Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
AMAY
Amay stared at the door that shut behind her. He heard the low rumble of Ishaan and her voices and then nothing.
She was gone.
“Are you going to sit down?” Virat asked, as he took his seat on the couch.
Amay continued to stare at the closed door.
“Either go after her or sit the fuck down, Ams,” Virat murmured. “You’re not doing any good by hovering like a spectre from the Underworld.”
Every cell in his body screamed that he should go after her. Amay sat down instead. He needed to clear his head, allow his brain to start working and stop following his heart like a stupid, idiotic…
He stood up again. Virat eyed him, looking mildly entertained by his nonsense.
“I should go after her right?”
“You should do whatever you want to do,” Virat replied, picking up his phone which had started ringing.
Amay stayed standing in the middle of the room, like a lost idiot, while Virat took what sounded like a grim, suffused with bad news, phone call.
“They found nothing.” Virat tossed his phone aside, running his hands through his hair, frustration seeping from his every pore. “Not one damn thing.”
“They’ve gotten good at clean up. They’ve gotten better at being criminal assholes.”
“Or they’ve got another place.”
“Maybe,” Amay countered. “They have nothing to hide. We don’t even know what it is we suspect them of.”
Virat’s steady gaze met him. “And what was today? A social visit? Do you think they actually came here to condole with Dhrithi? There’s something there, Ams!”
Amay exhaled, frustration seeping through him. “I don’t know man. If they’re up to something, then they’ve covered their tracks well. All we know for sure is that Varun Gokhale was an abusive narcissist who physically, mentally and emotionally destroyed his wife.”
“I don’t know about that,” Virat murmured. “Varun abused her but I’m pretty sure the actual destroying was done by you.”
Now you could hear a pin drop in the silence that descended around them.
“To give someone hope in a hopeless situation and then take it away,” Virat continued. “That’s a dick move of epic proportions.”
“I didn’t-‘
Amay cut himself off as emotion choked him. Virat waited patiently for him to find his words.
“I can’t,” he said finally. “I just can’t.”
“Why?” Virat sounded curious more than angry or disappointed. “I don’t remember a time in our lives when you haven’t been in love with Dhrithi Sahay. And now, when you actually have a shot at a future with her, you can’t? Make it make sense, brain trust.”
“I had a shot with her back then too,” Amay grumbled.
Virat laughed, a bright, boisterous sound that had even Amay smiling a little. “I don’t know what you had back then, my friend, but I can confidently tell you that you did not have game. None of us did.”
“I had a shot with her,” Amay insisted, regressing to his inner ten year old. “She held my hand in Chemistry class and passed notes under the table with me in Kausar Sir’s class.”
Virat snorted. “Solid move, man. I bet you’re still riding that endorphin high.”
“I kissed her in the gardening patch!”
“No, you didn’t! Liar!” Virat was full out laughing, chortling even as he held his sides. “If you’d kissed her, Ish and I would have heard all about it at that time, not all these years later.”
“I did,” Amay snapped. “In the baingan section.”
The minute the words left his mouth, the sheer ridiculousness of the situation hit him.
“The baingan section?” Virat wiggled his eyebrows at him, helpless laughter spilling out of him. “That seems very apt.”
Amay started to laugh, burying his face in his hands. “Shit. I’m an idiot.”
“You are,” Virat agreed good naturedly. “But that’s okay. You’re rarely one and sometimes Ishaan needs a break from being the idiot in the group.”
That set them off again, laughter filling the room and spreading through the air until finally, they calmed enough to talk again.
“What’s going on in that overthinking brain of yours?” Virat asked him.
Amay sighed. “I don’t know. My father came by the hospital and it triggered a bunch of memories. He never paid for what he did, Vir.”
“Yet.”
A single word, hard and uncompromising.
“Yet,” Amay agreed. “He’s all I have left in the world. My single, living blood relative. A murderer, a debaucherous megalomaniac, who would have killed me too if he’d managed to produce another child. Those are my genes. They should die with me.”
Virat said nothing, waiting patiently for him to excise the festering wound and lance the blistering pus inside.
“Dhrithi deserves better.”
Virat made a noncommittal noise.
“She does,” Amay insisted. “She’s been through hell already. She doesn’t need someone like me.”
“Someone like you?”
“Bad blood,” Amay said flatly. “Bad blood always outs.”
“Jeez. You’re like something out of a melodramatic Victorian novel.”
Amay stared at him. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never read a melodramatic Victorian novel but clearly you have.”
“You don’t get to decide what Dhrithi needs,” Virat snapped, undeterred by his mockery. “She does. And she seems to have decided she needs, no, she wants you.”
“She’s confused and probably suffering from PTSD.”
“You are insufferable!” Virat groaned. “And yes, she probably is but don’t presume to know her feelings better than she herself does, you pompous dickhead.”
“But-“
“If anybody is suffering from PTSD here, it’s you, Amay. You heard your mother being murdered at the age of ten! Did you think that was something you’d just quietly heal from? Like magic?”
Amay stayed silent, his mind churning in a million different directions.
“She has scars, Ams. So do you. Do you both want to deal with each other’s shit? Or not? That’s the only question here. But get of your noble high horse, pull the poker out of your arse, and see the situation for what it is. You have a shot with the love of your fucking life. Are you going to take it?”