Our Impossible Love
Page 24
Vibhor lost his shit when he got to the end of the picture series.
‘What the hell is this! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!’ he shouted.
Danish walked up to me and grumbled, ‘What’s this?’
‘We had sex last night. And it was good,’ said Erskin and threw Vibhor a flying kiss.
Sarthak chuckled.
‘Yeah, I know, I was watching. You’re good, Vibhor. You should join us in Poland,’ said Sarthak.
‘I didn’t do anything!’ squeaked Vibhor.
‘What happened here? What did you do, Erskin?’ said Danish.
‘What? We had sex! Big deal. He has a nice ass and I fucked it. It was slightly tough but we had lube,’ said Erskin. ‘I’m sorry, Sarthak.’
Vibhor struggled in his bed, as if to check for any physical signs and there they were. Two big purple love bites on his neck and about a dozen more on his chest. He started to cry.
‘YOU DIDN’T,’ said Danish, and looked in my direction.
I shrugged. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it.’
‘You fucking raped him, Erskin!’ shouted Danish.
‘NO!’ shouted Vibhor. ‘Nothing happened to me.’
‘Of course, something happened,’ said Erskin to Vibhor and then turned towards Danish, ‘Oh please, you should have heard him moan while I fucked his sweet ass. He wanted it. He touched me all over. Look at the pictures.’
‘This is not a game, people,’ said Danish, frantically. ‘Why didn’t you stop them, Ankit!’
‘I had passed out, dude. Why didn’t you stop them?’
Danish sat on the bed, and held his head. I sat next to them and patted his back.
‘He wanted it, Danish. Chill. And he knew what was happening to him,’ I told Danish.
‘NOTHING HAPPENED TO ME!’ shouted Vibhor and got off the bed, looking for his clothes.
He tripped over the bedsheet and fell face first on the ground. He ran around naked for a bit while all of us, except Danish laughed. He found the bathrobe and wore it. He was bawling now.
‘I think I should upload all of these pictures. People anyway suspect you’re gay. Read the comments once. They are all congratulating you for coming out of the closet. I remember the day I came out. It was awesome! Should I upload the ones in which I’m lying naked with you?’ asked Erskin.
‘YOU WILL NOT!’ he said and laughed nervously over his tears. ‘People would know you’re gay. EVERYONE WILL KNOW.’
‘They already do. And back home, no one really cares. They would just think I broke up with Sarthak. And then we can do this more often,’ said Erskin and walked towards Vibhor who ran and hid in a corner. ‘Why are you running away now? I think I need you again. You’re already naked, so why not?’
Vibhor crunched up in a ball in a corner and tried swatting away Erskin like he was a common housefly.
‘I wasn’t raped. I didn’t have sex with a boy. Nothing happened here,’ said Vibhor, crying.
‘And who’s going to believe you, Vibhor?’ asked Aisha.
‘EVERYONE!’
‘Erskin, why don’t you upload that picture? I will share it on my wall and slowly but steadily it will reach all the boys in his new boy’s school. I wonder who would they believe?’
‘ME.’
‘You wish. These pictures clearly say you’re gay, no offence you two, and that you have been fucked by a tree, no offence Erskin, or that you’re straight and you just happened to be naked in the bed with a large gay man,’ she said.
‘NO ONE IS GOING TO BELIEVE YOU!’ he shouted, his voice cracking now. ‘My father will sue all of you! I will go to the police!’
Sarthak laughed. ‘I wonder how that will go. Will your father believe that his MCP son he so proudly brought up is straight? Oh, what fun would that conversation be? And with the police. What would they call you? Can’t wait for that to happen to you. And wait, wait, even if you win the case, which you won’t because we have pictures and stuff, the same you had, will you really win the case?’
Sarthak took the phone and tossed it at him. ‘Please call your father. I’m dying to hear that conversation take place.’
Danish stood up, looked at all of us and said, ‘Do you guys realize someone was raped here? No matter what he did, you did it to him. How different are we from him if we did the same thing! HAAN? WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? YOU RAPED A GUY, PEOPLE!’
I didn’t want to lose it but I did. I didn’t want to shout at Danish, but I did.
‘HE WASN’T RAPED, DANISH! JUST LIKE I WASN’T RAPED. HE WAS ASKING FOR IT. HE WANTED IT. HE PROVOKED ERSKIN. HE GAVE OUT ALL THE SIGNALS. HE DESERVED WHAT HE GOT! HE HAD SEX WITH HIM. THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED HERE. JUST A LITTLE RAPE. WE DIDN’T HIT HIM. HE’S OVERREACTING!’
Danish threw his hands up in the air and slumped on the bed. The bell rang. Ankit got the door.
‘Here’s your laundry and should I get your luggage?’ asked the bell boy.
