Wilted Petals

Chapter 20: You Say Deccani, I Say Dakhini

Song: Shayad

Driving is the last thing I'm focused on as I'm driving back to my apartment after my night with Manish. My heart is still swiftly beating hours after kissing Manish. The sweat from my palms dampens the steering wheel, while the heat from my body warms my seat.

I need to tell someone about this. Someone who will hear me out and give me relevant advice as to what the hell I should do next.

And there's only one person who can do that.

    The second I fling open the door to my apartment, I quickly grab my phone and frantically go to text Jen. My thumbs dance across the keyboard in order to type, "This is urgent. I need advice. Call me."

I throw my phone on the couch as I flop back and try to process everything that's happened tonight. We danced, and then we made out. I'm still trying to ponder how everything went from 0 to 100 so fast. Thousands of questions plague my mind. What am I going to do? How should we address this?

But thankfully, I can relay all my fears to Jen when I hear my phone vibrate against the soft couch. My hand darts towards the phone and I immediately answer it. "Jen," I greet, as I can almost hear her eyebrow raise in confusion and worry.

"Jaya? Are you alright?"

My heart has refused to slow down and is still going a mile a minute. I open my mouth, but I only manage to stutter a few syllables of an incoherent sentence. Eventually, I calm myself down a little bit and say, "I don't know."

Immediately, Jen senses that something is up. Something is absolutely eating me up inside and I have to get it off of my chest before my brain explodes. And the worst part is, she's absolutely right about that. "What's going on? I can tell you're really on the fence about something."

I take a deep breath to ease my nerves that are all jumbled up in my stomach, and to also prepare myself for her reaction. Because I know the second I tell her this, she will scream half of the Bay Area down. In one swift breath, I say, "I kissed Manish."

I hear her jaw drop open in the background, and I move my phone away from my ear to prevent my eardrums from being destroyed. As I brace for her reaction, I hear her stutter, "I-you-he-the-it-," before she shrieks, "YOU KISSED MANISH?!"

At that moment, I thank myself that I kept my phone away from my ears, because I would've lost half my hearing otherwise. I have nothing more to say other than a nervous, "Mmmhmm."

I can hear Anwar run out in the background and hear him say, "Baby, what's going on? Why did you scream?"

"Because Jaya kissed Manish, goddamnit!" she cries at him.

I can feel Anwar's jaw drop at that second, but unlike Jen, he's able to fish out a coherent sentence to say. "You're not joking, right?"

I can tell Jen's shaking her head because I hear her earrings dangling. "I'm dead serious."

I then hear her press the phone back to her ear and ask, "How was it? Did he kiss back?"

The feelings of excitement and thrill come back and pump through my veins as I remember how amazing the kiss was. The scent of his cologne perfuming my nostrils, his cherry chapstick, and how he gently pushed me up against the wall as we kissed all come back in the most amazing flood possible. "It was... absolutely amazing. He pushed me up against the wall and we kind of made out a little bit."

This time, I'm positive Jen is about to explode like a bomb. Any minute now and she will absolutely lose her shit and start squealing like Miss Piggy on crack. "Oh my god. No way. So what's so urgent?"