witnessing with her own eyes.

"Mahi!" A familiar, overjoyed voice announced, making her name sound like Mahiii, announcing the presence of Mahika's other best friend. The one that wasn't getting married. "You're here!"

She didn't flinch because she was used to him being a loud drunk, watching him (barely) make his way around her chair to stand in front of her without falling flat on his face somehow. Mahika was far from surprised when she saw him holding two flutes of champagne, one already half-empty. He probably spilled it on the way or drank it, and she had no idea which of the two she wanted to be true.

"Dhruv," she said, voice high-pitched and drawled to match his enthusiasm, but face more deadpan than ever. "You're drunk."

"Yeah!" he replied, swaying just a little bit but enough to alarm Mahika so that she held her hands out in front of herself and leaned back a little. Whenever he smiled too wide, his eyes looked like they were closed. It was endearing, really, but Mahika was worried he was going to spill the alcohol all over her. Or worse, topple over and take her with him. "You should be too! Why are you sitting here all by yourself while everyone else is having fun? I should be the one who's sad —"

"Ooh, I love this song! Let's go dance," she interrupted loudly before he could go any further, jumping out of her seat and quickly scanning the crowd to make sure no one heard him. She turned and shot him a glare before snatching one of the flutes out of his hand — the full one, of course — and downed it in one gulp before snatching the other one as well and doing the same. Lucky for them, a server passed by right then, and she shot him a sweet smile, placing both the empty glasses on his tray before thanking him in a rush.

Then she looked at Dhruv again and hissed, "You better watch what you're saying, Dhruv. I'm serious."

Blinking innocently, he asked, "What did I do?"

She resisted the urge to grab him by the collar and shove him against a wall to bring him back to his senses. Settling for a shoulder grab and giving it a good shake, she said, "Get yourself together." She looked around again, narrowing her eyes to make sure no one was listening to their conversation. "Look. I know this is hard for you but this is supposed to be the biggest day of Naina's life. You can't do anything stupid."

"I didn't do anything stupid!"

"Really?" she hissed, shoving him lightly and leaning in to look him in the eye. "Getting drunk off your ass at your best friend's wedding isn't stupid?"

Before he could open his mouth and say more in reply, she grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the dance floor, nodding and smiling at everyone whose eyes she met.

"If I dance, I might throw up," he announced, and Mahika had to gather all her strength to not throw her head back and groan in annoyance.

"You know what? We're going up the stage to get our pictures clicked. You're going to act like you're completely sober. Then I'm going to drop you off at your room. Good?"

His steps came to a halt, almost making her stumble.

"I can't go up there. I can't see her right now."

His words were barely audible with all the noise around them, but Mahika could catch what he was saying from the movement of his lips. And if his wide, deer caught in the headlights eyes were any clue, Mahika could tell he was panicking.

She slid her hand down to his and gave his palm a squeeze, softening her expression.

Maybe in that moment, despite how sick she was of Dhruv pining after their best friend for years, she felt sorry for him. There he was, having to act like he was fine at the wedding of the girl who he had been in love with for longer than Mahika could even fathom.

Naina may have always been blind to the stars in his eyes every time he looked at her, but the rest of their friends never were.

"Dhruv," she called his name in a voice that was more gentle than it had ever been in his presence, searching his eyes. When the song switched to a lighter, more mellow beat, she gave his hand another little squeeze and said, "It's time to say goodbye."

All the way from there — to watching him look at Naina's glowing face with yearning that no one else except Mahika noticed when they finally got on stage, to watching him hug her with more love than ever, to finally pulling back to meet the eyes of the groom — everything was painful.

Mahika didn't miss the way Dhruv plastered a smile as genuine as he could manage in that moment when he hugged Akash, pulling back and giving him a mock threatening look. "You better take care of her," he said, and Mahika looked away.

On their way back to Dhruv's room, he had cried.

With the clicking of her heels and the clinking of her bangles, his little sniffles had echoed in the empty hallways of the hotel.

"I'm an idiot. Don't ever do what I did," were the words he had told Mahika before they had parted ways so she could return to the party, looking so sobered up that she wondered if he was ever drunk at all.

People talking to Mahika about love had always struck a chord within her. Which is probably why she had found herself downing some more champagne right as she had found herself surrounded by the rest of her friends the last conscious thought on her mind being:

Why does it matter how hard it sounds to love someone? It's not like I'm ever going to find out.

The rest of her actions, as well as her friends' had been clouded by the influence of alcohol. Dancing and screaming had followed. A few tears here and there. Aching feet. Then a throbbing ache in Mahika's head.

Mumbling an absentminded, "I'm going to use the bathroom", Mahika had found herself standing in front of the mirror, a few curls from her neatly-tied bun sticking to the sides of her face with sweat and what used to be a shade of scarlet on her lips now faded, upon closer inspection, into mere vermillion patches.

The rest of her makeup had stayed intact somehow, and even in that drunken state, she had appreciated the effort of Naina's stylist.

The state of her lipstick, or well, the lack of it, could probably be blamed on the glasses of champagne she had downed without a care in the world, anyway.

She doesn't know what had compelled her to actually let her mind wander off to the next thoughts that had hit her like a freight train; the alcohol, the sound of laughter from the hall, or flashes of Dhruv's face from every time he had told Mahika why he couldn't let Naina find out how he felt about her.

Sober Mahika would have found the thought absolutely ridiculous. But plastered Mahika was envious of him.

And a lot of other things.

Envious of the way Dhruv was freely allowed to love Naina, even though there wasn't much he could do about it. Envious of Naina for so easily finding someone she could marry, with no questions being raised about who, or who she could not love. Envious of everyone in the reception hall because they wouldn't have to go home and back to their daily lives with the weight of their own sexualities sitting heavy on their shoulders.

Just as the air around her had gotten suffocating enough for her to brace her hands on the sink, the door to the bathroom had burst open.

Mahika's head snapped up, dark eyes meeting her own in the mirror and widening only for a second before they went back to their usual state — probably even smaller for a fraction of a moment in a narrow-eyed expression — just as the door clicked shut.