A past Ichoseto not be a part of.
“Look,” Rudra says. “You might not think you’ve done anything fun, but you did get drunk—at ahouse party, no less. You won a food contest, went out on a midnight trek and lied to your mom about it—”
“Eavesdropper,” I accuse.
“Hey, you talk loud,” Rudra says before continuing. “You smoothed things over with Priti too. And you’re going to be in Goa soon. You’re going to... do what you came here for.” I don’t miss the way his lips turn downward when he says the last bit, before he adds, “Thelastthing I would call you is boring—it’s the farthest thing from the truth.”
I don’t say anything to that. I don’t say that it’s not about Amrit Acharya anymore. I think about Amrit for a second, his easy smile, his charm, the way everything about us justfit.But I never feltthisway with Amrit, the way I do now, with Rudra. Like there are opposite poles of a magnet embedded within us, drawing us to each other. Every time, it feels like the craving inside me to cross this overarching gap and kiss Rudra knocks the breath out of me. And now that I’veseen the way my insides seem to catch fire whenever I’m around him, the contrast between those feelings—what I felt for Amrit and what I feel for Rudra—is stark.
With Amrit, it wasn’t necessarily becauseIwas the problem, or thatAmritwas the problem. There wasnoproblem. Because maybe, like I’ve already told Rudra, there’s no comparison.
“When you put it like that,” I say, prying the conversation away from the topic of Amrit. Because this situation is starting to feel a lot more like an ultimatum with every passing second, one I can’t afford to reckon with right now. “Ihavebeen quite adventurous these past few days.”
“You’re a daredevil, Krishna Kumar.” He reaches out and ruffles my hair, and I fling a second pillow at him.
I guess Iamkind of a daredevil.
25
My Duty as a Passenger Princess Is to Promptly Fall Asleep for the Whole Ride
Goa, Monday
When Priti returns, a dance to her step, we head downstairs to where the car’s parked, packed and ready to leave.
“You look way too chipper for someone who just got back from an all-night trek,” I comment, grimacing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Priti says, practically skipping to us.
Charu, Digha, Varun, and Jalaj have come downstairs to see us off, and as I load my stuff into the trunk of Rudra’s BMW, I feel a wave of melancholy wash over me.
Although my interaction with Priti’s cousins has been brief and I’m no stranger to uprooting myself from a place entirely and leaving everything behind—I did it when I was ten—I still feel sad. The chances of meeting them again are slim. Their lives are headed in such wildly different directions than mine.
I shake hands with Jalaj and Varun and hug Digha and Charu, giggling when our heads knock together. Priti joins in, and we stay there, bundled together as if we’re players huddling before a game. We exchange numbers, promising to keep in touch.
I walk to the front of the car and open the passenger-side door.
Priti gapes. “Wait, you’re serious? You’re going to let me have the back seat?”
“You fetched the car, so this is, like, the least you deserve,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “I’ll navigate.”
Priti blows me a kiss, and my suspicions about her being extra happy because she’s meeting Mansi tomorrow are confirmed. It doesn’t stop me from being taken aback, even though things are better between us now. I’mnotused to Priti Gaikwad blowing me kisses.
Once our last goodbyes have been said, we buckle ourselves in and wave until the four of them have disappeared around the gate, and then we’re off.
The rest of the trip to Goa is so much longer than I thought it would be. I navigate for a couple of hours, but as the sun slowly sinks into the horizon, my eyes start shuttering closed, try as I might to keep them open.
I doze off and only come to when Priti shakes me awake. We’re parked on the side of the road, hazard lights turned on.
“Come to the back seat. We can’t have you navigating like this,” Priti says, but the rest of her words are blearing together in my head, and I’m slowly falling asleep again.
Minutes later, I’m being unbuckled from my seat. Even through my sleepy haze, I get a whiff of Rudra’s scent, my cheek smushed against his chest as he lifts me into his arms like a baby. His musclesare taut under my knees and head, and he’s holding me firmly like he’s never going to let go. But he sets me down in the back seat too soon, much to my dismay.
I mumble something garbled to him—evenIfail to fully comprehend what I’m saying—and he ducks toward me, trying to make sense of it, so very close, but Priti says, “She’s just sleep talking,” and he starts to move away.
I grab the front of his T-shirt, eyes closed, knowing he’s there just by the warmth radiating from his body. “Don’t go,” I whisper, and I don’t know whether he hears me and chooses to ignore it or whether he can’t hear me at all, but he pulls away, gently prying my fingers from his T-shirt.
“What was that?” Priti asks.
