A Queer Start?

Taken from google

Before we start:

This is my first short story (and first queer story) that I have actually finished, so you know, you might want to lower your expectations if you had any. :3

Also. It is a bit longer than a usual short story because my brain functions weirdly, with way too many words than necessary. And obviously, I haven't fixed a title for this yet (you are free to suggest if you like it), because I am really bad at names in general? But thank you so much for taking the time to read it! I appreciate it so much.

Anyway, here we go. Hope you enjoy it!

---

Shayla

It is raining outside.

Not pouring hard, but looking like it is.

It’s the kind of rain that pelts at the drab, grey exterior of your neighbor’s house in a sideways savage current, zipping down at the window with more wind than water.

I watch as the beads of water trail down the glass of my room’s window in an agonizingly slow line. There is an awning just over the window outside, which shelters the glass from the rain’s most vicious onslaught.

Honestly, there is just something hypnotizing about watching it rain. Through the glass, the sky looks almost greasy, with the scattered, dark clouds slipping across the small scrap of horizon I can see beyond the tall piles of concretes standing sentry over it.

And it’s almost, almost enough to make me not fixate on what’s gnawing at the insides of my brain and drilling holes in it.

Gory vision, I know.

Well, that’s exactly how I feel.

But okay, I am not going to obsess over it.

So she is not texting me back. So what?

So what? I don’t care anymore anyway.

I never should’ve done it, the other part of mind silently berates me, like it’s been doing since the past two days.

But I jiggle my head a little, hoping that’ll make me shake loose of the thought. Because if I don’t, I will get sucked into this brutal obsessive spiral that will make me want to analyze every single moment of the time I spent with her for the ten-thousandth time. I will analyze and I will fret over what it meant and I will be compelled to come back to it again to decide if I am feeling as bad as the moment warrants, and if I don’t, I will do the whole thing over and over again on a loop until I do. And then I will do it again, because my mind has a hard time believing it the first time.

Having OCD is fun.

My chest puffs up as I take a big gulp of air through my nose, and my finger finds the page the bookmark is stuck into. I release the breath and it maybe slackens a little bit of the knotted feeling growing inside me.

Books. They are my anchor to the good parts of this world that is otherwise hell-bent on drenching me in misery, casting me off as an afterthought. They are how I feel grounded when there is a riot of emotions whirring in my head and my chest feels on the cusp of a colossal explosion.

And the one good thing about a rainy day: it is designed to go with books. In the confines of your room, of course.

I lean my head against the peach-colored wall beside the small pocket of window I am sitting in, and resume my reading. I am in the middle of a really cute love story between these two guys, one of whom genuinely hated the other one, who, though, was always a little bit in love him. They are the best kind, really.

But after a few seconds, I realize I have had to read the same paragraph thrice, and the heavy, antsy feeling burrowed in my inside hasn’t really eased and my mind is still snatching bits and pieces of the incident from two days ago like it’s trying to hold on to a bad dream.

I drop the book in my lap, close my eyes and resist from shouting into the void that is my cluttered room. Immediately, like automatic cued-up videos, the scene starts playing in my head. A slow-moving montage of those moments that I can’t seem to simply stuff into the dungeons of my brain and just forget.

Rohini’s side-profile as she pauses the movie so she can laugh properly at some commentary I had made about the scene, clutching her stomach and all. She glancing over at me and shaking her head, her expression just screaming something between God, did you have to? and You are actually brilliant and I might just love you.

Maybe I was projecting my own feelings onto her (well, I am a girl who’s prone to reading too many romance novels). Hell, I wasn’t probably even thinking about her. Or anyone.

I wasn’t thinking, period.

My line of vision had narrowed to the softness in her eyes, the slight little crinkle around them when she was laughing, the hazy pink flush rising in her cheeks, the upturned curl of her mouth which was slowly, gradually fading into a faint slope as she looked at me, the swell of her reddish lips that looked like they were made of candy. Her hair gracefully sprawled on the pillows under her head.

I remember suddenly noticing her smile had disappeared. My eyes had flicked up to hers, and there was…something tangible there, something a little like fire and heat and almost like a supernatural force pulling me close, close, closer until I was really aware of the one inch of space separating us.

Did I actually move?

God, even now, I have no idea.

Then she’d bit her lips and my gaze had just skidded to an abrupt stop there. I think my brain had sort of short-circuited too.

Because then I was leaning forward, actually leaning toward her, and her swallow was encouragingly visible and audible in the crisp night wind and suddenly she’d had her eyes closed – and why would she close her eyes if she didn’t want this too?

