Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
It’s not comfortable.
It makes you act like crazy and do borderline compulsive, stalker-y things.
So this is the right decision for me.
Only that’s not why I’m making it.
But my biji doesn’t need to know that.
“Yes,” she says at last, turning back and sipping on the drink.
“You are?” I ask, surprised.
She takes another sip. “I am. Because I agree.”
“You agree with what?”
“That it is high time.”
I smile, relieved. “It is, right?”
“Yes.” She keeps her eyes on the TV as well. “Because maybe ab uss khote de puttar nu akal aayegi.”
“Biji,” I say, exasperated. “You know I don’t know what you just said.”
Well, except for khote de puttar. Which more or less means asshole.
I also know who she’s talking about because she’s used this term before in his context.
She huffs. “I meant maybe now that asshole will get his head out of his ass. When you’ve moved on. Enni changi kudi hai meri and if he can’t see that, then aag lage usko. And to translate, it means if he can’t see how amazing my granddaughter is, then he can go to hell. But not before he learns his lesson first and comes to you begging.”
Needless to say, she knows everything. She knows the whole story. Mostly because even if I wanted to hide things from her, I wouldn’t have been able to. As I mentioned earlier, she knows everything and she definitely knows everything about me. She knows about how I ran into Stellan that night, how instantly obsessed I became with him, how different he’d seemed to me. How then I went to Shepard to make Stellan jealous.
She told me, numerous times over the past year, that I should come clean to Shepard. That I should tell him everything, confess my feelings for Stellan, but I didn’t listen. First because I was convinced that Stellan would come around, that he would come back to me begging and crawling. And after that because Shepard had become my friend, truly, and I didn’t know how to tell him. Every time I pictured telling him, I’d see him look all betrayed and angry, and I’d just chicken out. And after, after that, when I realized that he wanted me as more than a friend, there was no way I was going to break his heart.
In any case, she knows.
And she has grown increasingly unhappy with him over the past year. Him being the love of my life who doesn’t want anything to do with me. She thinks he needs a bigger push.
“But I wish that was why you were doing it,” she finishes.
“What?”
She turns back to me and pushes her shades up. “That’s not why you’re saying yes, however.”
“I don’t—”
“You’re not saying yes because you want to get smart and you want to move on or even light a fire under his ass. You’re saying yes because you think it’s your fault.”
I squirm in my seat and look away. “That’s not true.”
“Oh, my baby, I wish it weren’t true, but it is.”
“Biji, I—”
“Because I know you. You’re saying yes because you don’t want anyone to get hurt; you think it’s your fault Shepard fell in love with you and you want to make amends.”
I stubbornly remain quiet.
And she stubbornly goes on, “I know how you think, meri bacchi. How you like to take the blame on yourself when more often than not, it’s not yours to take. And I also know where that comes from, who’s responsible for it.”
I swallow thickly then.
As the spot around my elbow smarts with a dull pain.
My bruise—something I hadn’t noticed until I got back home that night—is gone now. But the slight pain remains. Probably because I had one more encounter with my mother when she’d dropped in unannounced to check on things; she does that. Thank God, I didn’t have rehearsal that day, so I was home when I should’ve been. Even so, while she was leaving, she dug her nails in the same spot, worrying the wound.
My biji doesn’t know that, though.
No one knows what my mother likes to do out of the public eye.
Which is how I want it to be.
She already doesn’t approve of how my mom treats me and growing up, always made sure to shower me with love and care when my mom didn’t. But if she knew how angry my mom gets and what she does when she gets like that, my biji would lose it. But mostly, it’ll break her heart and I don’t want that to happen.
Not because of me.
So I keep it a secret.
Besides, it’s not as if my mother actively beats me, she just… grips me too hard or smacks me a little here and there, and mostly those bruises and stings go away in a few days. And I become good as new.
But back to the situation at hand.