#iwrotethis

A journey from the moment they met, to the moment they realised they didn’t know each other anymore. Endless nights spent staring at ceilings, into countless days of throwing looks across the room, but never catching them. From stakes being high, to a stake driving them apart. Through hardship and friendship, to situationship to a ship long sailed.

You’re kind of cute but it’s raining harder, my shoes are now full of water. Lovely, to be rained on with you…

The plane trembles and shudders while rainy pitter patter hits its windows. Curtain pulled half-down, as if to shield them from the real world, and lock them in their own. It’s got something. Intimacy that cannot be replicated by a normal life spent in domesticity, no. This is the kind of vulnerable, naked and raw togetherness that only comes from shared horrors. From nightmares and aftermaths spent in too-small beds in too-foreign hotels, but in oh-so-familiar embraces.

They never thought runway lights could look so ethereal when the plane touched down outside of Paris, rain pouring down all around everything them.

But it’s so short, and then you’re driving me home, and I don’t want to leave, but I have to go. You kiss me, in the car, and it feels like the start of a movie I’ve seen before…

The Eiffel Tower is supposed to be romantic, and it feels any- and everything but that when they sit across each other at a bistro table. Manilla folder passed, coffee forgotten. Getting lost in seas of blue and deserts of brown, so far apart and different, yet so close.

And just like that, like a breeze carrying grains of sand across the dunes, it’s gone. Over, done, past.

I can see you staring, honey, like he’s just your understudy; like you’d get your knuckles bloody for me. Second, third, and hundredth chances, balancing on breaking branches. Those eyes add insult to injury.

She glides across makeshift plank floors in her mother’s white dress. Turning and twirling in the arms of a man who, by all means, should have died. Not on her watch, though. She’d rather die alongside the man, than to have to see tears and another casket being lowered in the ground, buried, together with a beautiful smile.

No.

So she carelessly fell to her knees in front of him, clock ticking away, counting down seconds to detonation.

‘Just give me a minute’. Breathless.

‘Well’, nervous, desperate attempt at humor, ‘that’s about the time you’ve got left.’

It worked out in the end. And now they’re here, white on the wedding dance floor and floral prints, so far out of her normal range of clothes, circling the metaphorical drain. Because everything she ever wanted; stability, family, love… it was all on those wooden planks. In the sink, going down the drain and slipping way past her fingers, no matter how far she reached, no matter how much she tried to evade a certain blue gaze, soft as clouds and hugs that would definitely unravel her.

It was her own fault, really. ‘You should go for him’, she’d said.

I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending. You’re not my homeland anymore, so what am I defending now? You were my town, and now I’m in exile, seeing you out. I think I’ve seen this film before, so I’m leaving out the side-door.

Seven months. That’s how long her exile lasted, in theory.

Seven months she spent in Paris, staring at a digital scrabble board on a screen small enough to make her squint at it.

Then she came back. Left her exile, left Paris behind. Except, it followed her home, if she could ever call this place home again. Her physical exile might have ended when she stepped through that door, but it was never the same. It’d changed everything, and every interaction, every look and hands not held. Every hug not given and smile not returned with honesty.

She might’ve died, because this? Felt a lot like haunting her own life, trying to grasp at the tendrils of what once was. 

But it’s over, then you’re driving me home, and it kind of comes out as I get up to go. You kiss me, in the car, and it feels like the end of a movie I’ve seen before…

It was a decade later, and it took a hangover and several edibles shared between them, cheese dust still staining her hands (because chopsticks were never her forte to begin with). But she was so scared, so afraid, of losing her. So she poured her longing for her rock to stay, to not be pushed around and away by a tidal wave, she poured all of that into a ‘high-off-my-ass’ monologue.

‘But you know what it gives?’

Hopeful.

‘It gives me you.’

Devastation. Devastation wrapped in hopefulness. She was lost, so lost, and-

But it’s not real, and you don’t exist, and I cannot recall the last time I was kissed. And it hits me, in the car, and it feels like the start of a movie I’ve seen before.

Realisation. She couldn’t have this, her. And they were halfway to Quantico in their Rideshare when she pulled her hands to herself and hid them in her sleeves.

If she’d noticed, she said nothing.

So, step right out. There is no amount of crying I could do for you. All this time, we always walked a very thin line, you didn’t even hear me out (didn’t hear me out), you never gave a warning sign (I gave so many signs.)

So many signs.

So.

Many.

Signs.

An odd defensiveness flared in her chest, words popping out of her mouth before she’d thought them through.

“What can I say, Jiji? My phone’s battery was dead, it was dark. He offered to drop me home.”

Jiji reached out to touch her shoulder. “Did he fight with you again?”

No, he bought me gol gappe.

“No more than usual,” Khushi tried to smile at her sister. “I’m fine. Really. He drove me home. That’s all.”

Though she looked unconvinced, Jiji stepped away with a nod to ready herself for bed. Khushi waited until she was alone to snatch her bag from where it hung on a hook. Her searching fingers found the business card he’d offered.

“Well, it’s just that you like arguing so much, and we argue so often … I think we should keep in touch.”

At the time, she’d been so startled that she’d simply taken the card and slid from the car without answering. Jiji, fortunately, had been too busy scowling at him through the windows to notice as she’d slipped it into her bag.

The card was thick, the surface almost velvety to the touch. It sported a bright red logo in the top corner and announced his name in crisp black letters — ARNAV SINGH RAIZADA. Khushi shook her head to clear the unbidden memory of correcting his name on hundreds of letters.

