Missed me?
The moment the seat belt signs were placed on, Akira couldn't stop from beaming again. Never in her life, she was this excited to take a flight. Never in her life, she had been this happy to go back to her city. Because this time, it was not just her city, it was the city where Raymond would now be waiting for her.
She put on her seatbelt and stowed away her laptop bag. She was biting her lips out of excitement because she knew that he was going to be there to pick her up. So she had already tidied her hair and had put some tinted lip balm on her lips. After all, she was going to meet him again. She wanted to look as pretty as possible.
The moment the flight landed, she switched on her phone to network mode and tried calling up Raymond.
One ring.
Two rings.
.
.
"The number you have dialed isn't answering. So please leave a message after the beep."
All disappointed she called up again, but it went again to the machine. So she decided to leave a message.
"Wake up !!! I am here to make your morning beautiful. And....."
She stopped midway as her mind was now filled with all crazy thoughts.
"Did he forget about me?"
"Does he even remember about my existence?"
Her brain was getting frozen with the gazillions of questions that were running inside that brain of hers. But after hearing the beep sound, she recomposed herself and said,
"Don't you dare leave me now Raymond. Don't you dare to run away, because this time I swear to God, I will not forgive you."
Saying that she disconnected the call and with a heavy heart she picked up her laptop bag and got down from the flight.
Half-heartedly she dragged herself through all the formalities and then collected her bag. As she was dragging her trolley and was nearing the exit section, she saw a Starbucks shop there and her footsteps automatically came to a halt. She looked all around, hoping to collide with him again, hoping to find him again, but alas, it seemed like she wasn't fated to meet him today.
Feeling all dejected, she came outside the airport and her eyes continued their search for him, hoping against hope that he would still come for her or probably he was deliberately not picking up her call to surprise her, but to her dismay, he was nowhere to be found.
So she searched all her apps again, messages, WhatsApp, Gmail, hoping that there would be some reason that he would have given for not coming, but she couldn't find any.
Slowly her eyes started to sting.
"Don't you dare forget me, Raymond. Don't you dare," saying that she hurried towards the cab pickup area. She then tried to call up David, but he was also unreachable. She was clueless and didn't know how to contact him. So instead of going to her house, she decided to visit Raymond's place to figure out what was going on.
Her trolley was placed in the boot and holding her laptop bag she got inside the car. As the driver entered the car after placing her bag, she said,
"Clinton hill, as fast as possible please."
But before the driver could even start the car, a bearded man with a towering figure, wearing an oversized trench-coat, opened the other side of the passenger seat door. He gave her a warm smile and got inside the car.
Akira was all startled and was about to raise her voice when she heard him say,
"Missed me?"