chapter 42
Chapter 42 - The Habit He Couldn't Break
He still drove past her street.
Not every day.
Not often enough to call it intention.
Too often to call it coincidence.
It became a habit the way all his worst ones had-quietly, without admission.
Some evenings the turn came before he registered making it.
Some nights he told himself traffic had pushed him there.
Other times he let the lie remain unexamined.
The building became familiar in fragments.
The dim pharmacy on the corner.
The tea stall under the flickering streetlight.
The narrow stretch of pavement outside her gate.
He never stopped.
Not at first.
He slowed just enough to look.
Sometimes the lights in her apartment were on.
Sometimes not.
Once, late enough for the road to be nearly empty, he saw her silhouette move across the window.
Small.
Brief.
Gone again in seconds.
It was enough to leave the rest of the night unusable.
Another evening he saw the lamp in the front room lit warm against the glass and felt, with immediate irrational certainty, that she was inside reading.
The thought arrived whole.
Not imagined.
Known.
He could see it without seeing her.
The lamp.
The book.
The quiet.
That certainty sat badly.
Not because it was painful.
Because it was intimate in a way he had not earned.
By the second week, he knew which evenings her window stayed dark.
Which nights the kitchen light remained on later.
Which hours made the street feel too still.
It became a map of someone else's routine.
He hated how easily he learned it.
He hated more that he kept looking anyway.
One night he stopped at the signal half a block away and watched Arjun cross the street carrying paper bags in one hand and her keys in the other.
He didn't ring.
He let himself in.
Aarav's hand tightened on the steering wheel so sharply his knuckles blanched.
The light turned green.
Someone behind him honked.
He drove on.
Slowly.
Jaw set.
Something hard and immediate had settled under his ribs by the time he reached home.
Not anger.
Not quite.
Something narrower.
Less dignified.
He recognized it too late to deny it.
Jealousy sat badly in him.
Ugly.
Undeniable.
He did not call her that night.
He drove past again the next evening anyway