xxii.

M I Z A R (hill)

"Why Virat? What were you doing?" she cries, cradling my face with her hands, and with her thumbs, she traces my tears away. 

I don't know if it's an image created by my drunken haze that I can see Tara doing all that to me. I slowly stagger backwards, feeling breathless. It's like my heart is ahead in time, miles away from my brain which is still trying to process if it's actually Tara or just my hallucination.

But whatever it is, Tara looks goddamn furious as she yells at me, "Why would you get piss drunk and then come to a beach during high tides, Virat? Are you out of your fucking mind? What if something would've happened to you?" I don't even think I had seen Tara this angry before. She has never yelled at me before; she has either talked to me or felt me the way no one has ever.

I just poke her face when I ask, "Is this really you, Tara?"

Tara doesn't answer, and slowly all the blood drains off her face. "This is not the question you should be asking now. First let me get you home." And with that, she holds me but I push her away gently.

"I need my goddamn answers! Why is everyone stating you are dead, Tara? I saw you two weeks back, and you were breathing. Why will your dad lie to me?"

"It doesn't matter, Virat. We have to get you home first." she argues but I frown at her, linking my thumb and index finger to her wrist.

"It fucking matters to me. Because I love you."

"Virat —"

"— I know you don't love me and all that shit, but it doesn't change the fact that I love you."

"No Virat." she shakes her head at me, riveting her eyes to the sky. 

"Tara. please tell me —"

"— there are so many stars which do not form constellations but do you know what's a supernova?"

I frown at her, "We are not going to discuss astronomy at midnight, are we?"

"No, but it's important for you to understand." she dryly chuckles. "Supernovas are the stars which shine with an exorbitant multitude of brightness that they catastrophically implode because of the ejection of it's own nuclear mass."

"Why are you telling me this?" I ask with a frown, confused by her words.

"Because I'm a supernova, Virat." she screams frustratedly, digging her feet into the sand. "You're too drunk to even understand what I actually mean!"

"I love you, and I would die without you." I squeak, taking her hands in mine. "I'm not even joking, try me." I look at her for a reply, but she looks at me with eyes blazing. Supernova, I cannot help but bitterly smile at the metaphor. 

"Go then, die." Tara snaps at me, and I look at her with indredule. Was I hearing sane? Was I so hideous that Tara would want me to die? As she sees me thinking about it, her eyes widen, mouth pursed with her lower lip sticking out slightly more than the upper one as she frowns. "Are you going to really do it? Life isn't some novel where a person gives up on herself or himself just because a person doesn't love him back. It's just not me —it has never been only me, Vi. People are willing to love you, it never has to be just me."

"Why can't it be with you? I'm not even a quarter a heart without you, Tara. It's just impossible for me to live without you." I argue, fighting back my tears. Withdrawal is the most difficult job here, undone. Withdrawing from the fact that my life would be without Tara is difficult.

"You're making our friendship sound toxic, Virat. You're just deluding yourself into thinking that your life would be incomplete without me but it's not real —" she cuts off, her voice rising slightly. "Because your life isn't a fucking obligation which you must fulfil, Virat. Because some of us simply want to live but simply can't and you saying this —" she stops talking after a moment, looking at me with her eyes widened. My gaze pierces hers like a canon ball because she knew that I had heard it.

"What did you mean by some people want to live but simply can't? What did you mean by that?"

"Nothing," she replies quickly.  "I was just giving you an example."

"Tara," I repeat, this time my voice harder. "What did you mean by that?"

"Do you know what is a glioblastoma?" I shake my head, slowly drawing the parallel of what she had said earlier, do you know what's a supernova?  "It's the most agressive and rarest form of brain tumour as it affects the glial cells of your brain."

All the blood suddenly drains off my face as a wave of panic and shock cascades through my entire. I'm harboring my feelings in the dam which I cannot trust, for it might break. "Why are you telling me this?" My voice cracks and suddenly, I cannot trust my own voice. Because I knew. I knew the reason why she was telling me about it but I didn't want to be left with the grotesque truth.

"Because I have a glioblastoma, Virat." Because I am a supernova, Virat. "I'm dying." I'm imploding.

And the dam breaks. The fucking dam breaks, and my heart breaks, and I break. I'm just staring at Tara; too shocked to speak anything, too shocked to move, too shocked to react. The world around me swirls and spins, and the memory thread snaps. The times when I felt Tara was too pale, too weak, and when she fainted. It was in front of my eyes all the time, and yet I couldn't see it. Because I was foolishly falling in love with her. 

