Page 33 of Born in Ruin

“I hate Ishaan,” Mayukhi interjected, for no reason other than she wanted to. She folded her arms over her chest and pouted, her wonderful, girl gang fun high dissipating like fog in morning sunlight.

Ishaan’s face tightened at the comment but he didn’t bother to respond. He caught sight of someone behind them and raised his hand. Mayukhi looked over her shoulder and spotted Amay striding towards them.

“Dhriths.” The worried affection in Amay’s eyes as he looked at his girlfriend made Mayukhi feel strangely weepy. Why didn’t anybody look atherlike that?

“Ams!” Dhrithi exclaimed happily, her drunken smile blinding to onlookers. “I love you!”

“I love you too, sweetheart. Are you ready to go home now?” Amay wrapped his arms around Dhrithi, drawing her close.

“No.” Dhrithi’s face set in a stubborn expression. “I am spending time with Yukhi.”

Mayukhi glanced at Ishaan who was glaring daggers at her. She raised an eyebrow at his accusatory expression while raising her hand to signal the bartender again. He smacked her hand down.

“Hey!”

Ishaan and Amay’s phone chimed simultaneously and they both pulled it out. Mayukhi watched Ishaan’s expression darken even further by whatever he saw on his screen before exchanging a speaking glance with Amay.

“What?” Mayukhi demanded. “What is it?”

Ishaan tapped on something before turning the phone screen towards her. Mayukhi saw a picture of Dhrithi and her toasting each other with their wine glasses, but while Dhrithi’s laughing, flushed face was in full view, only the back of Mayukhi’s head was visible, rendering her an anonymous partner. It was posted on a sleazy paparazzi social media profile with the damning caption – The grieving Gokhale widow.

Mayukhi’s head spun. Naveen and his fucking spider web of sleazy media contacts. Someone was following her and funnelling information to those assholes, her former friends. Someone who might even still be here. She looked at the crowds of people laughing, talking and having a good time. It would be impossible to pinpoint who it was. Bastards.

Amay wrapped his arms even tighter around Dhrithi, slipping his own phone into his pocket and murmuring something in her ear. Whatever he said seemed to work as Dhrithi nodded and slipped off her chair, allowing him to lead her out of the bar after a smile and a goodbye to Mayukhi and a side hug for Ishaan.

Ishaan and Mayukhi stared at each other, an invisible bubble of silence insulating them from the noise of the bar. This time, when Mayukhi signalled for the check, he didn’t bother whacking her hand out of the air. When the waiter appeared with the billfold and automatically presented it to Ishaan, the underlying misogyny ripe in the air, Mayukhi tried to grab for it but failed. Ishaan handed his card over by the time she got out of her chair, ready to storm out of the place.

She stumbled, her legs feeling strangely unsteady. Or was that the floor that was doing that dip and turn thing? She put her hand out to hold the chair and steady herself but a strong arm wrapped around her waist, holding her up.

“Let’s go,” Ishaan said brusquely, hauling her forward and leaving her with no option but to march along beside him.

“I hate you,” she said again, the mix of alcohol in her system making her both queasy and weepy.

Ishaan’s stone face got even stonier. They reached his car and he beeped it open, waiting for her to get into the passenger seat before walking over to the other side.

“My car is in the basement,” she told him, the minute he got in.

“You can pick it up tomorrow.” Ishaan roared out of the parking space, the throaty growl of his luxury car sending a savage thrill through her.

“I want it now,” she said stubbornly, squashing her body’s response to this man and his life.

“Too bad.” Ishaan flipped his indicator on and overtook a slow moving bus. They slid to a stop at a traffic light.

“But-“

“How the fuck were you planning to drive home in this state?” he roared, his fury a live, throbbing entity in the space between them. “You want to kill yourself, go right ahead but don’t you dare pull a stunt like that when you have someone I care about with you!”

Mayukhi swallowed the rest of her protest, the implication of his words slicing through her. She certainly wasn’t someone he cared about. She knew that. So, why did his statement hurt so much?

“Did it occur to you for one second to not drink and drive with a survivor of a car crash in the car with you?”

Mayukhi’s heart slammed against her rib cage. No, it hadn’t occurred to her. This hadn’t been planned. And she knew that she would have never driven home in this state. They would have cabbed it. But stubborn pride had her keeping that bit of information to herself.

“Of course you didn’t,” he continued to rage. “That would involve thinking about someone other than yourself. God forbid you do that.”

She had though. She’d thought about how sad Dhrithi had looked when she’d come into her office, how hopeful for female companionship, how lonely as someone who’d suddenly been set adrift from her life, even if the new life she was building was so beautiful. It was still standing on the ruins of the old.

And it had spoken to something in Mayukhi. The same lonely, sad, part of her, the one that didn’t even have hope for a beautiful future of her own, one like Dhrithi’s. All she’d been trying to do was be a friend, and maybe make one at the same time.

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