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, I don’t want to look at her, I don’t want to breathe in the same air as her. I don’t want to let her pick at the scab left by the wound she caused.
‘Daksh?’
I don’t answer.
‘Daksh?’
My strides get longer, my jaw clenches, and I try to put as much distance between us as possible.
‘It’s not a race,’ she tells me.
That’s when I snap. Something breaks in me. I freeze, then as I turn, a roar bursts from deep within me, almost primal. ‘FUCK YOU!’
A satisfying relief runs through my body.Nice. I’m going to do it again.
‘FUCK YOU,’ I seethe again.
I regret not having done this earlier. I can see the point of revenge. The lure of giving into your intrusive thoughts.
‘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 some version of regret in them. I find only coldness. Typical Aanchal.
‘Daksh, don’t leave,’ she mumbles.
My eyes turn into furious pools of wetness.
‘Aanchal, you can’t do this to me.’ I step closer to her. ‘I can’t waste one more fucking moment on you.’
She catches my gaze with an intensity that anchors me to the spot.
‘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 it’s fucking presumptuous of you to think I’m here for you. I’m here for Gaurav.’
‘And why are you still with Gaurav?’ she asks.
‘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 will 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 and a half. I remind her that she and I are different. She would sacrifice anything to be successful.
‘You will never abandon your work. You will sacrifice whatever it takes for your work,’ I tell her.
