[a desi bus romance] Vijay and Nila have only one thing in common - they take the same bus at the same time everyday. What if this mere commonality steers their life into a whirlpool of uninvited feelings, wholesome conversations and unexpected conn...
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By the time they were done with the arcade it was around midnight. Nila and Tarun had lost terribly to Vijay and Krish in air hockey but Nila made up for it in Whack a Mole and Tarun in the Strong-O-Meter. Vijay got his ego badly bruised when Krish won a dolphin plushie in the claw machine and Tarun a honeybee plushie. When they gifted them to Nila, Vijay refused to move away from the machine and insisted he waste his money on it until he won something.
Nila had first doubled over with laughter over how Vijay kept clinging to the machine like a child when Krish and Tarun tried to pull him away. She thought it was adorable. But when Vijay fisted his hands, the amusement in her face morphed into alarm. In the end, Nila had to draw promises from Krish and Tarun that they'd never bring this against Vijay in the future and discreetly bribed her boyfriend with kisses and hugs to keep him from crashing the glass.
She'd known Vijay was extremely competitive and liked to win. It was the first time she'd witnessed how insolent losing made him.
It was another jagged piece of him that she picked up and put in the jar named after him in her heart.
Nila pretended Vijay's presence didn't melt her bones into molten ivory when he held her as she drove them to the biriyani spot. She prohibited her from thinking about how fucking good it felt when his fingers touched her skin. Nila had never felt this way --- so needy, so desperate, so pliable. Her body obeyed his touch so much it was almost laughable. She was torn between wishing he would touch her again and banishing the thought from her mind permanently. Okay, at least temporarily.
These thoughts were new, foreign and not... good for her at all. They were dangerous.
She needed to exile them from her mind.
The four of them smelled the biriyani from far away before they'd gotten their share of it. It was too hot and Nila hated food when it was piping hot. She was too eager but also too scared to touch it. Nila had no idea how the boys were digging in as if they were blind to the waves of steam rising into the air. She was still blowing on the food, using her fingertip to push the food apart to cool it down.
"How's it?" Tarun asked.
"I haven't eaten yet," she said, annoyed.
"Why?"
"How are you guys able to eat it? It's so hot!"
Krish walked over to the man selling the food and asked for a spoon. The man looked at him as if he was insane.
Vijay said nothing but broke a piece of meat, buried it in a mouthful of the flavoured rice and lifted his hand to her mouth. "Here."
She opened her mouth and Vijay fed her.
Krish came back with a pathetic excuse for a spoon, the brittle wood barely curved in that he couldn't make out which side was the front. When he saw Vijay feeding her, he threw the spoon away. "Biriyani loses its charm when you eat it in a spoon anyway," he said.
