The love of my life

13. Decisions

September '2018

"Are you okay?" Varun asked as Ekansh nodded.

"How's your girlfriend? How are you hanging with me so often?" He said as Ekansh looked up from his glass of tea.

"She's busy." He said, thanking his stars that he had never told him the name of the aforementioned girlfriend.

"The last time a girlfriend was this busy, she cheated on you." Varun says picking up a pakoda and dipping it in sauce before munching on it.

"The last time I was really angry, I broke someone's nose." Ekansh says uninterested, while gently stirring his tea.

"You're not doing this again." Varun said as Ekansh looks up.

"Doing what?"

"Pushing me out, because you are so obsessed with another girl who has no time and is not interested in putting an effort for you."

"She's going through something."

"Like Tara's sick grandma?" Varun says as Ekansh huffs.

"What do you want!" Ekansh says irritated.

"Bro, I've known you since we were in diapers. It's the same story that has happened thrice. You get too attached, she leaves you and I am left to gather the pieces of your broken heart." he pauses. "And you don't even drink... You know how hard it is, to tolerate a heartbroken sober person. A person who drinks, you can just make him drink more and he passes out, but I have to actually listen to your heartbroken ass." He says as something in Ekansh shifts.

He was a giving person, he had always given his best effort in his relationships.

Failed relationships to be exact.

He was always left. First in his boarding school, because the girl was from a different caste and she suddenly realized after 3 years of dating, in first year of college that her parents won't agree to Ekansh. Second one, she found a guy who was a USA green card and third... Tara.

And Varun was always the one to hear him complain. As much as he hated him for talking about Daman like that, he knew that Varun was right.

"I'm not falling this time. There won't be a heartbreak." He said as Varun laughed.

"Yeah, I'll believe that." He said finishing the last sip of his tea and keeping his cup on the wooden table of the roadside tea stand as Ekansh's phone rang. He saw the contact and let it ring until it stopped. "So, you're breaking up?" Varun asks as he wondered who the girl behind the spectacle emoji contact name was.

"No, just... I think I came into a relationship really quickly... after Tara... This feels like a rebound. She is the nicest, sweetest person I know... but it... Just... It feels wierd.?" He said confused as if the stability, understanding and the absence of arguements was normal or just the lack of a romantic spark that he had always felt with the others.

"Do I know her?" Varun asks for the tenth time.

"I'm not telling you, who she is. You'll tell Anika, and... Well... it'll spread." Ekansh said finishing his tea.

"I've been with Anika for so long... I'm not hiding anything. So, okay don't tell me. But also, if she's sweet and nice, why are you so confused? Because she's avoiding you?" Varun says and Ekansh just couldn't let it go in his brain any longer.

"Because I feel I don't believe in love anymore." he says as Varun squints.

"You're a poet." He points out as Ekansh shrugs.

"A heartbroken one."

"So, you've been together for what 2-3 months... Haven't exchanged the 'I love you's?"

"I just hope she doesn't feel it, or say that either because I am not so sure about it." He says, even more confused at the way she was pushing him away.

"You don't love her?"

"I don't want to love her... Not her not anybody else. But yes, she's close to my heart and I hope that never changes." He says as his phone buzzes with a text from Daman.

*Doctor wants me admitted, so I'm going home, where my family can take care of me.*
He reads the message and then shuts his eyes close.

"What's wrong?" Varun asks.

"What is worse than being attached and unable to figure out what your relationship is?" Ekansh asks as Varun frowns.

"What?" He asks.

"A Goddamn long distance relationship." He says as he gets up from the chair and takes out his wallet to pay the guy.

"I'll take it. Go sit in your car." Varun says sensing the upcoming rage of his best friend and wanting him away from humans.

Ekansh had anger management issues since he was a child, and grew up into a 6'2" teenager with a muscular frame that played football and was a track athlete always in shape.

Varun was now 5'6" and had always been somewhat on the obese side, or the typical staple fodder for bullies.
They stuck together, as Ekansh saved him from bullies in school while having absolutely zero emotional stability.

Varun was his voice of reason, and Varun knew when Ekansh was minutes away from whooping someone's ass. They had gone to different colleges in undergrad, but were again together for postgraduation. And Ekansh had somewhat of a record in his previous college, but his anger issues had improved alot with adulthood, keeping situations when he's absolutely pissed off aside.

"Where to?" Varun asks sitting in his car.

"I'm planning to go to the tracks and run for an hour or half, burn some of the rage. I'll drop you at the hostel." Ekansh answers.

"That's best." Varun says hoping that no one pisses Ekansh while he was there.

The next few days were hard. They were hard for Ekansh who was still confused about his take on this relationship, but they were harder for Daman who was reeling in the side-effects of chemo and radiation.

She'd call him sometimes when her parents were away, but it was rare considering they feared to leave her alone. Daman and Ekansh would talk on the phone after two-three days for ten-fifteen minutes, asking how the other person was, What interesting cases Ekansh had seen in the clinics and how was Daman holding up.

Daman had let his behaviour of their last meeting, or his avoiding her calls let go, because she barely had the energy to argue.

"I'm deciding to move out." Ekansh told Daman on call one day.
"The apartment?" She asked.

"Yeah, I had it because of my injury but it's fine now. I can climb stairs, so no use staying out of hostel. It's not just the distance, but you know hostel has a mess and here I have to make or order food." He said as Daman had so much to say but couldn't.

Where will she see him now? Where will they spend nights together? Hotels? His car? Or did it all end the day she came home.

What was she to him? She didn't argue and just hummed.

On another day, she disconnected and looked up at his elder cousin brother playing with his little daughter while Daman was texting Ekansh. She hoped that he would want a future with her.

But she wasn't sure, if he did.
Not when she herself pushed him away, first.

But what was she supposed to do? Go to him and be a puking mess, whose hair were everyplace just not on her head and would have blood coming out from her nostrils and sometimes in her vomit, just out of nowhere.

She was too embarrassed to accept that she needed help, even from her family, then why would she just accept it from someone she met a few months ago?

Had she pushed him to a place where the relationship was no more retrievable...