“Hi, Riana,” she says, not even sparing my best friend a look, and the way he looks almost like a puppy at her makes me want to laugh so bad.
Sure, he isn’t obsessed with her.
“Hi,” she says, kind of forced to Aarav, who just gives her a nonchalant smile. For someone who gives me and everyone around relationship advice as if it is his job, he sure as hell sucks at following it himself.
“Riana, this is Aisha Kapoor,” Raj says, and the way he takes her name pisses me off. Maybe I am too jealous. Maybe I am too possessive. All I care about is no man being as close to her as I am.
“She is Aarav’s sister-in-law,” he says. “And this is Reyansh Carter—Aisha’s husband.”
Okay, maybe he isn’t that much of an asshole. I like the fact that he called me her husband.
“Hi, Riana,” Aisha says, taking her in a hug, and I chuckle. She is way too enthusiastic about him having romantic interest in some girl.
While Aarav has been popular among women, because the fucker looks too good to be true, thanks to his wonderful parents, he has also not been in many relationships.
He believes in that Bollywood-style romantic love and thinks he can find that. As someone who didn’t believe in it, I can say he isn’t delusional. Love like that exists. You just have to believe in it, believe that it will find you.
But I think the universe has a funny way of working. I never believed in love like that, yet the most beautiful, all-consuming, heartwarming, and wrecking love came into my life in the form of Aisha, and I have never been more grateful for anything as I am for her.
“Aisha,” I whisper in her ear, desperate to have some of her attention on me.
“What?” she says, her voice clipped, and my heart frowns.
“Can I talk to you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I sound like a damn kid being told no to his favorite ice cream. Just that I am being said no to by my favorite person.
She sighs, turning towards me, and I finally get to see her beautiful face.
God, she is magical.
“I am mad at you.”
Aisha Kapoor
Mom’s words hit a part of me that I wasn’t ready to acknowledge. When she said, “Bring the old Aisha back, even if for tonight,”I wanted to hug her and cry all together. Because I know even when I try to make it unnoticeable, I am still not the same woman as I was before.
And I know that nobody remains the same, that people change and grow in their twenties, but I don’t think they change at the core of what they were. I did.
I went from being the happy-go-lucky person to being someone who doesn’t believe in luck.
I actually became who Reyansh was before we met. And I have seen that person, and that person was so hurt, so disappointed, and so not interested in enjoying their life.
Reyansh stands in front of me, like a lost puppy, when I say that I am mad at him. I didn’t expect myself to go with the flow as soon as I decided to bring back parts of my old self.
My twenty-one-year-old self loved to tell him that I was mad at him, even when I wasn’t, because I loved the effect these simple words had on him.
“Why?” he asks, and I cross my arms, and he shamelessly checks me out, forgetting that I just said that I ammadat him.
“Since you don’t know yourself, I am not interested in telling you either,” I say, moving to walk away from him towards thegolgappastall that I saw the moment I came here. I lovegolgappeso much. There’s nothing in the world as tasty and unbeatable as them.
“Baby, don’t do that,” he says, almost on the verge of giving up, and it makes me laugh, but I don’t break character.
I am not mad at him; I am just annoyed that despite saying he won’t repeat his past actions, he continues to do so. One day he leaves my heart hopeful and prepares me for better things and better situations, and the next he does things the same way as in his past, and I go back to being that anxious, overthinking wife who knows there’s no coming back from this heartbreak.
