‘I expect nothing less from you,’ I say, wondering if he has had as many imaginary conversations with me as I have had with him.
He pours us a drink. ‘Neat, okay?’
‘Neat’s never okay,’ I counter.
‘Cheers.’
The alcohol burns on its way down.
‘You know, being tipsy is not the alcohol but the dopamine telling you that you’re going to be drunk?’ I tell him.
‘Nothing sexier than knowing how drinks work anatomically when one’s drinking,’ he says.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Please tell me more about how the compounds react to the enzymes of our body. I want to hear everything.’
I don’t like it when he’s funny, I don’t like it when he goes around in the society talking to people who then giggle and laugh at what he has to say. If he had to be funny, the least he could do is look shabby, terrible, stink, something.
But even now, like right now, the moonlight highlights his annoying handsomeness. The last time I saw him in the motorcycle shop, when he effortlessly hoisted his bike on the platform, he looked rugged. There’s no version of Daksh that I’m not totally in love with.
‘Why didn’t you text me?’ I ask him.
He turns to look at me with his languid, lovely eyes. ‘For the same reason you didn’t text me. We have a history of not being very good for each other.’
‘You’ve ruined me for other boys.’
‘By other boys, do you mean Saket?’
‘He was perfect.’
‘I wouldn’t say perfect,’ he says.
‘And yet it didn’t matter,’ I say.
‘Was it the mind-bending sex?’
‘The sex with you was middling at best,’ I lie.
‘It was incredible for me, life-altering,’ he says, matter-of-factly.
I pretend that my body hasn’t got warm from what he just said. It takes all my strength not to let my mind slip into the thought of his fingers against mine.
‘I think everyone’s shaped by people around them and,’ I tell him what I have been thinking for a while now, ‘your existence has shaped me.’
‘And you have shaped me,’ he says, his voice dropping down a register.
I turn to look at him.
He continues, ‘I can’t imagine a life where you have nothing to do with it. Somehow, somewhere inside me, you will always be connected to my story. And somewhere you inside of you—’
I start to giggle. ‘You said, somewhere you inside of you—’
‘Is this the dopamine taking over?’ he asks.
‘That’s what the alcohol does,’ I say and pour both of us another drink because all I want right now is to shut down my mind and be with him.
I throw the vodka down my throat. The warmth that follows is comforting, as if a blanket is being draped around my shoulders.
