Page 78 of Red Flags and Rishtas
She shrugged. ‘Meh.’
Our eyes locked and I gave her a hesitant smile. She didn’t return it.
I cleared my throat and said, ‘I need to tell you something.’
She glanced at me sideways but didn’t say anything.
‘I saw Saurav with a girl a while ago,’ I began. ‘They were in his car. Honestly, it seemed completely innocent and I didn’t think anything of it at all. But then, yesterday, I cleaned out my room and found this.’ I took out the Polaroid from my jeans pocket and offered it to her.
She took the photograph from me and turned it over in her hands, uninterested. ‘You finally cleaned out your room?’
I ignored her comment and pointed at the girl in the photo. ‘That’s his ex, V. The same toxic one who kept trying to win him back for months.’
Her face was expressionless and she remained mum.
‘You don’t think it’s weird he’s hanging out with her?’ I asked, placing a hand on her knee. ‘Aren’t you worried they might be …?’
She blinked rapidly and then looked away.
‘Oh my God,’ I exclaimed, reading her silence. ‘You know.’
She tried to hide her face behind her hands, but I jumped from the sofa and crouched in front of her, peeling them off.
‘Vrinda,’ I said, ‘talk to me, love.’
‘He’s been … I think it started a few months ago,’ she managed to say before dissolving into a puddle of sobs.
I clutched her to my chest, wrapping my arms around her back. Her tears soaked through my cotton T-shirt within seconds.
‘Hey,’ I whispered, ‘it’s going to be okay. I’m here now.’
It took her a good twenty minutes to stop crying. I went downstairs to make her a hot cup of tea, and when I got back, she was huddled in a ball on her bed.
‘I saw her messages on his phone two months ago,’ she said, sipping from the mug. ‘At first, I was in denial.’
I scooted closer to her, listening intently.
‘But then it started to become a little too obvious. He wouldn’t text me back for hours, his phone would be busy at night and he was always away at work.’ Her voice was shaking as she said, ‘So, I confronted him.’
‘And?’ I asked.
‘He admitted it,’ she said, the hint of a tear beginning to well in her eyes. ‘Apparently, I’d been putting too much pressure on him to get married. And this is how he decided to cope.’
My heart went out to her and I felt a fire brewing in my belly. I was furious.
‘That asshole,’ I fumed. ‘Please tell me you dumped him.’
Tears flowed down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with the sleeve of her bathrobe. ‘I can’t … I’m not strong enough.’
I stared at her, dumbstruck. A part of me couldn’t believe that this was the same best friend I’d known a month ago. My beautiful, confident, talented Vrinda. She resembled a broken remnant of that girl.
‘You’re the strong one,’ she said through her tears. ‘You always have been. I’m just the privileged one.’
I reached out and squeezed her hand, the guilt from my words the night of our fight slicing through my gut. ‘I didn’t mean anything I said that day, V … I was talking through my ass.’
‘No,’ she sniffled as she said, ‘you did. And you were right. Ihavehad it easy.’
‘V, it’s not—’