The writing on the card included a number she recognised for the reception desk at the head offices and an email address that his managers monitored. But he’d scrawled another number untidily along one side with a black pen.

His personal number, Khushi realised with a jolt.

It felt strangely intimate, though logic reminded her that she’d had the same number saved in her phone before he’d broken it on the storeroom floor.

Why is he still in Lucknow?

On the heels of this thought came another: Why should I care?!

Her mind was suddenly awhirl with memories — raised voices and shouted words, a fall from his window, the broken door to the storeroom. His airs about money and power. The terror of the guesthouse.

Khushi ripped the business card in half, her breath coming in rapid pants, and then tore it into even smaller pieces. Tears stung in her eyes. She scrunched the pieces into her palm as Jiji returned to the room.

“Make sure you wake up early tomorrow,” her sister draped her towel near the window. “We’re going to the temple.”

“Okay.”

Waiting until Jiji was occupied with something in the cupboard, Khushi returned the ruined card to her bag. In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and washed her face before studying her reflection. Her pulse was a chaotic drumbeat in her body, her thoughts a wild tangle. And underneath it all was something that thrilled and scared her at the same time, something that had followed her to Lucknow.

                                    #####

“Everything leads back to him,” Jiji had groaned, rolling on her side on the bed they shared. “Just go to sleep quietly.”

It had been a week since they’d returned to Lucknow, and Khushi had been comparing the price of potatoes between Lucknow and Delhi. Or at least, that was how the conversation had started. She couldn’t remember how they’d gotten to talking about that Laad Governor.

“You’re right Jiji. We’re in Lucknow now and we’ll soon forget that we ever went to Delhi. Or that we met such cruel, haughty people. Although … Anjali-ji had such sweetness in her. It’s a shame that we had to leave without saying goodbye to her. At least we met one nice person in Delhi. Oh … and Nani-ji. Maybe two nice people. And Aakash-ji, I suppose, though —”

“— Khushi! Are you going to count out every member of his family? Your mind is like a compass that’s always stuck on him!”

“And why wouldn’t it be?” Khushi had asked hotly. “He sent me there to do some meaningless task, knowing the place was about to collapse.”

“I know. You’ll never have to see him again, Khushi. You resigned from that awful job, you gave him an earful, and now you’re here and he’s there.”

The words should have elated her, but they only left her feeling strangely hollow.

                                    #####

That hollowness sat heavily inside her as Khushi joined her sister in their bed a few minutes later, sliding between the covers with a sigh.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jiji’s voice was soft in the dimness.

“Yes.”

“You barely ate dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

A short silence, in which Khushi’s mind unhelpfully replayed the way she’d fallen into his arms yet again.

Oh Devi Maiyya, couldn’t you find another place to make me slip? You mustn’t have liked the offering I left you this morning.

“I’m glad we came back to Babu-ji,” Jiji said softly. “I can’t imagine being away from home at a time like this.”

“The doctors said that as long as he rests properly and takes his medicines, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“He isn’t resting nearly enough, even with both of us at the shop.”

Khushi nodded her agreement, “He’s worried about the bills.”

“Bua-ji and Amma are talking about selling some jewellery. I thought I’d give them my bangles.”

“I have bangles we can sell too.”

It took a while for Jiji’s breathing to fall into the deep, slow rhythm of sleep. Khushi lay awake, her thoughts chasing each other in ever-tightening spirals.

The night of the photoshoot. The softness of her pallu as it slipped. The scorch of his gaze as it roved over her body and left her feeling singed. The electricity between them on Teej, every touch a bolt of lightning. The weight of him pressing into her in the storeroom.

She flushed, skin prickling and warmth blooming in secret places.

Stop it, Khushi. A handful of gol gappe is all it takes for you to forget his cruelty?

She turned onto her side with a huff. Sometimes it felt as though her life had been split into Before and After, as though falling at the fashion show had created an entirely new Khushi Kumari Gupta. A Khushi who was strangely compelled towards him, a Khushi who’d come dangerously close to swooning in his arms today. A Khushi who wanted something she had no name for.

“I didn’t know the situation at the guesthouse was that bad!”

“Do you really think I would’ve sent you there if I’d known? Is that what you think of me?”

For the first time, she allowed herself to entertain the idea that he hadn’t sent her there on purpose.

So what if he hadn’t? I was still trapped there for an entire day. He was wrong.

But the thought was impossible to dislodge now that it’d wormed into her mind. Having assumed he’d wanted to argue every time he’d approached her, she now considered whether he might have been trying to explain. She saw their interactions in a new light. The sweets, the cheque.

Did he feel guilty? Was he trying to say sorry?

She eventually fell into an uneasy sleep, tormented in her dreams by his eyes, his voice, the memory of his touch. She woke just before dawn, breathless and damp with sweat, the sheets tangled with her legs. Flinging them off, Khushi sat up in bed. Her sister made a questioning noise.

“Sleep, Jiji. It’s not time to wake up yet.”

A nameless storm raged in her chest, making it hard to breathe. She squeezed her eyes shut.

I should hate him.

A lurch in her tummy.

But I don’t.

Padding slowly over to her bag, she fished out the pieces of the business card one by one. There was a roll of tape amongst the paper and pens scattered on the table in the corner. Khushi glanced back at her sister as she sat. It took a few minutes to line up the jagged edges, to press the tape along them with trembling fingers until she could read his name again.

He’d set down a challenge. She wouldn’t back down.

    ********