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PART III - A

We're back to Parth's perspective and it will stay the same way until the end of the story.

Also, I have only been to Boston once in my life and never visited MIT or Harvard, so if I got the geographical data wrong, blame Google.

PART III- IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES

Three years later

“Please promise me, that we’ll stay good friends.”

Megha said and Parth could see it in her eyes that it hurt her too. She was seeking a reassurance that he wouldn’t just drop off of her life, that there might be a future for them somewhere as something, anything.

But Parth felt petty, the pain from their break-up stung like the brand new bruise it was and he couldn’t even blame her because he knew that she did it only because she had too. They couldn’t keep watering the dead plant. It needed to be buried. But still, like the mediocre, entitled guy that he was beginning to realize that he was, he wanted to hurt her back.

Parth shrugged noncommittally, staring at a speck of dust in his keyboard. There was a sharp pain in his chest, his breaths were getting faster and it took all his effort to not break down completely in front of his laptop screen, and in wide view of Megha, right there.

“Parth…” Megha began and her eyes were filled with tears.

“I think I need to be alone right now.”

Parth said abruptly and Megha stared back at him, hurt, sad, looking like she wanted to take everything back.

But she was the stronger one of the two of them and she understood. She had always understood him. She rubbed her eyes and nodded.

“Okay.” She sounded, resigned. “You do know that you can always call me right? You mean so much to me Parth. Always. Okay?”

Megha sounded desperate. Parth knew she wanted him to say yes. Yes, that he would call her, that he would be okay, they could still be friends. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t assure her that. Not now, not when he was seconds away from falling apart. He shrugged again and Megha’s shoulders slumped even further.

“Okay. I guess, then. Bye Parth, I lo-“ she caught herself and suddenly Parth couldn’t breath. He stared back, at a loss for what to do and she hung up like that, eyes wide and apologetic.

Parth wished he could say that he hadn’t seen it coming. He had. In fact, he had been waiting for this. He’d known two months ago when they had gone to visit Mumbai during their spring break. What he didn’t see coming was how they had still carried on for two more months, neither of them trying to address the elephant in the room.

Maybe, Megha had felt guilty, maybe she had felt that he would break because this would have been his second relationship to go down in flames. Or maybe, like him, she felt that they could fix it, that the dead plant could be brought back to life.

They had been out of sync for a while, even though he didn’t want to admit it. The changes, though gradual, were very noticeable.

Their calls first switched from video to voice calls, then they had kept getting shorter and shorter, then a day went by when neither of them had called and Megha suddenly became too busy, always at a protest or a blood drive. Something noble, that if he had complained would have made him look like an insensitive jerk. She had new friends, people she didn’t introduce him to and one day he had seen a bird tattoo on her clavicle in a photo she had posted on Instagram. That was when it really hit him, when he had to find that his girlfriend had gotten a tattoo from a photo from Instagram.