But she didn’t. Because a phone ping had crashed into the moment, and she’d jerked back, like she’d been zapped by electricity. I had leaned away and the space between us had grown bigger and bigger until she was standing up, her phone clutched in her hand, looking anywhere but at me.

Well, I couldn’t stay after that, obviously. We were up on her roof where she had made a sort of nest with blankets and pillows and sheets and everything, with the laptop sinking in the middle. It was windy that day, and this whole thing had seemed like a great idea.

I mean, being anywhere with her was a great idea to me, but being up on her roof in a human-made blanket-fort, watching a movie, on a dark, cloudy night with the chilly air ghosting over our skin – that just yelled romantic to me.

But of course it wasn’t.

God, what was I even thinking? She is straight.

And even if she’s not, even if she does realize she is not, she clearly hasn’t faced that herself yet. And I am not going to be an experiment either.

Yes, I haven’t kissed a girl before. So it’s not like I was swimming in experience. It’s not like I wasn’t shit scared of what was happening. Of what I was specifically asked not to do. If I close my eyes long enough, I can still hear the cacophonous pounding of my own heart like a terrible drumroll playing incessantly.

So, of course, I’d hightailed it out of there quickly.

And it’s been two days, and she hasn’t replied to my single text. It’s been all blue double ticks to my “That movie was good,” and “You okay?”.

Yeah, yeah, I didn’t say I didn’t lose my dignity a little in the meantime.

But…gaaaah. I have started thinking about it again. Why do I do this to myself? I have had crushes before. I have got over them before. It’s no different. She is no different.

But she is, the annoyingly Zen-like voice in my head purrs (somehow it has a Sandra Bullock cadence to it?). She is, because you’ve talked to her and you still like her. Because you like talking to her. Because she looks like she likes talking to you too.

I don’t know what I am doing. I have justified it in my mind by making a mental collage of those moments where I thought her eyes had lingered a little too long on me, where our arms had brushed and I could just feel the air thick and heavy with an absurd current, where I could swear she looked at my lips for more than a second before her eyes had flitted away, where her eyes had just locked on mine a beat longer than necessary.

It’s all in those moments, right?

Wrong, clearly. I just didn't anticipate she'd ghost me like this. We have been friends for months now. The entire last two semesters of college. We’ll graduate in the next.

I mean, what happened to talking about stuff? We've always been so good at that. And one of the things I abhor about people is how they don’t reply. It’s just so disrespectful. And she knew that.

I shake my head again, hoping that’ll parry off the heap of tightness surging in my chest and the burning cresting behind my eyes. I draw a long, deep breath and the one I release comes out wobbly. It rattles the air around me and I clear my throat to stave off the lump lodged in my throat.

No, enough. She clearly doesn’t want to talk to me. So. That’s that.

I get back to my book. Or try to.

---

The next day, I hope Ma believes me when I say I am not feeling too well.

But it was wistful thinking really. She doesn’t, of course; she never does.

So now I have to go to college, ugh. But thankfully, I have only one class with Rohini today, at the end of the day too, so hopefully, I can avoid her without any hiccups.

But….But…

I don’t know if I want to.

And that’s the worst part, really. It’s like I hate myself.

No, I do hate myself. Why else would I be desperate to see a glimpse of the girl who is so obviously, happily ignoring me?

I ball my hand into a fist, praying that would stifle this stupid urge and help me be sane. And I am glad when it almost works.

Well, mainly because the professors were successful enough to make us stress over the finals. And there is a translation assignment we submitted the previous week that we got back today, and mine was mostly clean except for a couple of spots marred with comments and a red note pasted at the bottom. So, I went and asked about them, because I am fussy like that. And the day passes by in a forgettable blur.

But of course, the universe won’t let me off the hook so easily. Because there is the last class of the day, and that’s when I see her.

I am not sure if I had hoped for her to be there or not.

You know the answer to that, the Zen/Sandra voice laughs mildly in my head, as I will my heart to revert to its normal beating, not thump so thunderously. Chill, dude. You’ve seen her before.

But I don’t know what is worse really: Rohini not looking my way at all, not after that one time when she entered the room and our eyes locked before she skipped past my desk toward the front, or…actually, you know what, there really is no question. It’s one hundred percent the worst.

My stomach lurches and I try not to feel the rejection in my bones, slightly bruising all my organs, as if I have been royally pummeled in the guts. Somehow, miraculously, I had thought maybe it’d be better if we could just see each other, talk.

But – yes, girls are officially no better than boys.

All through class, I keep my head down because I could feel my lips trembling despite keeping them all clamped hard, and my eyes had a constant sting to them and sometimes the board ahead would get all blurry.

And once, I even got called out for not paying attention.

Which is just great.

No, it’s like a very bad comedy script.

