Chapter 24
Pune, Sunday
We hike back down to the tents, and that takes forever, but I go through the motions mechanically, stuck in limbo between a dream and a nightmare.
About an hour or so past noon, we’re on the bus again. This time I don’t share a seat with anyone because I feel so icky and
dirty. I’m both irritated and teary, but that’s just the sultry afternoon heat and the extreme fatigue.
So it’s no surprise when I actually shed a tear after reaching the Sinhas’ place.
After the best shower I’ve ever had in my life, I feel like I’ve just washed off years of grime packed into the layers of my skin.
Under the water, the dirt just kept pouring out, mixing with the water and spiraling into the drain.
It was like the earth had seeped into my bloodstream through the pores of my skin.
Only when I was convinced I was completely clean did I turn the shower off.
Now I put on a loose, flowy churidar that flares around my ankles, allowing my skin to breathe while protecting it in its
current sun-sensitive state. On top, I shrug on an olive-green angarkha kurta—one of my favorites, with delicate mandala cream
designs—that’s like a jacket with one flap tied over the other under my left arm. The dori used to tie the flaps together
have tiny cream tassels at the ends, and they shimmer in the bathroom light.
My brown skin doesn’t really let me get sunburned, just tanned from melanin accumulation, but because today’s exposure was
severe, I’ll need my skin to heal before I can parade around outside in shorts and tank tops again.
Priti is out with Varun collecting Rudra’s car from the mechanic. Digha and Charu went to her house down the hallway to freshen
up, Rudra and Jalaj are taking turns bathing in Jalaj and Varun’s bathroom, and I’m in Charu’s bedroom. For once, Rudra gave
in to Priti’s begging and let her drive his car back here, too exhausted to argue.
Drying my hair with a towel, I walk over to the tall mirrors stuck to Charu’s wardrobe, surveying my reflection. I have dark
bags under my eyes, but at least that pimple from yesterday is gone, reduced to a red bump. I grab my makeup bag from the
side table and quickly put on some black liquid liner, draw a small black bindi between my eyebrows, and don a pair of oxidized
silver earrings with olive-green beads hanging from them.
There’s a knock on the door as I run my fingers through my hair, easing the knots out. Rudra walks in, freshly changed into
a pair of loose black tracks and a half-sleeved gray T-shirt. His hair is wet again—in its current state, it’s barely combed
and damp, sticking to his chin. He leans against the doorframe, watching me watch him.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you in an angarkha kurta this trip,” he says without a beat of hesitation. “You look pretty.” I turn back to the mirror to avoid looking at him, untangling the last of the knots from my hair.
“Thank you,” I respond, pushing my hair behind my shoulders. It falls in a sheet, draping down my neck. I don’t let it show,
but I’m giddy from his compliment. “You look good too.” A pause. “You always do.”
“I doubt that, but okay.”
I turn to him, surprised. I’m not used to hearing that sort of a response from a guy as good-looking as him. Does he not see
it?
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you doubt it?”
“Because . . .” Rudra looks awkward all of a sudden, hands shoved into his pockets. “I don’t know. I’ve just never had anyone
say that to me before.”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Priti has.”
Rudra snorts. “Priti keeps saying it. Doesn’t count.”
“Well, you do.” I drop my eyes to the ground. “You’re nice to look at.”
“Not as nice as Amrit, I’m sure.”
I snap my head up. “Why would you say that? There’s no comparison.”
“Oh.” Rudra seems surprised. He steps toward me but then hesitates.
“It’s fine. You can come inside.” I point behind him. “But shut the door.” Rudra’s eyes widen, and I hastily add, “The AC’s
on.”
He closes the door, and then it’s just us in here. The space between us doesn’t feel as large anymore. Memories float back into my mind: his thumb resting on the hollow in my throat, his hand gripping my hip. The way he looked right up at me and said You look like you’re about to kiss me right now.
I turn on my heel, pressing my palms to my cheeks to cool the heat spilling in. I sit on Charu’s bed, leaving enough space
before me so Rudra’s not as close when he joins me.
For a moment, I think he’s about to broach the topic of whatever happened between us last night and today, so I decide to
speak up before he has the chance to. “Are you sure you’re not too tired to drive straight to Goa?”
“I just need coffee. I’ll be okay.”
“We don’t have to leave today, you know.” I grab Charu’s beige satiny pillow and place it in my lap, fiddling with the hem.
“If you’re too tired. We can leave early in the morning tomorrow.”
“It’s a nine-hour journey,” Rudra says, sighing. “We’d be cutting it too close. Especially since we planned on having Mansi
and Priti meet around noon so Mansi can have some time before probably making the most important decision of her life.”
“And Priti will flip if we suggest leaving tomorrow,” I add. “She practically ran out to pick up the car in her eagerness
to leave for Goa. What beats me is how she thinks she’s being slick and secretive with all this. It’s so obvious.”
“She’s always been like that,” Rudra says, smiling fondly. “And trust me, I’m fine to leave. That way, we won’t have to rush
tomorrow. We might even have a chance to actually take Goa in, between everything.”
“You mentioned having been to North Goa before,” I say.
“Yeah, loads of times. It’s a good getaway.”
“With your friends?”
“Yeah?” He says it like a question.
