When you Say Goodbye

Email

Moving back to Chicago Ditiya rented a 300 square feet studio apartment on the top floor of a large building on west Division Street near north side and never met Dhruv even staying in the same city.

The unit was essentially one, high-ceiling room. With a small but functional open kitchen, a tiny toilet and shower-only bathroom in the back cover, a decent clothes closet. The room had a sofa set which was a sofa cum bed to sleep on. She also had an old upholstered reading chair next to an end table, where she kept her magazines. The only really nice pieces of furniture, aside from a relatively new television set were an oak wood dining table. More often than not this doubled as her work desk.

The best thing about the apartment and the reason for the not so low rent was the windows two oversized. The built-in bookshelves on the opposite wall were filled to bursting with her CDS and law books and a wide selection of hardbacks, mostly fictional. Bright multicolored eight-by-ten rug covered most of the hardwood. She kept the place neatly organized and very clean.

She got a job working behind the counter at the local convince store and she signed up for a ten-session jazz dance class at the music school nearby.

He makes friends with a co-worker of his, a girl named Rida who has brown hair due to excessive use of mehndi, covers her hair when at prayer and at certain religious or cultural events. But she does not make it a habit. She invited Ditiya out with her and her family, and Ditiya was once again thankful for her profound ability to adapt when they accept her in without hesitance

Those days Ditiya felt light and free and happy, enough to realize that she had never been, at least not like that. She avoids having a romantic relationship with anyone, but that was not to say she had the same self-control when it came to sex.

Ditiya met a guy at an in her dance class who had long hair and wore cut-offs, and she promised herself it will only be a one-night thing. Though she should have known that she would run into him again, which she did, once in a week? Ditiya slept with him often. However, she never allowed the name to stick in her mind, as if that would stop her from latching on, stop her from turning it into something that it was not meant to be.

............................

Ending of November, a week after Dhruv had received an email from Ditiya saying she left U.K, he was in a business meeting when he got a phone call from Shreya, and then another, and then a text, and another, until his phone was a vibrating cacophony inside his pocket.

Six or seven months ago he might have ignored it, but now that he was left in constant fear that this might be the day Shreya took too many sleeping pills, Dhruv could not take that chance.

Dhruv ran out of his office, down the hallway, and frantically presented his identity card to the scanning mechanism. Door obediently slid open. He barely read through the first of two texts, before another call came. The only thing Dhruv could make out amongst the misspelled, jumbled words was 'fuck you' and 'your Ditiya.'

He fought the urge to power off his phone and return to his office, pretending none of that has happened. Instead, he answered, saying, "Shreya babe. What's going on? What happened?"

"You left your fucking laptop at home and I read your fucking emails," she yelled so loud that Dhruv had to pull the phone from his ear. "They were marked as important like some treasured. Fuck you, Dhruv. All those times I asked you about her, only for you to deny it like I was some fucking jealous psycho!"

"Shreya..." Dhruv tried feebly, "they're just email."

"If you two really weren't talking, why would she send you so many stupid fucking emails about which place she was visiting and why the hell would you reply them? There are some from three fucking years ago and you never bothered to tell me? And you marked them as important? You fucking shady bastard, what the hell else aren't you telling me? Fucking her too, I'm sure? That's the reason she is back in Chicago. Bastard!"