So, as soon as the class breaks, I make a beeline for the exit. It’s easier because I am at the back, as usual. Strategical thinking, always.

Since our last class was later than usual, the hallway is not empty but it’s not teeming with casually-dressed, denim-clad people chattering away and making the place sound like a bee hive either. I am glad. I don’t have to dodge many people as I cut through the back and slip out the smaller door from which the main gate is closer, only a two-minute-long walk.

That's when my phone rings once in my pocket. It’s the sound of an incoming text. Having to need to fiddle with something in my hands, I take it out and check the message. There is a group text at the top, someone telling us that the Journalism professor just now dropped her notes in the print shop and we should go get them from there.

I am lucky I am headed that way anyway. I hurry up my pace so I can beat the queue that is going to form in the shop soon. And sure enough, when I reach the small, cramped indoor shop, across from the Common Room, there are only a couple of students milling around.

But my feet freeze when I recognize one of the students very clearly. Because, yup, right there is the core of all my fairytale fantasies and dreaded nightmares, in the flesh.

Rohini is over by the door of the shop, standing to the side, a pair of black jeans and white sleeveless crop top hanging on her slender figure like they’ve been tailor-made for her. Her hair is loosely flowing down her one shoulder in light-reddish, glossy waves (yes, did I mention she had red highlights? That look very silky? It definitely doesn’t make me want to run my fingers through them), her fringes flopped over her forehead perfectly, as usual.

My eyes hover over all of her before they get stuck on her other shoulder, which is almost bare with just one strap spanning its width. She has always had a pale skin, and it's paler than normal today – But ugh, she is looking so pretty it's not even fair.

I strenuously make myself glance away and up. Which is a definite mistake, as my eyes snag right onto her brown ones. And I realize they were already on me.

My heart stutters a little, and my blood pulses faster. Her stare is sharp but also, maybe a little dimmer than usual, or maybe I am projecting my own feelings into it again. But either way, I dictate my frazzled nerves to calm the heck down, and tear my eyes away and walk up to the small window of the shop to order the print-out.

In a minute, it is ready for me and I hand out the cash. But just before I make to shove the papers in my bag, I hear my name ringing through the corridor.

I jump back and almost drop the papers, my hand flying upward to cover my chest involuntarily. Slowly I remove my hand and use them productively again to thrust the papers down into the bag, then turn around.

“Shayla! Where have you been all day?” Ruchira smacks me lightly on my arm.

Ruchira is more Rohini’s friend than mine, but this semester, we all have been hanging out together, though me and Rohini more for…obvious reasons (But I swear I didn’t realize it then). I didn’t even notice she was with Rohini. God.

“Uhh,” I try to avert my gaze, not look at Rohini, and come up with a credible lie. “Yeah, umm, I had to…talk to some professors. Finals and all.” I widen my eyes in a hopefully fake-terrified way, to deliver it as flippantly as possible but also in a manner that doesn’t nullify the need of this excuse.

“Ugh, yeah, I know, right? I haven’t completed even one reading yet.” She says, sighing loudly and dramatically.

I want to ask “Which class?” but restrain myself, because I need to get the hell out of here and I don’t want to prolong this hapless conversation.

“Yeah,” I roll my eyes, then shuffle on my feet a little, grip the strap of my bag slung over my shoulder, “But uhh…listen, I have to run now. See you tomorrow, okay?” I smile too, to soften the dismissive nature of my words. I hope it didn’t sound dismissive, though. I almost feel bad for cutting it short, but honestly, this is already suffocating enough. Rohini probably hasn’t looked at me yet and even if she did, she certainly didn’t talk. I already feel like I am coming out of my skin.

“Wait, wait,” Ruchira rests her hand on me, effectively stopping my evasion, and I muffle a sigh of frustration. I like her, but this girl just. doesn’t. see. I mean, don’t I seem uncomfortable enough? “I am going that way too! I can drop you off. I am dropping off Rohini and Anwita anyway.”

“Uhh, no – it’s fine honestly – ” I try to stammer out a decipherable response, but it sounds frail even to my ears and Ruchira is already shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

"I know it's not fine, but it's so on my way, not a big deal."

"Ruchira, I really don’t need a ride —"

"I know, but it's literally on my way, and we haven't talked in forever ! Just wait a second," Ruchira runs up to the window and some more exchange of cash and papers happens and then she is scampering out the door, now more in a hurry than I was.

I let out a sigh. She has dropped us off before sometimes; so why would I have a problem now? Think, think, I urge my inner me, but I already know it's a lost battle.

My eyes snap to Rohini, finally, and hers are a little wide, seemingly more in shock than…worry, I don’t know. She opens her mouth to say something, but it remains motionless in that position for a moment before she decides to close it and just settles for glaring at her friend. Who is ignoring her apparently.

