xiii.

A L D E B A R A N (the one who follows)

The water falling onto my skin felt like icy needles piercing right through my skin, and chasing away the clinging shadows of my life. Closing my eyes, I step deeper into the spray, willing the lingering fear and nausea to circle the drain at my feet.  

"Fuck." I place my palms flat against the cool tile and absorb the chill of the punishing deluge into my bones. I was a selfish asshole to her tonight, I know.

In fact if I'd been a better man, I would've walked away from Tara Dobriyal the moment I saw her.

I step out of the shower, and put on my trousers and vest. Deciding to leave, letting Tara go was never easy but somewhere I knew, I am in love with someone who is going to be taken away from me... eventually.

I had already packed my bags, and couldn't wait to go back to Delhi. As I am about to shut the door of my room, I notice the last souvenir Tara had given me — her locket. I take it in my hands, and see how the delicate diamond catches the gleam of the sunlight. An intensified wave of memories rushes back to my shore, and I am left with a blurred vision in an instant. 

No. I must forget her. Every single memory of her.

That's why I decide to leave Tara's last memory there.

When I get down, I realize that my driver had not come to pick me up yet. So I just stand outside the hotel lobby. As I take out my phone to enquire my driver about his whereabouts, I'm left flustered when I see Tara walking towards me with an expressionless and stoic face. She takes a step towards me, and then another... until she is standing right in front of me.

She refuses to look at me, but I can't look at her. I can't look at her because if I do; it will only break my illusion that the Tara I knew — the vivacious girl who I loved was lost in the shadows of a person who is going to die.

I expect Tara to hurl curses at me — call me a cowardly backstabbing, selfish asshole but she stays silent and walks past me. Now I truly know what they mean when they say— silent ones kill the most. She clicks on her heels, turns around abruptly and leaves in the direction of the exit. I hear my heart breaking again as she slowly fades away.

Tara waltzing back to my life, and messing up with me again makes my heart infinite times heavier. Sighing, I glance at my watch when the driver calls for me loud and clear, "Virat Sir."

"Where the hell were you? I was waiting for you since an hour!" I rebuke in anger, hopping inside my car.

"Sorry Sir. The Mumbai traffic is crazy." he replies in a low mumble. Groaning frustatedly, I ask him to drive me to the airport.

"Make it quick, my flight is in two hours and I can't afford to miss it, okay?" I warn him in a half-concilatory tone, and he nods at me slowly. 

When we hit the road, I cannot help but think about the direction in which my life was heading. People say that our lives always form a perfect circle, but my life had taken a shape which I cannot understand. I have always been at the losing end. Always.

My life was only a perfect circle in the terms of the hollowness of my soul — the void which exsited before the advent of Tara, and even after her departure. This void was my constant, my forever and always. This void had promised every single ounce of bl —

The car comes to a sudden jolt, and helps me escape the oblivion — the hollowness in my heart was creating. "What happened?" I enquire my driver when I notice the never ending traffic on the road. Mumbai's traffic lately had not been the best considering the rapid influx of population in the city which was affecting everyone.

"I highly doubt if we would be able to make it by 3 p.m. Sir. The traffic is just insane." My driver sighs, switching off the engine. 

"I have to reach the airport anyhow. Take the short route from the Marker's road." I instruct him, then close my eyes with a relaxing exhale, engrossing myself in deep thoughts.

I never belived in terms like fate and destiny. It never made any logical sense to me. But now I realize half of the things in your life don't make any logical sense. Tara — in spite of being a beautiful human being was at the threshold of life and death, with its slope tilted towards death — didn't make any logical sense. Maybe the only logical sense, a genuis could add to it is that life loves unpredictability. The winds of destiny otherwise always blow when you least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fierce of a goddamn hurricane, sometimes they gently fan one's cheek.

But no one can deny these winds; and no one can deny love. I had love washing along my shore when I least expected it.

Can I deny it? 

No.

The answer would always be a no.

Knowing that with her, it's never going to be a forever is hard — but everything worthwhile in this universe is never easy. Everyone has their slice of happiness in some twisted manner. Everything need not be happy at all, to be honest, I finally realize.

"Stop!" I beam at the driver, and he looks at me, frazzled, and mumbles a sorry. "I'm not firing you. Just let me drive for the time. I have to meet someone before it's too late."

I smile, remembering my mom's words: it's never too late for good things.

I hope it's true.

•••

"Why are you here? Tara has been crying since last night, and I suppose you're the reason." Tara's dad grinds through his teeth, his jaw cleched while I sigh in exasperation at his double standards.

"I've been crying since last three weeks, and I think you should know that you're the reason." I retort, rolling my eyes at him.

