Jaded

Disagreed

"Ha, good one," His cousin glanced up from her phone, for once. "Imagine if you actually were."

He shrugged, and moved to the wardrobe, pulling a suitcase down.

"What're you... wait, Resh... are you for real? You're actually going on Love Island?"

"I am," he laughed. "And guess who else is gonna be there?"

His cousin furrowed her brow, before her eyes widened. "She's not. No way. Jade? How do you know!? "

Suresh filled her in on the details, telling her about Marisol, about ITV, about what the terms of his contract were, making sure to sprinkle lighthearted laughs throughout so she'd know he was completely fine with everything.

But Nimali's face was a vision of horror. "Resh, you can't do that to her on National TV."

Suresh laughed loudly. "Do what? Surprise her? We always got on like a house on fire. It'll be a nice surprise."

Nimali's mouth practically hung open, as she glared at him. "You can't possibly think she's going to be glad to see you?"

He shot her his best dazzling smile. "Everyone's glad to see me! I'm a delight!"

She rolled her eyes. "And if, for some ungodly reason, she doesn't immediately slap you in the face, what are you going to do? Apologise?"

"That's the plan, yeah."

"And then what?"

He shrugged again. He seemed to be doing that a lot, today. It wasn't the best

"Oh my god, are you going to try to get her back? " The shock in Nim's voice was palpable

"--No!" he exclaimed. A flush of panic ran through him, but he wasn't sure why. "I don't know. Maybe. Just... Look, she was fun. Would be nice to get some closure on the whole thing. After that, who knows? Maybe we could pick up where we left off. But if she's not into it, there're a lot of other girls there, anyway."

Nimali shot him a disgusted look, and picked her phone up again. "Good. Because I swear to god, if she took you back after what you did to her, I would lose all respect for her."

Suresh scoffed at her. "You realise she probably got over it after a few days, right? We were never even that serious."

"Never that serious? " Nim gasped. "Resh... you've never been more serious about any– "

He shot her a fiery look, silently instructing her to drop it.

"Nuh-uh. Your courtroom glares don't work on me. You can't tell me you weren't serious about that girl. You were head over fucking heels for her."

"No I wasn't," he growled.

"Yeah, okay. Whatever. Keep convincing yourself you weren't about two months off buying a ring."

Suresh swallowed hard, as the acid he'd worked so hard to bury over the past year started tickling the back of his throat again. No. He wasn't letting those feelings come up again.

They were never serious. They were never serious. They were never serious.

"Nim, the whole reason we broke up was basically a miscommunication. I'm sure she and I can both be mature about it."

Nimali rolled off the bed, and made for the door, waving her hands in the air as if shaking the entire situation from her shoulders.

"I'm having no part of this. Leave my name out of this entire idea. I just hope you know exactly how dead you're going to be when Amamma finds out you're humiliating that poor girl again. "