But my feet take me to Aanchal.
‘I have your baggage,’ I snarl. My entire body burns with anger. ‘Take it.’
I finally muster some control and turn away from her. I walk away from her: from all the hurt and rage I brought upon myself by falling in love with her. I hear her jog behind me. I want to stop her. Ask her to go back to her life. A life I have made painstaking efforts to stay away from. I don’t want to hear her, pick at the scab left by the wound she caused.
‘Daksh?’
I don’t answer.
‘Daksh?’
My strides get longer, my chest heaves.
‘It’s not a race,’ she tells me.
That’s when I snap. I stop, turn and with the force of a thousand suns, scream right into her face. ‘FUCK YOU!’
A satisfying sense of relief runs through my body.Nice.
‘FUCK YOU,’ I seethe again.
I regret not having done this earlier, when she had my heart in her palms and she had crushed it without a second thought.
‘YOU ARE THE WORST FUCKING GIRLFRIEND IN THE WORLD!’ I shout.
It’s like therapy. Watching her eyebrows curl into a frown comforts my heart. It reminds me of all the times she gave me excuses, explanations, and I tried to find some understanding in her eyes and found garbage.
‘GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY LIFE!’
She meets my eye. I try to find regret in them. I find only coldness.
‘Daksh, don’t leave,’ she mumbles.
My eyes turn into furious pools of wetness. ‘No! Aanchal, you can’t do this to me.’ I step closer to her. ‘You can’t! I can’t waste another moment on you.’
‘And yet here you are.’ Her voice is cold and calculative. Like she’s enjoying this exchange. As if she likes seeing me torn up, hurt.
My mind’s raging, pure lava. ‘I can’t believe you. And fucking presumptuous of you to think I’m here for you. I’m here for Gaurav.’
‘And why are you still with Gaurav?’ I ask.
‘It’s my work. I would never abandon it.’
She stares into my eyes. ‘You know that’s a lie. Gaurav’s your tenuous link to me, Daksh. If you don’t work with him, our link would break,’ she says with a seductive note in her voice, something she has learnt over time to add to her arsenal to make people do what she wants them to.
Her audacity doesn’t surprise me any more. ‘It’s nothing more than work,’ I growl.
I have met a fair share of selfish people in the world, but she beats all of them by a mile. I remind her of what’s most important to her. ‘You will never abandon your work. You will sacrifice whatever it takes for your work!’
I think she’s smiling. She scoffs, ‘You say it like it’s an insult, Daksh. And yes, you’re right. I will never abandon it.’
‘Great then, fuck you, fuck your work, best of luck for your life.’ I flash her two middle fingers as if I’m a high-schooler and she’s my school crush. ‘Fuck you, Aanchal.’
‘HEY!’
A loud voice boomed from the side. We both turn. I don’t see them at first with all the crowd that’s gathered around us. Three policemen are marching towards us, their hands on the holsters of their guns. Before I can react, they are surrounding me and spouting angrily, ‘You can’t do that in here, habibi!’ says a tall, bulky policeman as he grabs hold of my arm. ‘You can’t swear in public. You have to come with us.’
‘She deserves it,’ I hear myself mumble.