Right.

“Come on! Anwita is probably waiting outside already.” Ruchira yells jubilantly.

I think Anwita is her roommate. I don’t know. But I follow her anyway because I cannot come up with two credible lies in two consecutive minutes. I don’t check to see if Rohini is coming or not.

---

“Okay, just wait here for five minutes, guys. I just need to pick up our dinner,” Ruchira chirps out while unbuckling her seatbelt. So Anwita is her roommate, and they’re both renting a flat near Shyambazar, I’ve remembered. Our college is pretty near their place, which is a huge area always crawling with a staggering number of people. I’ve never really been to their flat, but knowing how Ruchira has a car, I think it’s a little more than cozy. “Anwi, what do you want?” she looks at the brown-haired, Hobit-sized, curly-haired girl sitting in the passenger seat.

Yup, Rohini and I are sharing the backseat. It’s been peachy the past twenty minutes.

“Umm,” Anwita halts her religious scroll through her phone, folds her lips in, and stares outside for almost five minutes. We wait.

And wait.

“Ugh, just come with me. I can’t recite the entire menu to you again.” Ruchira says and gets out of the car, Anwita swiftly following suit.

And in less than a second, the car is stark silent. As in, completely devoid of any sound, except for maybe my heavy breathing.

Speaking of which – Has it always been so heavy and loud? I have this horrible feeling that I breathe too weirdly, but quickly bat away that thought and look out the window.

I don’t know how many minutes passed. Out of the corner of my eyes, I can see Rohini scrolling down her phone, the light of the screen throwing her face in a bright whiteish halo that is viciously attacking all my senses.

Oh, it’s the awkward kind of silence here, in case you were wondering.

I pin my eyes on the clattering cars whooshing by and the racket of hawkers droning away mindlessly and the honks of rikshaws trilling monotonously and the hollers of bus conductors rattling off names of bus stops, all guzzling down my ears. My gaze roams aimlessly over the street our car is parked on, across a string of shop fronts.

I don’t exactly know much of this exact area. Looks like a commercial one.

But…even that is not enough to make me unfeel the awkward silence ballooning up the inside of our car ceremoniously.

Actually, this is worse than an awkward silence. This shroud of quiet is smothering in the small, stale space of the car, almost blocking my airflow into my lungs. I need to – I don’t know. I need to get away. Or do something else.

“Look, if you want me to stay away, you can just say so.” I find myself blurting out.

Because of course that’s what my brain comes up with as the solution here.

But Rohini’s eyes shoot up to me in a violent jolt, and okay, maybe I was a tad louder than I intended to be, and okay, I guess I am doing it here and now.

“What?” Her voice comes out fragile, then she clears her throat once. Her eyes look big in the flickering light of the streetlamps invading from outside and the small overhead bulb on the ceiling of the car.

“You have been ignoring my texts. And me.” I take a deep breath, schooling my face into a casual, unbothered expression – or trying to – and will myself not to just scream a why? like a pathetic thing I am. “So…like, personally, I think I deserve some sort of explanation before you just ghost me, but if not, the least you can do is tell me.” I shrug and stop, stamp my lips shut before I say something shitty.

“Tell you what?” She says, and her voice sounds a little toneless.

I have noticed this about her before too. When she doesn’t want to deal with a situation or think about it, she kind of…detaches herself from it. Her face becomes this unreadable mask that is a little less intimidating than an impenetrable fort.

And tell you what? the voice in my head screams…I don’t know, do I have to tell you how to reject me now?

I shut my eyes briefly. “Tell me if – “ I grind my jaw and sew my lips in again; it suddenly feels hard to get the words out the second time around, “If you want me to stay away.” I pause and peer into her eyes directly this time, not away, hoping my expression asks the Do you? without me having to utter them.

I just need to hear it. I really do. It should work like ripping off a band-aid, right?

There is a pregnant silence, taut with…everything unsaid but loudly, transparently felt.

Then: “Yes.” Rohini says, and it sounds like she adds a period there, a piercing, emphatic end that brooks no room for hesitation.

Huh. So turns out I did not need to hear it, after all.

“Ohkayy, then,” I swallow hard, and if my voice sounds off to my own ears, I don't focus on it. Instead, I swallow again, then look away outside the window, and it’s suddenly a misty screen, the people and the cars and the shops all a little fuzzy, like a fog spreading over them slowly. But I catch myself after just a nanosecond. And blink a few times rapidly to make the few stray tears disappear. And make a little laugh come out too, lest she catches on that I feel like I have been trampled over by a highway truck.

“Well, thanks. Wasn’t so hard to say it, was it,” I can’t help this last murmur, as I open the car door and barge into the evening.