A girl who was going to die. 

But then I blink my eyes and I am in love with her again.

"Why didn't you tell me?" The burn of betrayal is laced in the acidity of my throat. I feel betrayed, helpless, hopeless, all at once. 

Tara smiles at me, and I don't even have to think why I am so madly in love with this girl. Maybe because she has this uncanny ability to smile through the saddest times. "You really want to know, Virat?" she asks softly, and I nod at her slowly like a kid. "Okay, first you will cry, and then you will smile. Just don't tell me you weren't warned."

"Just shut up and spill." I groan frustatedly, rolling my eyes at her.

"Because you were never supposed to know. I was never going to tell you about it. You would have gone back to Delhi, and I would've be in Mumbai. We would have never contacted again, and you would would have forgotten me. But I could never fathom that we were going to get this close. That I would be falling in love with you." Her eyes leave me numb. These were the words I was dying to hear since a long time; to feel loved but it was going to be momentary and the thought of it made my heart churn in anguish and pain.

"I would have never forgotten you." I reply honestly.

"I know it now. But trust me, Virat, I was never going to let you come close to me... this close. But I guess I was too selfish to push you away."

You should have pushed me away then, the words at the tip of my tongue but I know it's not plausible. I was feeling like trash without her anyway when she left me.

But now, I wouldn't let her go. "I would've still loved you the way I do... now."

"Let me go to Landon Carter style: aren't you frightened?"

I reply the most truthful, and yet the most selfish words I have ever spoken, "I am terrfied." It sounds so pathetic that I want to bite back my words, but I know it's impossible. "My best friend is a neurosurgeon, he can treat you well, Tara." I quip, holding her against my me. She was the gravitational force which was keeping me grounded now.

A laugh escapes past her before she scoffs, "Guess what? My best friend is a neurosurgeon too. Jatin is actually my doctor."

I hesitantly ask her, "So are you not going to fight?" For me? For us?

"Fight against who, Virat? This? " she traces her forehead, a sardonic smile on her lips, "It's inevitable. My tumor is inoperable; it's like a death sentence stamped on my head. All my life I've been smiling and laughing, and one day I just passed out, and I was told I'm going to die. It wasn't easy, Virat. To not fight. I tried to fight, went through two minor surgeries for my low grade astrocytomas. But this time it's impossible."

"Means there's nothing I can do to save you." Nothing I can to do tide over this hill.

"You are not supposed to save me, Virat. You were never meant to save me. You don't have to stay back and love me and look at me dying. You don't have to be another Landon Carter. You don't have to suffer with me, you can say goodbye as and when you want." Tara speaks, not even a single trace of resentment and bitterness in her voice.

I cannot help but wonder that's exactly what had been the constant in my life: running away from people I love. Undeniably, I have always been a coward, and even now my feet are ready to run away from Tara. Even she has given me the permission to run away. Then there's this boundlessly selfish heart of mine which is chanting: don't stay, don't stay, don't stay. Because at the end of the day, I'm the one who will be coping with her loss, I've to be the one who has to suffer with the tragedy in my love life. "So, are you going to go?"

"I don't know." I answer, but what I really want to answer is, Can I? Should I? Will your memories let me?

I don't voice out my thought though, and just ask her, my tone nasally, "Why do bad things happen to good people, Tara? Why always?"

Honestly, I expect Tara to give me a cliched answer that it's only because God loves the good people and wants to keep them with Himself. But what she tells me leaves me amused, "Because there are no bad things and good people. Nothing bad ever happens to anyone and people are neither good nor bad. A person is nothing. A person does not exist. There are no people."

Exactly. There are no people. There is no love. Because your heart is the symbolic representation of love, and yet it can't see, it can't hear, it can't think. All it does is make you feel. And this symbolic representation of love is so attuned to itself, so selfish, and no one else. All this blind organ does is think — will this action benefit me? Does this action make me happy? Does this... does it benefit the person who will make me happy?

We like to think we are good people, but we are not. We only truly care for ourselves, and by the extension of it, the one who benefit us. 

"I think I know what I am going to do Tara," I speak aloud, pulling away from her embrace. As I look into her eyes, I can see her breaking, but I do not wish to cut my feet too deeply by staying around. "I am truly sorry."

And with that I walk away.