The Bucket List

Chapter- 17

We stare at each other. Then I let go of myself.

Picking the hem of my dress, I retreat to my changing room, through the stairs abandoning Karthik without a note.

My eyes burn with the unshed tears.

I have changed into a purple dress and canvas shoes and I'm sitting on the squashy couch, staring at myself in the mirror. My true version looks back at me through the glass.

But she looks as radiant as the girl who caught everyone's eyes tonight! Yeah, it's me.

"Come in", I shout at the door. Karan walks in.

"You missed it," I say. I can't filter the sourness of my words.

He sits beside me and sighs. He has rolled up his sleeves and looks tired. And I did not fail to notice the drops of red paint on his white shirt.

Damn! That's blood.

"What happened? Did you hurt yourself?" I begin to examine him for any trace of a wound. I find none.

"It isn't me."

I look at him questioning.

"My friend's not good. It pains to see her that way."

Her?

"She doesn't deserve it."

"She had an accident?" I ask. So he went to help her?

And you overreacted and you were...presumptuous.

He looks at me and shakes his head. "She hurt her own self."

"Why would anyone hurt their own self?"

He stays quiet. And soothes the wrinkles on his forehead with his thumb. I wait for an answer but that never comes.

Is she not well mentally?

"How was it for you?"

"First- class." My father always said this when something was great and he couldn't find words to describe it. Just one word. 'first-class'.

He chuckles. "Of course it was. You were enjoying yourself, I saw."

"It's not my fault both of you are not on good terms since the beginning."

He runs his hand through his hair.

"What happened to your friend?"

He inhales sharply. "She keeps on running away from her own happiness. She thinks she doesn't deserve it. the only thing that keeps her calm is... self-destruction." I watch him shudder.

"Someone, I know?"

He stays quiet.

We hang in the death-eating silence once again. The sky is the darkest right now. Ironic how the place I am sitting at is the most illuminated.

He sniffs and clears his throat.

Waiting for no more signs I hug him. "You can talk. Anything you want."

He clutches me too and buries his face in my neck. I feel the heat. He pulls me closer to him, making me sit on his lap, still not raising his head.

"You don't have to be this way." God, it hurts watching him this way. "Please don't cry."

It's automatic. My hand runs up and down his back and then caresses his head. Usually, I get awkward around weepy people. But this feels different. As if I'm healing my own broken self.

We sit there that way as if it is forever. "You're the kindest person I know." I realize now that I have been crying too.

He has calmed down. But what's the tension in the air.

He raises his handsome face after what felt like an eternity. I'm met with a sobering pair of eyes, now red. It squeezes my heart. Tears pool in my eyes, not by watching his fragility but his suffering is, that disarms.

His nose is red from the latest session and his lips the softest I have ever seen them. My heart is thumping against my chest and he is close to me. My lips inched closer to his and we were back in front of the setting sun, where I just imagined it first.

Maybe I'm dreaming, maybe I'm not. But for once, leaving all the difficult questions unanswered, leaving all the shyness behind, I did it. He breathed into me and I into him, as our lips met.

He tastes of mint and even smells of it. I taste his tears. My body tingles with this newfound numbness and I sink deeper in the reddish shade of sky.

Someone shouts and pulls me away from the lovely evening and pushes me to the darkness. It's dark outside the window. And then I am thrashed back on the couch.

"No!" Someone shrieks.

I am confronted with a pair of most beautiful eyes, which are held accountable with guilt and shame.

Fuck! What have I done?

"This is not right. I didn't mean to!" Karan bursts out. "No! Stay away."

"I am sorry." I barely whisper.

He is mad. Really mad.

Pissed.

I thought he wanted it too? Why did I kiss him?

"I...I...-

"No!" He snarls making me tear up.

Picking up my phone I rush past the door. Running down the stairs as tears run down my eyes. Moving forward of the haunting gazes of predatory people; finally, I step out of the hall, into the fresh air.

It thunders as the dark clouds surround the sky. it's a cab that arrives now at my footstep, splashing the accumulated water from the puddle, making my legs wet. I shiver.

"Where are you heading, ma'am?" The cab driver lowers the glass.

Words don't reach my mouth. I mumble the apartment name.

"I could give you a ride."

"I haven't got any money," I say.

"I'm heading in the direction. I could drop you." He is a thin guy with a heavy beard and long eyelashes. "You can trust me."

He seems a good fellow. He would mean no harm. But seriously, do I care? At least not now. Well, you are always safe with a person whose legs are thinner than your arms.

I get in the car.

Five past one in the early morning, my phone says. It has been a long tiring night. Tiring indeed and crappy too! No, not the entire night, just the part after midnight. Little part with huge impact.

I don't know how to ....react? Take in? What to do?

The driver takes a sharp turn making me crash to the door. "I am sorry", he says.

It starts to drizzle and the driver pulls up the windows. Now I am oblivious to where he is taking me. And I'm numb to actually care.

But after a very short drive, the car comes to halt. And he turns back and says, "There you go ma'am."

"Wait a minute," I say and get out of the car. Unlocking my apartment door on the very first floor, I grab a few rupees from the nearby desk.

The cab driver looks at me with a slightly amused smile.

"You deserve it." the words come out of my mouth as if they are forced. I feel groggy, drunk without being drunk.

He waves at me and speeds on the street.

I am here, standing in the street, all alone in the deafening silence. The cab honk was the last thing I heard. Not even a needle drops. It finally sinks in.

Karan's furious face is all I see. Eyes closed. Eyes opened.

It rains on me, and I finally give in to the rejection. I start sobbing.

He hates me!

I lock myself in my room disconnecting myself from the empty hall that echoes my every whimper.

Finding the bed too big for my sole self, I take the couch along with a worn-out blanket. It makes me warm. Makes me feel at home.

I succumb to the sleeping angel.