"Dev," I breathed, throwing my arms over his broad shoulders and collapsing against him. His arms were immediately around me, firm, safe, comforting like a cocoon. When minutes had flitted away, taking away the tension in my body with it, he pulled away. Yet his arms were around me, not budging the slightest.

Gone was the ironic look in his eyes as the lines of worry dug deep in between his eyebrows. "Are you okay?"

"I just missed you," I said, but the lines deepened. He was observant and like an eagle hunting rodents, he could spot lies. That unnerved me and my voice wavered, the deadly silence letting my lies ring in my ears as I spoke, weighing each word as I did, "It's been two months since we last met and I just missed you a-a lot. Now that summer is here, I have more time on my hands to overthink and . . ."

"But I love you," he said, his voice a matter-of-fact statement and confusion evident in his eyes at my sudden appearance. "You have never done this before, Tulsi." Then his voice became low, soft, patient. "What happened?"

"I just miss you," I repeated exasperatedly and leaned against him. "I'm sorry I showed up like this. Shit. Is anyone at home?" A boyish smile broke on his lips at that and my heart-beats slowed at seeing the amusement dancing in his eyes. "What? Is anyone at home?" He didn't say anything, the smile playing on his lips as I heard the door shut behind me, catching me off-guard. "Oh, so nobody's home . . ."

No words passed between us and within seconds, I found myself sitting on top of a table with his body in between my legs. It was afternoon, but the grey, gauzy curtains were drawn and none of the lights was switched on. A heavy darkness loomed over us and through it, our eyes stayed connected. We were not touching, but so close that I could feel the rise and fall of his chest, so silent that I could hear his slow, calm breathing. As for me, I didn't know whether I was breathing or not, alive or dead. I didn't care who I was or what was going to become of me as I stared into those dark eyes. That brooding look of his as if he was trying to see through me, to read and study me like a book.

Then I nodded in a daze and at that instant, his lips roughly captured mine, his hands holding my wrists down on the table. That was how he kissed me, commanding, but never demanding more than what I wanted. Our first kisses after months were always like this, he was cruder, rougher and direct. And it took only a few seconds for my tingling toes to curl and our breathing to become heavy with desire, but my burning body could never recuperate from the shock of such a kiss.

When he pulled away to let me catch my running breath, I heard him murmur to himself, "If I could do this to you every day."

That was it. That was what made me blissfully forget Lila for the next two weeks. Just two weeks until she came.

*

It began when I was sauntering back home after hearing Jazz gush about how cute Dev and I looked in some of the pictures and that flattery was so smeared over my heart that I was recovering from the quiet, exhilarating giddiness. A lanky figure crossed the street, that familiar stoop snapped me out of my reverie and arrested my attention. Since I was in a happy mood and by then our eyes had already met, I waved at him.

"How are you?" That was the first thing Anthony asked in an almost breathless voice, although he was steps away from me. That was the only thing he asked on those rare texts too, perhaps after wishing a happy birthday or happy Diwali. At a closer look, he was starting to fill up his clothes. I could see the sleeves of his t-shirt tightening, billowing it inside like a little girl's puffed sleeves.

"I'm good," I said, but his eyes were shifty and guilty and it didn't look like he had heard me. After two years or more and this was how he was, still nervous as ever if not more. "How are you?"

"I'm good . . . thank you for asking," he said, more formally than I had expected and his long legs swung as if kicking an imaginary stone. Taking that as a hint, I initiated to walk ahead and once he was next to me, I followed his footsteps out of curiosity. They were light and quick, the kind of gait that one adopted to avoid someone. Along the way, he threw half-hearted questions and one-word replies to sprinkle over his well-established evasiveness.

That was how I found myself in some hip café that played English pop songs and had creamy lentils written in cursive in the menu instead of dal.

"Are you meeting someone?" At my question, the worry and guilt that heightened in his glassy eyes threatened to break into tears (or was it because of the shining lights above?).

The next few words that he forced out were raspy and wobbly, "I'm . . . meeting my-uh girlfriend."

"Girlfriend?" I was surprised, but no amount of surprise could ever amount to what I felt the next moment when I heard the bells chime and a short girl with frizzy hair that glowed amber under the lights barged into my life without my permission.

"Sorry I was late! I honked the car so much and got Manu bhaiya into a fight," words tumbled out of her mouth, careless and mischievous. Just a second ago . . . I thought that I would never meet Lila in this lifetime and here she was, in all her sunny glory. Her black eyes so full of light that one would mistake them for jewels flashed towards me, fixating me. Then the lips that I had kissed in feverish love parted, those pink lips whose softness I could feel against mine till this day spoke, "I have started to drive."

That was it? Her first words to me after this long was that useless piece of information? What was I supposed to do with it?

"Oh, that's great," I said in a lifeless voice, she had knocked the life out of me. A helpless coil of emotions unrolled, slithering up my body and strangling my throat. I coughed once and controlled another, tears burning in my eyes.

"Should we sit?" That feeble voice of Anthony's which mirrored my own made me realize that he knew about what had transpired between Lila and me. In fact, he was more aware of that than Lila. That girl behaved as if she had returned from a long vacation and that three years ago, she hadn't been in love with me. Did she even remember or was three years so long ago that time vanished her memory?

But three years wasn't long enough to make her unfamiliar. Like certain alterations that happened between the previous summer and this one with the essence of summer never fading, such changes transmogrified her face. The slight roundness of her pale cheeks had melted, protruding her cheekbones and jawline. Her eyebrows were darker and if anyone thought her to be beautiful before, her beauty now could stop people from thinking. There was not a speck of doubt about her beauty for anyone to think over.

"Whatever they ordered," I said absently at the waiter's question, my eyes not leaving the girl who sat unbothered in front of me. She had perused the menu with such nonchalance as if we had met yesterday for brunch. She asked us for suggestions, pointing to twenty different dishes to which both Anthony and I just nodded.

I was afraid to blink, let alone take my eyes off her for some magical creature had plucked scattered images of her from my dreams and assembled her in one piece. Dreams were as fragile as glass, one flicker of the eye and all of it could go crashing down. The dreaminess of that evening made the lights around us go softer, the noises around us drop to whispers.

In between, Anthony got up, to ask the waiters to increase the temperature of the air-conditioner that pricked goosebumps on my skin and on his way, he inadvertently tripped over a table leg. Lila's suppressed giggles drew me to her once more as she leaned forward and said, "He's still nervous you know. You were his first love!"

First love. She didn't consider mine as she went back to the menu card that rambled for fifty pages, the word love was normal and unspecial on her lips. I continued to stare at her, openly and indifferently.

I knew my stares were vacant since I felt the emptiness within me, so loud and occupying my entire being. My soul or heart or whatever it was that told me who I was and where I was, had flown out of me. There I sat staring at her, the fool I once was, again showed herself in front of this gorgeous girl.

"Isn't this dal?" She giggled again at the fancy scrawl of words, that contagious giggle that spluttered bubbles of joy. But it never quite infected me, I was stunned to the bones at how she could laugh the way she did. I had anticipated a change in her, something that would make her so unrecognisable that I would never be afraid to fall for her again.

The buzz of my phone jolted me awake from this dream and I opened it to find a text from Dev, "Mom found your clip in my bedroom. I'll have to ask you to marry me soon."

That was when I noticed, the curious flicker of black eyes that watched me from above the frivolous menu card, eyes that exhausted its light and resembled two bottomless pits if only for an instant, eyes that knew of the love that they once had seen and returned.

* * *

Glossary

Dal- Delicious, rich, creamy lentils sauce simmered in aromatic spices hehe.

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