Sarthak guided him to Erskin’s and his luggage and the bell boy took it away.
‘Here,’ said Sarthak and threw Vibhor his clothes.
Vibhor wore them hiding behind a curtain, quietly sobbing.
‘We need to go, Aisha,’ said Sarthak. He held my hand and tugged at it.
‘One second,’ I said and stepped a little closer to Vibhor. He didn’t look up to meet my eye. He was scared and he was sobbing. I felt no pity for him. ‘Vibhor. You raped me. That happened. Believe it. Know it. You raped me. It was real and you’re to blame for it. Only you. It wasn’t my fault. It was yours. You should feel guilty about it. Have some damn remorse. It was all your fault. You’re a bad person. You have no place in our society. Do you get that? Haan?’
‘But—’
‘Do you know now how it feels to have your voice taken away from you? To be powerless. Like this. Remember this when you try anything like what you did to me with anyone else the next time,’ I said, held Sarthak’s hand in one, Erskin’s in the other and left the room.
Erskin paid the bill. A little later, Ankit joined in. Danish was with him but he didn’t say a word. We took a cab to the airport. Danish sat in the front and no one said a word for the first twenty minutes.
Finally it was Ankit who gave it away. He laughed so hard, he started to cry. He tried to shut up but he couldn’t. The rest of us tried restraining ourselves but we couldn’t hold it down any longer and we burst out laughing again.
‘That’s cruel. You guys know what you did. It was horrible,’ said Danish.
And we laughed again.
‘What’s wrong? Have you guys totally lost it? You guys are goddamn criminals,’ said Danish and turned to us.
Sarthak literally had tears in his eyes from all the laughing. He said, ‘Vibhor wasn’t raped. We faked it.’
‘What?’
‘I wouldn’t touch that thing!’ said Erskin.
‘And I would break up with you if you did,’ said Sarthak.
Danish looked at me for an explanation. I held my ears and mouthed a sorry at him.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For playing the bad cop. I’m sorry but it was essential to our plan.’
‘What plan! What fucking plan, Aisha? You were all in it? Ankit too?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, they were.’
‘FUCK,’ he said and slapped his head even as the rest of us laughed. ‘But didn’t he know he wasn’t . . . like his ass?’
‘That’s a little trick we played. We gave him this medicine—’
‘Shut up, Sarthak, I don’t want to know! And those love bites?’
‘It’s a simple vacuum, Danish,’ explained Ankit.
‘NO. You could have told me. I was being a fool all this time? At the bar? In the hotel room?’
For the rest of the ride, Danish kept trying to wrap his head around the whole thing, and cursed us for not letting him in on the secret. The car stopped at the airport and we unloaded their luggage.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked, holding my face and
kissing me, knowing now that I wasn’t part of a gang rape.
‘You wouldn’t have acted so well if you knew. We wanted someone to support him and we knew you would do it.’
‘What if I hadn’t?’
‘You’re a nice guy, Danish. Nicer than all of us. We could count on you. None of us would have supported him,’ I said.
He rolled his eyes. I kissed him.
‘I’m right here. Can you not do this in front of me?’ said Sarthak.
‘Says my brother who’s dating Giant Gonzalves. No offence, Erskin,’ said Aisha.
A little later, Aisha’s mother reached the airport too. The time for their flight approached and we hugged them endlessly and countless tears were shed.
Aisha’s mother kissed Erskin’s forehead and said, ‘You’re the best boyfriend I could have hoped for Sarthak.’
And I thought I saw the giant almost cry. I knew how much it would have taken my mother to say that so I hugged her and winked at my brother. They got their documents checked and disappeared behind the airport gates, and we waved at them till they were out of sight.
‘I will drop Aunty home,’ said Ankit. ‘I’m sure you two have somewhere to go.’
Both Danish and I blushed. My mother kissed me and then Danish on his forehead and asked us to come back home early. Ankit took her away.
‘So,’ asked Danish. ‘That was interesting. What’s the plan now?’
‘Want to go somewhere and discuss the names of our kids? Of course we have to make sure no one overhears us because who does that?’
‘I have also seen some flats on Housing. Do you want to go check them out?’
‘Pose as a married couple? Sure. I’m down for that. Should we tell them we have a little girl?’
‘Aren’t I too young for that?’
‘We can fake it,’ said Danish.
‘And later we will go to a family restaurant like an old couple whose children have left them?’
‘Shhh. Who does that?’
‘We do that.’
‘Shhh.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you.’
‘Danish?’
‘Yes?
‘Thank you for listening.’
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN METRO READS
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First published in Penguin Metro Reads by Penguin Books India 2015
www.penguinbooksindia.com
Copyright © Durjoy Datta 2016
Cover design by Neelima P Aryan
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0-143-42461-1
This digital edition published in 2015.
e-ISBN: 978-9-385-89049-9
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