‘Sir, no answer,’ she says. ‘You can keep the luggage here and go check in the open area. Maybe you will find the guest there. That’s the best I can do for you.’
‘Perfect,’ I tell her.
Except that it’s not perfect. I should have been in my taxi, going away from this city, away from her. Not towards her. Not towards the reason I spent a couple of years in absolute misery. A dread fills me up. I’m going to see her. I push the thought out, just in case people are right about manifestation and the law of attraction.
After wandering through multiple corridors, I spot the cocktail venue.Vanita Weds Aditya,says the signage in an ornate flower arrangement.Vanita never struck me as someone who would get married so early, but here we are. I call Gaurav’s number again. There’s no answer. I walk towards the venue. A small part of me is commanding me to go back. Leave the suitcases at the reception and leave the city, it tells me. She’s here, the voice inside my head warns me. I can feel the air crackle with bad energy.
I look for someone near the stage, anyone I could pawn off the suitcases to. The stage is being given the final touches, the lights are being tested, the harried staff is running around shifting chairs, arranging flowers, testing the sound system. The wedding planners in black T-shirts bark instructions over their walkie-talkies. White people look on, watching curiously. Faint sounds of Hindi songs are in the air. I look around; there’s not a single guest there. This is taking way too long.
Fuck it. I turn back and walk towards the reception.
That’s when I seeher.
Aanchal Madan.
For a moment, I think I have imagined her. I hope that I have imagined her. But there she is.
Aanchal Madan.
In flesh and blood. All of her.
Aanchal fucking Madan.
A wave of hatred crashes upon me.
My biggest regret.
Aanchal Madan.
The World’s Worst Girlfriend.
I am consumed by how much I despise her.
Aanchal Madan.
It engulfs me entirely. I thought I had gotten over the hurt, but my revulsion towards her overwhelms me.
Aanchal Madan.
My body sears with the heat of my loathing, it burns.
Aanchal Madan.
My first instinct is to turn away, to avoid her presence altogether, just pretend I never saw her and walk past like she doesn’t exist.
But I feel compelled to confront her, to release the pent-up fury that I didn’t know still existed in me, a fury that now threatens to tear me apart. I want to leave, forget this moment, but I also want to remind her of the pain she left behind, the pain I can still feel so viscerally. I want to go home to the world I built without her, but I also want to grab her and demand answers. I want to never see her again, burn off her name from my memory, but I also want to know if she regrets what she did. I want to know if the shattering of my heart was simply another task on her endless to-do list.
The receptionist is showing her the suitcases. She spots me as she’s talking to Aanchal.
‘There he is!’ the receptionist points towards me. And then addresses me excitedly. ‘The suitcases are for her and her brother! She called reception to ask about them and came down, and good thing I found you!’
Yeah, you fucking did.
Aanchal turns to look at me.
The correct course of action would be to walk towards her, point at the suitcases, nod and then walk away from her pretending as if the weight of our history isn’t suddenly weighing down on my back and breaking it.
I should remind myself that she’s now a rotten, forgettable part of my life I have buried and gotten over. It’s taken a part of my soul and then some to heal myself from Aanchal’s rejection. If I love myself even a little, I should walk away from her. If I don’t want to spend one more minute trying to figure out what I did wrong and what I didn’t have, I should run away from her. I should walk away from her, get into the taxi whose meter is still on, fly back to Amruta and complain about her mathematics teaching skills.