Rohini

The thud of the car door closing almost sends a shudder through my bones. And it's as if that jolt shoves me back into my body from the stratosphere outside, where my soul was seemingly floating away, unmoored from the reality I wanted to stop from happening.

And everything that happened a second ago just jumps at me in a rush.

And...God.

I mean, GOD.

Now, I feel like someone just grabbed my heart, tore it clean out of my chest, all veins and blood and all, and chopped it into tiny, little shreds. My lungs feel like they’re being squeezed in a death grip, wrung out of all the breaths I have, and there is a huge lump settled in the back of my throat and it’s not going away, no matter how much I swallow.

I bury my head in my hands, taking a handful of my stupid fringes and scrunching them in a fist and tugging at them hard, so that pain can somehow make the image of Shayla’s trembling lips and shaking chin disintegrate and vanish.

But my mind keeps flashing with that same horrible image, as if glued there with a permanent sticker.

All through the weekend after…what happened – or rather, didn’t happen – these memories kept playing in a relentless loop in my head, like a broken record stuck on a select few songs. You’d think I was going to die, the way they all just lined up in my mind seamlessly: from the day we met, to how we became friends to when I started to feel this chaos and confusion for her.

I still vividly remember the day she came to our Shakespeare Literature class, all breathless and panting, her shoulder-length hair effortlessly awry, like she meant for it to look that messy anyway, her denim jacket snugly hung on her curvy frame.

She was five minutes late, to the first class of the semester. Or at least, that course.

I didn’t recognize her, so that meant she was from a different department and had taken this up as her elective.

Anna, our professor, had just smiled at her and waved her in, because she is cool like that. I had known her since the first semester and she is the coolest professor in the English department, really, who actually bothers to teach the students something meaningful to absorb, and not just the junk compressed into books and designed to be shoved down our throats.

“Shayla, right?” Anna had said, after consulting a list on her hand, and leaned against the podium a little. She never sat in classes.

Shayla (I’d taken a second to memorize the name) had nodded, and taken a seat right beside me and Ruchira, even though there were a few more empty ones in the front. She’d stared at what was open in front of me on the desk (a copy of Hamlet) and her eyes had pinged up to mine next.

So I had smiled, as in a welcome sort of way, and after a second maybe, she had smiled back too.

And that was that.

But after the class was over and I was putting my books away, my eyes had tripped on a scrap of purple, pinned to her bag. On closer examination, I’d realized it was a round pin, with a yellow door with curving designs set in a sea of purple. And then another one, with “I am not great at advice, can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?” written over a vaguely-faced body.

So basically, we had bonded over F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

And then, I had got to know she was a Marvel and a DC fan and an equal fanatic over Jake Peralta and Arnab Singh Rayzada and it wasn’t really a question that we’d be anything less than solid friends.

I didn’t just realize we could be more than that too.

Honestly, I…didn’t realize it, like really realize it, until one day a few months ago. Though, in retrospect, there were countless vague, thinly veiled times before that day too, times I had dismissed as a moment of weirdness in my stomach, or simply ignored altogether, that were probably some big cosmic hints, their memories now jostling for space in my head in their raucous need for acknowledgment.

But somehow, this one day particularly sticks out in my mind as the pivotal point: Anwita had thrown a birthday party for herself and invited a whole lot of people I didn’t know.

I’ve replayed that day in my mind several times by now, moment by moment, and each time, I just feel more and more stupid. Because there were so many times that night alone that should’ve clued me in to my own feelings, but just somehow didn’t.

Like at one point, we were all drinking and everyone was dancing and I was glad that I, a grade-A introvert and lone obsessor of TV series and movies and K-drama and anime and comics, finally had friends like Ruchira and Shayla and Anwita to dance with.

And then the power had gone out abruptly and the speakers had stopped with a screeching noise, plunging us into a dark hush only penetrated by a few people’s phone screens and the ribbons of light coming from the moon through the window. But strangely, nobody had stopped dancing; somebody had just blasted music from their phone and connected to a Bluetooth speaker this time and the party had raged on as hormonally as before.

And in that tangle of bodies, I had found myself gyrating to the beats next to Shayla. She was looking particularly devastating that day, wearing a pink and white, chiffony dress covered in flowers, that hugged her all in the right places so flawlessly and stopped a couple of inches above her knees.

(There, that should’ve been my first hint, shouldn’t it? I had never thought a girl looked devastating before. But she was.)

And she was moving her head from side to side, gently rocking to the music with a glass of wine in her hands and laughing this specific nerdy laugh (I don’t know how else to describe it; it’s this weird mix of a full-blown cackle and a snicker) and her forehead was glistening with sweat so she had to wipe it with her hands every now and then.

