Jiya

'Welcome to New York, it's been waitin' for you, Welcome to New York, welcome to New York....' The song blasted in my ears as the plane prepared to land at JFK after being in a holding pattern for the past hour due to poor weather conditions in the area, we've been the plane for an extra hour as if the original 15 hours weren't enough, thankfully the pilots are generous enough to keep us updated about the delays and the reasons behind them.

"Thanks for this exhausting welcome, New York..." I sighed to myself and looked out of the window, but because we were probably in a cloud, I could see nothing, so I turned to my left to see my brother sleeping with earphones jammed in his ears, As expected, he had been asleep for the whole duration of the flight except for when he was eating, but I can't really complain, thanks to him and his father, that I am here in the business class with him instead of my original economy class ticket.

I looked at my phone and changed the song because it definitely didn't feel like New York was waiting for me. The stormy weather, the fight delay, everything looked like it was going against us, but I'm still optimistic, that our planned two-day stay in the city will be uneventful before we leave for Los Angeles and move into our Home for the next year.

"Amy, Amy, wake up, we're about to land..." I gently shook my brother by his shoulder after removing his earphones as he stirred in his sleep. "Wake up Amy..." I shook him harder as he finally opened his eyes and looked at me drowsily.

"Di, can't you wake me up after we land? Just let me sleep till we reach our gate, I'm already wearing my seatbelt, and I'm half-awake now so I won't trouble you later, okay..." And with that, he drifted back to sleep snatching his earphone back and stuffing it in his ear again. "Ungrateful fool!" I muttered under my breath and turned away from him, My semester actually starts in two months, but I am here early because Amy wanted to come here early and travel, before we got busy with college, and according to my family, the youngest, aka the 'baby' can't go so far away alone, so, me, being his big sister, by 2 whole months needed to accompany him and take care him, apparently I am much more mature, have situational awareness, which makes me capable, which he clearly isn't, with this reason they conveniently ignored the fact that for the next four years I am already booked to take care of this baby, yet they couldn't give me one more month to chill at home, but, I got the business class ticket, so I guess it's fine.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are happy to announce that we have been given the ATC clearance to land, and we will be landing at The JFK airport in about 30 minutes, Thank you for your patience." The pilot announcement as a relief washed over me, A tornado was supposed to pass by New York and all the planes were going to be grounded and diverted after 10:30 am, luckily it was 8:50 am currently and we would land by 9:20 well before the airport closes. I looked ahead of me to find the air hostesses winding up and going back to the pantry and then their seats to buckle up.

I picked up my phone and checked the distance between the Airport and our hotel, luckily it was just 2.8 miles and we could reach there in a minimum of 10 minutes, so we wouldn't be stuck here at the airport because of the storm, but even after we reach our hotel we wouldn't immediately get our room as the check-in time is 4 pm, originally when we booked the plane tickets 3 months back, we were going to walk around the streets of New York and drop our bags at a friend's place but the tornado changed our plans and one day of our two days stay at NYC was going to waste, fortunately I was able to cancel our original hotel bookings and book this hotel near the Airport, so now if tomorrow also we can't go out then at least we will be closer to the Airport and won't have to get up early to get to the airport in order to catch our final flight to LAX.

We landed at JFK at 9:12 and were out of the aircraft within 20 minutes, to our surprise, immigration was quick and smooth, which honestly was not expected from what we had heard back at home, we spent the next 25 minutes waiting for our baggage, and finally, at 10:07 am, we were at the airport gate waiting for our cab.

"It's 10 in the morning but look at the sky, it's black!" Amy whispered sadly while leaning over the baggage trolly while I tracked our ride on my phone.

"It's okay, if the weather remains the same tomorrow as well, we can always come back later, we are here for at least a year, don't be sad." I assured my baby brother, no matter how annoying he is, he still is my baby brother, who I love with all my heart.

