Of course she remembered that day. Anger at the memory of Roshan’s coldhearted accusations rose inside her.
“Congrats,” she had said, approaching Roshan in her white graduation gown. “We made it.”
“You made it,” he grumped, affixing his green graduation hat on his head.
Confused, she looked around. “We’re all graduating today.”
“Well, some of us are in higher positions than others.” His voice was snarky, rude. She had never heard him like this before.
“Are you serious? You’re graduating at the top of the class.” She grinned at him.
“Not the very top. That would be you.”
“Yeah, by like a hair. Who cares?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I care. I worked my butt off, and I’m second. No one gives a shit about second. You’re giving the speech. Not me,” he barked at her.
“So give the speech.” She shrugged, not really understanding the problem. She didn’t even really want to give the speech.
He rolled his eyes at her. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?” She frowned, hoping the conversation wasn’t going where she suspected it was.
“Get the extra 0.02 points?”
Her agitation grew. “Are you serious?”
“I am. You must have done something, taken some class, begged for some points somewhere—”
At this, she stepped closer to him, fury coming off her in waves. “You think that the only way I was able to beat you was by some calculation? That I begged for points? I’ll have you know I have never begged for points in my life. I worked my butt off. I did extra credit. Everything I have, I earned.” She paused. “I even took time to teach your sorry ass.” She stepped back. “I will say that I was wrong about something. I thought that in spite of being the most popular guy in school, you were a good person. Tutoring you for the past eighteen months, I thought I saw a side of you that was kind, funny and open. I was an idiot, because I thought that maybe we were even friends. Turns out that graduating first in the class doesn’t mean you can read people well. Because it turns out that youarethe asshole I’d always thoughtyou were.”
The coarse sand beneath her feet was like sandpaper to her anger. Wearing it down with each step, until she was left with simmering irritation and curiosity. What had Roshan been about to say?
She stopped at the edge of the beach, letting the warm water cool her feet as it rushed and fell back in that unique pattern that belonged only to the ocean. She felt someone come and stand beside her. The scent of sunscreen mixed with the soap Roshan used confirmed it was him.
“Thank you for doing this. For acting as our tour guide… The surf lessons,” he said softly.
“I can’t afford the suite, and I needed a place to stay.” She shrugged, her words clipped, still focused on the ocean. “Your boys made the deal.”
“Yeah. Okay.” He stood next to her as awkward silence filled the gap between them. Vishal and Karan’s voices drifted toward them. He turned to go.
“I remember,” she said, quickly turning her head to him and then back to the ocean. She could see him from the corner of her eye.
He was frozen, his face pale. “I am so very sorry. I was horrible and cruel.” His tone was stricken and sad and earnest. “I regretted my words that day almost instantly. But I didn’t know how to apologize. Even now, I don’t know what I could say that would remove the look of betrayal I put on your face. ‘I’m sorry’ is small and ridiculous and inconsequential. Not to mention hypocritical, since I’m only saying it because you’re standing here in front of me, when I had fifteen years to reach out. Mail you a letter or send you an email or just come to your house and beg forgiveness. I felt like we were friends, and I threw that away. Which is fitting, because clearly I don’t deserve friendship with you. I have lived with that regret and will continue to do so. So for whatever it’s worth, I wish I hadn’t said any of it. I wish I had been mature enough to see who you really were—are.”
The guys’ laughter reached them as if from another plane. Roshan’s friends were oblivious to the angst that was living between him and Nimita right now. She stared ahead for a moment, her breath coming hard and her heart thudding in her chest, as if she had just been running.
“I was furious with you,” she huffed and turned her body to him. Facing him head-on. “You really hurt me. I thought we were friends—and then you turned on me. Just because my GPA was 0.02 points higher than yours.” She hadn’t realized it at first, but she was shouting.
“I was horrible. And I’m sorry you’ve been carrying this around—”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Dave,” she snapped as she faced the ocean again, surprised that her nickname for him had dropped from her lips with such ease. She said it asDayv, like the English name, as opposed to the correct pronunciation ofDuvay. It had started out as a joke, but the nickname had stuck all through the months of tutoring him. It felt now as if she’d used it only yesterday. “Once you showed your true colors, I washed my hands of you.”
It had hurt. More than it probably should have. Nimita didn’t have many friends. The relationships she kept were important to her. People either knew her well or not at all. She didn’t do small-talk relationships. She had put Roshan in the friend area. And he had failed her. Which meant he no longer existed.
“To be honest, I hadn’t given you a second thought until the lights went on in that hotel room,” she said, only partly fibbing. She looked at him again.
“I thought about you all the time,” he said softly. “About what an ass I was. But I didn’t have the courage to fix it.”