“I just—” I’m blushing again, shamelessly, and I’m hoping my sunburn helps cover for it. “I just wondered if you went with an ex.”
Rudra ducks his head, and I’m shocked to find he’s even redder than I am. We’re pathetic, both of us. When he looks at me,
his face is lit up, the apprehension from before gone. “If you were curious about my past relationships, you could’ve just
asked.”
I’m pretty sure I’m starting to resemble a tomato at this point. “Relationships? Plural?”
Rudra chuckles. “No. Just one.”
“Who was it?”
He’s looking at me so bashfully I want to fling a pillow at him. “You wouldn’t know her.”
I do fling the pillow at him then. “Just tell me, damn it! I’m curious!”
Rudra catches it deftly, laughing. “Okay, okay, fine! It was this girl from my class, back in eleventh. We dated for three
months before breaking up.”
“Why?”
He leans back, head against the wall and eyes on the ceiling. “This is going to sound really cliché, but we didn’t want the
same things.”
I smile. “That is very cliché.”
“Yeah.”
“So no one besides her?”
“Nope. Just her.”
“Why haven’t you dated anyone seriously since?” I ask, grabbing another pillow to smooth out about a hundred times.
“The same reason you haven’t.”
“And what is that?”
“Because we were pursuing our dreams.” I love the way he says our; it makes me feel like he’s as invested in this conversation as I am.
“You wanted to go to JHU, so you shut yourself off from the outside world and focused on just that. I wanted Juilliard, have always wanted Juilliard, and want to sign with a record label for my music one day—I did the same thing.”
“How do you know me so well?” I ask, voice soft, almost a whisper.
“Because we’re the same . . . because I told you this before, Krishna,” he says, an incomprehensible emotion eddying in his
eyes. “I’ve known you since we were kids. I was always there.”
Even if it was just in the background.
He doesn’t say those words, but they echo in my mind anyway.
“To be honest . . .” I say, ready to admit out loud what I’ve been keeping in my head all summer long. There’s something about
Rudra that makes me want to tell him, even if the truth is embarrassing to share. “That’s what this whole trip has been about for me, you know? I
missed out on so much by doing all that.
“All I remember about high school is waking up in a panicked frenzy every day, ticking things off my to-do list because there
was always something left and absolutely no time. And once it was all over, I realized I’d done everything I was supposed to do—and yet, I felt like I’d done nothing. I know my friends”—the few I have—“think I’m boring because I have nothing to
gossip about. Not anything fun, at least. No parties, no sneaking out of the house, no kissing—all I have are grades and my spotless track record of following
the rules to the tee. The first time I even drank, I did that wrong too.”
“Rarely is anyone’s first time drinking a good experience,” Rudra says. “The first time I drank, I ended up passed out next
to the toilet. Woke up with god knows whose piss on my clothes.”
I can’t help but chuckle at that.
“And why are you talking like it’s all over? You’re eighteen, Krishna. You haven’t missed out on anything yet. In fact, you
have so much to look forward to.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I say, not harshly. “You did it all and also got into your dream college.”
“I didn’t do it all,” Rudra says. “I didn’t . . . you know.” He trails off suggestively, all toothy and shy and pretty.
I blush. “You’re still a virgin, Rudra Desai?” I ask teasingly.
“Yes, I’m a still a virgin, sunflower, and I’m not ashamed of it.” Rudra grins. “My ex and I—we did other things, but it wasn’t
much. It never went there.”
It’s not fair, but the mere thought of him kissing someone, let alone getting to second or third base, makes me shrivel up
inside with envy for that girl. It’s so unlike me. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe I’m just that possessive, to be envious of someone’s
past I was barely a part of.
A past I chose to not be a part of.
“Look,” Rudra says. “You might not think you’ve done anything fun, but you did get drunk—at a house party, no less. You won a food contest, went out on a midnight trek and lied to your mom about it—”
“Eavesdropper,” I accuse.
“Hey, you talk loud,” Rudra says before continuing. “You smoothed things over with Priti too. And you’re going to be in Goa
soon. You’re going to . . . do what you came here for.” I don’t miss the way his lips turn downward when he says the last
bit, before he adds, “The last thing I would call you is boring—it’s the farthest thing from the truth.”
I don’t say anything to that. I don’t say that it’s not about Amrit Acharya anymore. I think about Amrit for a second, his
easy smile, his charm, the way everything about us just fit.
But I never felt this way with Amrit, the way I do now, with Rudra.
Like there are opposite poles of a magnet embedded within us, drawing us to each other.
Every time, it feels like the craving inside me to cross this overarching gap and kiss Rudra knocks the breath out of me.
And now that I’ve seen the way my insides seem to catch fire whenever I’m around him, the contrast between those feelings—what I felt for Amrit and what I feel for Rudra—is stark.
With Amrit, it wasn’t necessarily because I was the problem, or that Amrit was the problem. There was no problem. Because maybe, like I’ve already told Rudra, there’s no comparison.
“When you put it like that,” I say, prying the conversation away from the topic of Amrit. Because this situation is starting
to feel a lot more like an ultimatum with every passing second, one I can’t afford to reckon with right now. “I have been quite adventurous these past few days.”
“You’re a daredevil, Krishna Kumar.” He reaches out and ruffles my hair, and I fling a second pillow at him.
I guess I am kind of a daredevil.