And we were suddenly dancing really close.

Like, super close, in a way that made me aware that we were standing super close, where I could see the slight black spot under her right eye and the light trace of blush over her brown skin and the way the cherry-red lipstick she was wearing was a little uneven on her lower lip. Our eyes had caught and held for longer than two moments and there was this flutter just under my ribcage.

She had moved away the next moment, filling her glass with more wine from the table set against the window, and I’d caught myself thinking, again, how utterly pretty she was. Like in that moment, with the moonlight making ripples over her hair and lining her skin in silver? Yeah, she’d looked like…I don’t know, kind of ethereal and breathtaking.

But it was just the buzz talking really, I’d told myself.

And after she came back and started dancing again (but not as close as before), I’d told myself it was the buzz of the alcohol too that kind of tugged my gaze to her collarbones that were jutting out of her skin so obviously.

I mean, she had good collarbones. Better than mine.

And then she’d leaned my way a little to say something clearly, but my treacherous eyes had somehow ignored that part and instead of shooting up, decided to skip down.

It wasn’t showing much cleavage, honestly. But somehow, my entire body had flared up with heat and mortification, making me suddenly warm in my crop top and baggy jeans, and I’d felt like I had witnessed a very mesmerizing but very scandalous sight. The thought alone had made me tune in to what she was saying. But unfortunately, I couldn’t catch it all. I had shaken my head and focused on her face. “Umm, sorry?”

It's just cleavage. You have them too, my soul guidance counselor reminded me.

Shayla, though, had given me a look crusted with amusement in return. “I asked, do you want some wine?” The music wasn’t that loud without the speaker, so she didn’t need to yell.

“Oh nah, I’m good,” I had said, yanking my mind back to focus and forgetting about everything else. Honestly, I can’t handle these neat, straight drinks. I prefer cocktails. I’d been drinking a single glass of cosmopolitan that night.

“But you aren’t even buzzed yet!” she had laughed, still swaying to the music, and I was suddenly conscious of my own arms, and how hers were brushing against them, which, in turn, were actually tingling.

“I am!” I’d said more fiercely than usual probably, if her oddly eyeing me was any indication. “I so am.” Because why else would I have tingles all of a sudden in the middle of a dance floor? Why would I suddenly notice her –

No. It was the only feasible explanation.

But it isn't even the first time you've noticed them, someone reminded me in my head. But - But no, I was just having an off day then. That's all.

“Okay, if you say so,” Shayla had raised her arms in that universal surrender gesture, but smiled and sipped more of her wine. She was clearly tipsy.

And later, later when the room had almost cleared out, leaving only a couple of us, and the music had dimmed down to a mellow song, instead of sitting down on the couch like I had wanted to, Ruchira had grasped my hands, and started slow-dancing with me, then Anwita, then Shayla. And so, you know, we all took turns to dance with each other.

And when it was Shayla’s turn to dance with me, my heart had skipped actually, as if in some breathy anticipation, at the way she had this sweet, adorable smile on her face, and then taken my hand in hers.

And there was that flutter again.

I had swallowed, because – and I remember thinking this so clearly – her hands had felt so soft in mine, as we’d started gently swaying from side to side together and laughing intermittently at how ridiculous this all was.

Her hands, though. They were soft and delicate and a little clammy but I didn’t mind that. It was all a bit of fun. We were just really having fun. It was Anwita’s birthday, after all.

I just didn’t want to let go of her even when the music had stopped.

Later, I had reasoned that perfectly in my mind. I mean, she was one of my best friends now. Of course I would want to hold her hands. Girls do hold each other’s hands all the time. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

But after that day, I’d started to notice these same…meaningless, casual looks and touches more and more.

And I can’t say I didn’t want them to happen again. I can’t say that when I invited her to watch a movie with me that day on the roof, some small part of me wasn’t giddy and excited and was just waiting for it to happen, though I didn’t know what that it was.

Or maybe I did know.

I didn’t just want to admit it. I just couldn’t.

---

And now she is walking away and the pain building in my chest is kind of snowballing into these tears sprouting in my eyes.

Her eyes, though. For a moment, when I said ‘yes’, they were filled with so much hurt. That I caused.

I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand in a hasty motion and throw the car door open, almost falling out of my seat in my hurry to run after her.

But I don’t have to run much now. She doesn’t like running and I see she hasn’t gone past three stores. I catch up easily and yell, “Wait!”

She freezes for a moment, but only a moment. Then her walk resumes and it picks up pace.

But I speed up mine too. I don’t know what I am doing, what I am even going to say to her, but I – I just can’t – I just want to wipe away that hurt look from her eyes.