"There it is, that's our cab, get in!" We loaded the car with our luggage and we were off to our hotel. The two days that we had reserved for our NYC tour passed by just like that due to the storm with us being locked in our hotel room and hotel premises, The storm was brutal, and a lot of damage was reported around the city. Luckily, it passed by well before our fight so we weren't delayed on our original schedule, as for the time that we were stuck in the hotel room, being Asian drama lovers, me and Amy binge-watched our favourite K-dramas, C-dramas and J-dramas for two days straight, the luck was in our favour the day we landed and the hotel checked us in early due to the tornado, "Thank you, New York! Sorry for falsely accusing you earlier!" I sincerely apologise to New York. Our time here has been nothing but smooth and comfortable, unlike my previous accusations, so we had two whole days to binge-watch some of the pending shows on our to-watch list on TV, comfortably lying in our own twin beds, without hearing any taunts or scoldings from our parents about our screen time.

The next day we reached the airport at 7 am to catch our 10:05 am flight to LAX, we kept a 3-hour margin to be on the safer side and not miss our flight accidentally, it was our first time in the USA and the only motto that I am going to follow is – 'Better safe than sorry'.

"Di, let's get something to eat, I'm really hungry..." Amy nudged me with a cheeky smile as we sat on the chairs near our designated gate. I looked around and found only a few people at our gate and then checked the time, 8:43 am, "it should be fine I guess..." Amy nodded his head hearing me as I got up and Amy got up with me.

"You stay here, I've heard that changing gates is pretty frequent here, so just keep your eye on that, don't wear your headphones and pay attention to all the announcements, and let me go get us some food okay, once I find something I'll message you, tell me what do you want." Thankfully he understood what I was trying to say and sat back down without arguing and nodded, I smiled at him and ruffled his hair before turning and walking away to look for food.

I walked for around five minutes and found McDonald's and Starbucks and decided to get myself a coffee and messaged Amy to ask him if he wanted some as well, but of course, he wanted coke, So I first got our food while I placed a pickup order at Starbucks from the app, picked it up after collecting our food, or I should say Amy's food, I didn't buy anything to eat because I had read that the McDonald's fries contain beef flavour, so my vegetarian conscious didn't allow me to get that, I would have to stay hungry for the next few hours but it didn't really bother me, fortunately, everything was ready and picked up within 20 minutes and with that I walked back to my brother.

I came back carrying my coffee in one hand and Amy's food in the other only to find him chatting with someone, and it didn't really surprise me, Amy is the most extrovert cousin I have, he can never stay quiet if he has people around him, I don't understand what his charm is, but everyone that he talks to seem to like him as well.

As I walked closer I could hear them talking in Hindi, which, in an instant warmed my heart, hearing my mother tongue from someone other than myself and Amy after 3 days felt good. From my view, with their backs facing me, I could see that the guy my brother was talking to was taller than him, my brother was 6'0, so the guy talking to him must be 6'2 – 6'3, his hair was chocolate brown, wavy short-medium length, and he was wearing a black hoodie, as I reached near them I waved the food package in front of my brother, he looked up and took the package happily making me smile, and when I felt a pair of eyes on me, I looked up to find a pair of blue orbs fixed at me, he is fair, with sharp face features, high and straight nose, plump rose lips and bushy chocolate eye-brows, the small mole on his naso-facial angle on the right side of his face made his already pretty face more beautiful, Amy must have noticed me staring at him and immediately pulled me down to sit beside him and introduced us.

"Di, this is Jay bhaiya, he is also flying to LAX, and bhaiya this is my sister Jiya." I smiled and shook hands with the beautiful stranger in front of me, who was sitting on the other side of my brother, and turned to look at my brother with questioning eyes, which he understood and started explaining immediately.

"I heard him talking on the phone in hindi and couldn't help myself but talk to him, we were talking about the India vs Sri Lanka cricket match that just ended..." I nodded hearing him and looked down at my coffee on my lap, even though this man was gorgeous, and seemed friendly, I needed to keep my guard up, my bestie, Naina, who came here a year ago, and lives in North Carolina, often told me how Indian were the biggest enemies for other Indians so I shouldn't immediately lower my guard down if I meet another Indian.

