Page 50 of No Other Love

Vikrant

I screwed up so fucking hard.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t think beyond this one fact as I went about my day. Trying to have breakfast, rushing to the clinic so I didn’t have to look at Anika’s ravaged, blameless face anymore. Nevertheless, her face and this fact haunted me.

When I held Neelima’s baby boy and imagined for one stunning, awful moment, a child of my own with Anika’s eyes and hair and wild capacity for joy. If that was something we both wanted and decided on, in a future yet unwritten.

When I updated more patients’ files and remembered the ease with which Anika had complimented the way I was running this place.

She was everywhere I looked, inside my breath, my bones. If love ever had a name, it was her – Anika Chakraborty. She was it for me.

And I had lost her once more, after having her. I could have begged her to stay, pleaded on bended knee and, if she was feeling generous, she might have even agreed. And I’d not feel like a hollow shell instead of a whole person.

Instead, I had to screw it up so fucking hard by bringing her dad into this.

I knew,I knew,Anika’s relationship with her parents was way more abysmal than mine was. And she’d always snuggled into me in a thousand little ways to make up for it. To throw that in her face was unforgivable.

Fuck.

I was such abastard.I came to the conclusion around two pm, when the whole town was enjoying their siesta time, and I could not even eat my delicious lunch. Because I kept reading the end onHeartbreak Vowswhere the billionaire stockbroker fucks things up with the love of his life. A second time around.

Our situations mirrored each other, give or take all the billions and the blue eyes and the fact that I hadn’t known Anika when we were teenagers. Everything else was almost the same. Right down to the fact that her parents did not find me worthy of their daughter.

But that was fiction, and this was real life. And, in real life, we don’t get more chances in life after fucking it up. Did we?

That’s when Neelima’s husband came into my office and hugged me. Tight.

‘Next time, I want a daughter,’ he said gruffly, stuffing a sweet rice modak in my mouth. ‘I don’t care what my parents say, I want a baby girl. Someone exactly like Neelima.’ The husband shuddered. ‘If she ever lets me near her.’

I clasped hands with the man, congratulating him. Supporting him. ‘They get temporary amnesia once the initial horror fades off. I’ll be glad to help bring your baby girl into the world.’

Neelima’s husband nodded and, with one more tearful embrace, left to be with his new family.

***

Leaving me with the rather stunning and simple realization that the man was right. Who cared what the parents said? Who cared whatanyonethought? I loved Anika.

I. Loved. Anika.

And she loved me. She wouldn’t have allowed me to touch her, if she didn’t. Some other man, maybe. But not me. Not in the radical, sexual new ways I had. Possessing her so rampantly.

See, when Anika touched me, she did so with her heart on her face. And I’d always held it like a little sword over her head. Because I was so sure I would lose her anyway.

She was spectacular, the sun. And I was a little bit afraid I’d get burned to cinders by her.

But so what?

No other love was ever going to come close to what we had. What the hell was I doing letting her go?

So, I ran out of the clinic. And begged Neelima’s husband to lend me his bike keys, since I’d preferred to walk it up to the hospital instead of using the Jeep. The temptation to drive home to see her would have been higher, so I removed the temptation.

And I drove like a madman to the bus stop, hoping against hope that she’d be there. I knew she’d leave home as soon as decency allowed her, preferring to bake in the hot afternoon sun than spend a moment with in-laws who did not like her.

And I was right.

She was here. I still hadn’t lost her.

***