“Wait, Shayla, please,” Finally I reach her and grip her arm, but not too hard.

She wrenches it away anyway, but at least turns around, her arms crossing over her chest.

And stares me down.

“I am sorry,” I say. I really am. I really really am.

But how should I explain what I was feeling? What I am still feeling? What she constantly makes me feel?

This turbulent, weird combination of exhilarated and frightened and anxious and happy and worried and scared and warm and brilliant – it doesn’t make sense.

It can’t.

I mean, how would I explain this to my mother? My mother who is already probably looking up grooms on different matrimonial sites even though I have told her countless times I don’t need help looking and won’t get married until I am at least 30.

And my father…oh god. He is old, like, really old. Just thinking of them makes me weak with terror.

But…but…I see Shayla’s arms pinned to her chest, her shoulders slumped forward a bit, like she wants to shield herself from the impending pain, like she’s already resigned herself to more hurt and isn’t flinching from it, isn’t running away from it, and it makes me want to cry a bit but be a little braver too.

So I inhale my fear in a big gulp, try to push it down my intestines and to my appendix where useless things stay.

Maybe my parents can come around. Maybe they can understand.

But right now, this seems more important to care about.

“I am sorry,” I repeat, because perhaps then she’ll believe that I really am, that I wasn’t an asshole for no reason. Though isn’t that what every asshole thinks? It’s all just an excuse really. God, I am a horrible person. “I am sorry for ignoring your texts and…for ignoring you and I am…sorry for saying I want you to stay away.”

“No, you are entitled to want it, to say it, or anything.” She says, and the hurt in her voice is so plainly audible, or maybe it’s just me who’s hearing it, but either way, it scrapes at my heart, chiseling away at it slowly. “Just – you need to – it’d be nice to have a heads-up or something.” She shrugs all causally, then looks away. “And I am sorry, for trying to –“ she swallows, “for trying to kiss you that day. I…obviously wasn’t thinking. And of course I should’ve asked you if you were okay with it first and I didn’t, so you were justified in ignoring me really.” This is quickly turning into one of her rambles I love, “But you also could've said something too. All you had to do was say, no, Shayla, I don’t want you like that, I want you to stay away, Shayla, and I would’ve,” her breath hitches and then stumbles, and she stops finally, eyes flitting to the side.

My heart is throbbing painfully now. We have stopped just at the entrance of a narrow alleyway, between two closed stores. This area is relatively less crowded with people. But I’d rather not have this conversation out in the open like this. So I back into the alley, hoping she’ll understand and follow me.

Thankfully, after a moment of hesitation, she does, stopping just a few paces away from me. The buzz of cars and other ordinary sounds fades into an ordinary background noise just as I start.

“I…” I shake my head, still not being able to reorder my thoughts, “It’s not like I don’t want you like that. It’s just – I mean, I was – I am scared.”

Shayla huffs a breath, I don't know whether in frustration or exhaustion. “And I get that. I do. But...so was I. This hasn't been easy for me either.” A waggle of her head and her eyes skitter away and back to me, with a humorless smile carved on her lips. “I accidentally came out to my mother last year and she told me she’s okay with it…as long as I don’t get involved…with a girl. Because society.” she curls the last word with her fingers in an air quote, “But here I am, getting involved with a girl. But I still wanted to do it, because it’s my life and maybe I don't get to choose who I like, but I do get a choice in who I'll be with.” Her chest is heaving with these deep breaths now that make her look like she is panting, and her chin is quivering a little. But she takes a swig of air, and it stops. This time, she says in a calmer, somber voice, “And if you’re scared, I get it. It's very fair. And...if you want nothing to do with me, I get that too. But what I don’t get is plain ignoring, this ghosting without…any explanation, when we were - we were good friends before.”

I take a step toward her, then two more, until I am near enough to touch her, but don’t. “I know. We were. We are.” I nod, looking down at the ground, because it’s hard to look at her and still see the crushing hurt that’s somehow burrowed there permanently, it seems. The thought also hurts me. I close my eyes for a brief moment, willing it to go away so I can say what I want to. “I…I am sorry,” I say again.

“Please stop apologizing. I told you you don't have to,” she makes to move away, but I stop her quickly, my hand clutching hers in a tight grip. She jerks it once, but I don’t let go, and after another half-hearted tug, she lets it be, frustration mixed with wariness still plastered over her features.

“I didn’t want to ignore you, okay?” I say through my own frustration now, “I just didn’t know what to do with what I was feeling and…and it just seemed safer to…like, not talk to you then. Because whenever I think of you, I feel this…” I shake my head again, with heightening frustration at myself for being so incapable of finding the right words at the right time, which is ironic as I’m studying uum, literature, you know. “I feel this…like, my thoughts, they get so hazy and it’s so confusing and terrifying but like, in a good way, and that’s somehow even more confusing, because…I didn’t know.” I realize I have started my own babble and halt my words at last.