Also, this guy looked unnaturally white for an Indian, along with his eyes and hair colour, which alerted my senses, even though I didn't really get the gut feeling indicating that he was a bad guy, but I had to be cautious. I didn't talk further and pretended to be busy on my phone and drinking my coffee, while Amy and Jay continued discussing cricket.

Even though I was trying to ignore their conversation I couldn't help but notice the American accent in every English word that left Jay's mouth, that wasn't the case with his Hindi, maybe he had been living here for a long time because there is no way that a person who is bought up in America can have such an authentic Delhiite Hindi accent, and even though he doesn't look old, he might be an year or two older than me otherwise Amy wouldn't have called him bhaiya.

Soon the boarding announcement was made and we made our way to board the aircraft, coincidentally or not Jay had the aisle seat on the same row that we were in, and though there shouldn't be anything fishy about it considering that the seats were allotted randomly and Jay clearly reached after us and he wasn't anywhere near us while we were getting our boarding passes, but my senses were on high alert, the only relief that I had was that for the next six and a half hours, the duration of the flight, he wouldn't be able to do anything if he had been planning on doing anything.

We found and took our seats, Jay helped me and Amy in putting up our carry-ons in the overhead compartment as Amy rushed to occupy the window seat which was originally allotted to me.

"That's my seat Mister..." I tried to get my brother to look at me and get back to his seat but instead, he put on his headphones and closed his eyes, ignoring me completely, so reluctantly I sat down in the middle seat followed by Jay who took his aisle seat.

"You look very sceptical about me, you have this doubtful and unsure expression on your face..." Jay started while taking out his wallet and before I could say anything, he unhooked the food tray in front of me and then took out three ID cards, and placed them in front of me one by one.

"This is my college ID, I'm a student at UCLA, which is why I'm flying to LAX, this is my driver's licence, and this is my state ID card, you can click a picture and send it to your family and friends, rest assured, I'm not a bad guy, just a fellow passenger." I felt so embarrassed as he showed me his Id's one by one that I couldn't even look in his direction, even in the ID pictures, he looked so good that it almost made me doubt them as well, but the main details were all the same on every Id, which assured me, I just nodded and turned to Amy and took off his headphones. "If you want the window seat just say so, don't you dare ignore me!" I warned my brother as he grinned foolishly.

Meanwhile, Jay took back all his IDs and folded the food tray.

The take-off was smooth and the flight was smooth as well without any major turbulence, Amy and Jay were talking occasionally, Jay seemed to be working on his laptop and Amy soon drifted off to sleep, we didn't really sleep the night before in order to adjust our sleep schedule, and even though we had planned to stay awake and sleep only at night, Amy was fast asleep.

"We are also going to UCLA, is it nice...?" I tried to make a small conversation, I looked at him as I heard his typing stop and found him looking at me already, I couldn't read his expressions or what he was thinking, all I could do was just force a smile and wait for his answer if it ever came.

"The campus is nice, rest everything depends on the school that you are enrolled in..." His answer was short and to the point, and with that, he went back to typing, he must be on the edge due to my perceptions and was probably trying to ignore me because, with Amy, he was having great conversations.

"Which school are you enrolled in? I'll be joining the Law School, and Amrit will be joining Anderson's..." I tried to keep the conversation going in order to kill the awkward silence and hoped that he would keep the conversation going because my ambivert self was screaming inside due to embarrassment.

"I'm pursuing my Ph.D. from Andersons, currently, I am in my 2nd year..." PhD? Oh! he is definitely older than us, he has already completed his master's and is now pursuing a Ph.D. so he has to be at least 3 years older than us.

"Oh...that's good..." And the awkward silence was back again, the flight still had more than 4 hours to go, and I couldn't handle the awkwardness, so I plugged in the earphones provided in the plane to the aeroplane infotainment system and watched 'Crash Landing on You' again for probably the 100th time, while Jay continued working and my brother slept, such a waste of the window seat.

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