"I am not a selfish bastard to declare my very much alive daughter dead, Virat. There's a reason behind that action." he argues, momentarily closing his eyes to bite back his tears. "Tara didn't want others to know she is suffering from cancer because she felt it would only break her family and friends. We had to hide her; for six months before left the house because of an argument with me." he explains, and I feel guilt and remorse washing over me with a tidal force.

"I'm so sorry. I forget that you're also at the losing end with me. It must be difficult for you." I admit apologetically while he simply nods.

"She's upstairs." he firmly presses his lips together, wiping away his tears. "But don't you dare push her away this time, okay?" 

"I promise I won't." I smile, rushing upstairs. When I fling open the door, I see Tara standing against the backdrop of her window. She wasn't exactly crying; but her features were pulled off into a look of extreme sorrowness. But if you ask me, I would say, she was still looking like a rising sunset, a homogenous mixture of warm colors, and radiating postivity, a pure contrast to the dark night sky in her background. There's a reason why the moon and stars always appear so bright against the dark navy sky. For you never know the light until you've seen darkness.

It wasn't until I stand beside her that I realize what she is staring at. The rain. How the rain droplets tapped the window rambunctiously, everything getting washed away in the rain. We make such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn't really make anything neater. It just masks what is below. It's only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are.

I could see my reality: a coward. A selfish coward.

When Tara looks at me a little surprised, I hope that she doesn't see my reality. "What are you doing here? What happened to Goodbye?" she asks stoically, refusing to look at me into the eye.

Goodbye my ass, I can't stay away from you for a second now. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you fell in love with me; a person who has the most selfish heart." I rack my sobs down my throat, my hands brushing against her cheeks.

"We all have selfish hearts, Virat. And it's this selfishness of heart which keeps us going; because of the human heart, so selfish for the people it loves entirely, and yet so selfless in its pursuit of selfishness." she replies, wrapping her hands around my torso. I place my hand on the small of her back, breathing in her perfume while she buries her face in the crook of my neck. "I love you." 

"I love you." I chuckle, "More than you can imagine." Before Tara, I thought these I love yous and things like are made up of nothing stronger than twenty six letters, and a handful of punctuations. But now I know: even if these words are the most frail ones, but still they're capable of wounding you for worse, or healing you for better. 

"What changed your mind though?" Tara asks, jutting her chin at me as she closely watches every move of mine.

"Because you left an imprint. I wanted to forget you, but you were always going to be in my heart. Because you're the one who helped form my heart. There's no getting over that." I reply honestly. 

Tara smiles at me, before leaning forward. "Sometimes your words make me think so much..." she smiles while I reach out, and pull her into me, one hand resting on her waist and other grazing the nape of her neck. 

"Yours always..." I reply softly. Tipping her head up, I lower my lips on hers.  Her body presses closer to mine, and she wraps my arms around my neck. Her lips were warmer and softer than anything I could have imagined. I bite on her lower lip, resulting into a soft moan escaping through her lips. The forevers linger on my lips as I push her against the wall adjacent to the window.  But neither of us realize when Tara's legs go out from under her and flail as she falls, whacking me in the throat on the way down. She looks up at me as I gagged and coughed, before laughing hysterically at her, "You need practice, Tara."

"Really?" Tara narrows down her eyes at me as she gets up, before sealing my lips into another languid kiss.

Slowly and undeniably, I pull away due to lack of oxygen. I wanted to preserve this moment, this slice of time when the night was cool and bright with reflected moonlight and the kiss —  the feeling of which still lingers on my lips.

Tara giggles, "You can sleep here today if you're not a bedwetter."

"That's a good way to insult someone after kissing the life out of them." I shot back at her in fluid of sarcasm.

"You're a bedwetter, aren't you?" Tara shakes her head at me, laughing and cackling on her own at her stupid jokes.

"Yes; I'm a bedwetter." I reply sarcastically, "And who do you think you are? Hermione Granger, the Miss. Know-it-all?"

"I hate Hermione fucking Granger!" Tara exclaims in anger. "That bitch." 

"You actually, really, totally hate Hermione Granger?" I ask in bafflement.

"I've always hated Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciate her life. She got to live at Hogwarts and be friends with Harry and kiss Ron, which was supposed to happen to me!" she whines, sinking her head into my chest. 

"You're such a meanie to hate her for such petty reasons." I remark with a frown, pushing my lower lip outwards.

"I guess, I am. But now when I rethink about it, I feel I'm luckier than that Hermione. Because I've you."

Honestly, I feel my tongue tied at her words so I just stare at her for a good five minutes. "Tara... Even I'm even lucky; the luckiest infact to have someone like you in my life." I smile, leaving a peck on her forehead. 

Even if I know this is not right. It's wrong but still a little right because everything need not be alright— that right person, the right timing and those right places — all leading to that fucking perfect happily ever after, that's not essential. It's not at all mandatory.

I believe it just has to be — in time, in place, in moment.

Just two people. And an intervention. 

"You two? Could you please just rewind what was going on?"