It takes Shayla a moment to fill the silence. “Didn’t know what?” Her voice sounds gruff, restrained, almost whispery among the faint clamors. Her wariness is ninety percent gone and is replaced with an expression that says she’s really trying to stave off whatever she is feeling.

I bob my head sideways again, fix my eyes on our shoes that are almost touching. “I didn’t…I didn’t know that I could feel this way.” I gulp my fright down and look up.

Shayla is maybe a couple of inches taller than me. I take another step toward her, then hold her hand more firmly, and curl one of my fingers around one of hers. Then slowly, the others too.

“I am sorry, Shayla. And I really like you." I gulp. "And I want to…I want to try…and,” I pause and inhale, “...and do better. I really do.” My voice comes out a little low and hoarse and weird, but I really don’t pay attention to anything except for the deafening crash of my heartbeats, and her freckled nose and her soft eyes and her cherry-red-painted lips that are honestly begging to be stared at.

At first, she stands there looking down at me with lips still pursed, like she doesn’t know what to believe. So I close the distance between us, getting this certainty with each step I take that this is right, and I reach up with my free hand to chase a wayward strand of her hair that’s escaped from behind her ear. And I tuck it back.

I’d always wanted to do that.

And then finally, I feel her tentative fingers weaving through mine, then gripping them harder, almost painfully hard. And I let a small smile break out on my face.

I am still so scared, and I still don’t know what I am doing, or how I will manage my family, my life.

But I know this: I am glad to have gone after her. Because this feeling…I don’t want to lose it.

So I lean up a bit and she leans down another bit but with more stutter, and our lips come so close that our breaths overlap and hers ghosts over my nose, and then finally, finally, I complete what I never should’ve left unfinished really and press my lips to hers.

And I think it might be the best thing I ever did in my entire twenty-three years.

We break away for a moment, looking at each other.

“Are you sure?” Shayla asks and there’s a slight tremor in her voice. "I meant it when I said there’s no pressure and we'd still...be friends even if you don't —"

So instead of answering, I cut her her off by brushing my lips lightly over hers in a soft kiss again, then again, and again and again. And then I can’t take it anymore, so I push myself closer and our mouths clash together in a heap of breaths and lips and heat and sweetness and my hand is buried deep in her hair, her magnificent hair, and her hand is grasping my waist like she’ll fall over if she doesn’t and I don’t know if I have ever felt this way before.

It’s…kind of extraordinary.

When we pull away, at last, we are both a little breathless, but our chests are rising and falling rapidly, in a synchronized staccato rhythm, and my hand is pressed to her shoulders and hers are looped around my waist, holding us rooted together.

“Hey, love-birds!” I hear Ruchira’s yell from the entrance of the alleyway and Shayla startles. She starts to step out of our loose embrace, but I slide my hands down her arms and grip them harder so she doesn’t. She looks at me, a question in her eyes, and I silently try to tell her that yes, Ruchira is safe. I did tell her what happened the other day and this was her stupid, brilliant ploy to get us talking or something, even after my express death glaring. “Time to move the PDA to a more hygienic place!” She shouts and I crane my neck around just in time to see her figure disappear from sight.

When we emerge onto the street and slip into the car, both she and Anwita are looking back at us from the front with crazy grins.

“An alley? Really?” Ruchira shakes her head, “I thought I taught you better than that.” She directs her regret at me.

“Hey, I had to think on my feet,” I say, and hear the defensive note in my voice, but can’t help it. I did.

“Oh honey, let’s face it: whatever you were doing, you definitely weren’t thinking on your feet,” Ruchira says, scrunching her nose, and then she and Anwita both look at each other for a second before breaking into loud heinous cackles.

“Good one, man,” Anwita says, wiping her eyes and high-fiving Ruchira.

“Oh, come on, that wasn’t high-five-worthy,” Shayla mutters, rolling her eyes, though her mouth shoots out a grudging laugh as she hurls a look at me. The mouth I just kissed.

And it was good.

I smile back at her.

“You okay?” she asks me in a low voice as Ruchira’s laugh subsides and she starts the car.

I take a moment to assess. Am I shit-scared still? Of course. I mean, of fucking course.

But right now, I just don’t want to think about what might happen. Right now, I only want to bask in the exquisite glory of my first proper kiss with a girl whom I like, who happens to like me back.

Maybe my proper kiss ever.

“Yeah,” I say, and take her hand in my lap as the car zips through the traffic.

At least for now.