by Durjoy Datta
Durjoy Datta
SHE BROKE UP I DIDN’T!
I Just Kissed Someone Else!
Contents
About the Author
Also by Durjoy Datta
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Also in Penguin Metro Reads
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PENGUIN METRO READS
SHE BROKE UP, I DIDN’T!
Durjoy Datta was born and brought up in New Delhi. He completed a degree in engineering and business management before embarking on a writing career. His first book, Of Course I Love You …, was published when he was twenty-one years old and was an instant bestseller. His successive novels—Now That You’re Rich …, She Broke Up, I Didn’t!, Oh Yes, I Am Single!, If It’s Not Forever …, Someone Like You—have also found prominence on various bestseller lists, making him one of the highest-selling authors in India. Durjoy lives in New Delhi, loves dogs and is an active CrossFitter.
For more updates, you can follow him on Facebook (www.facebook.com/durjoydatta1) or Twitter (@durjoydatta).
Also by Durjoy Datta
Hold My Hand
Till the Last Breath
Of Course I Love You
Till I Find Someone Better
(With Maanvi Ahuja)
Oh Yes, I’m Single!
And So Is My Girlfriend!
(With Neeti Rustagi)
Now That You’re Rich
Let’s Fall in Love!
(With Maanvi Ahuja)
Someone Like You
(With Nikita Singh)
You Were My Crush
Till You Said You Love Me!
(With Orvana Ghai)
If It’s Not Forever
It’s Not Love
(With Nikita Singh)
To the girl who had vodka bottles stashed
under her bed
Prologue
The days were long. Long as they had never been. The air was still in the room. Nothing moved. It had been three days since I had locked myself in. It had been three days since I had broken up with Avantika. I read a page from my old diary, from three years back, where I used to recount every important day of my life, and the first time I had met Avantika was one of them.
There were other people in that incident, who were no longer in my life, but Avantika was and she always will be.
I guess …
September 2007
Today was a day when I spent most of my time with my eyes and mouth wide open. Avantika had just landed and my best friend wanted me to meet her.
I was told that Avantika had been in rehab for her drugs and alcohol problem but that was more than a year back. I had already started imagining Avantika as a leather-jacketed gothic chick with metal piercings and black nail paint.
And then, there she was …
That could have been the last thing I remembered from today had I had a weak heart. I had passed out for a few seconds for sure. My heart skipped a beat or maybe it just stopped, downloaded from gappaa dot org, beating altogether. I was choking. My stomach churned. I felt the blood rush down to the ends of my arteries and then burst out. I could feel my brain imploding. I was going to die and I was sure.
She is breathtakingly beautiful! She is a dream. Even better, you could not even dream of something so perfect. Plastic surgeons still cannot rival God, I thought.
She is so hard to describe. Those limpid, constantly wet black eyes and melancholic face screamed for love. The moonlight that reflected off her perfectly sculpted cheekbones seemed the only light illuminating the surroundings. Somebody stood with a blower nearby to get her long, black hair to cover her face so that she could look sexier flicking it away from her eyes. She has the big eyes of a month-old child—big and screaming for attention—a perfectly drafted nose, flawless bright pink lips and a smooth, pale complexion that would put Photoshop to shame.
Oh hell, she is way out of my league.
She was a goddamn goddess or she was the devil. She could not possibly be human.
I just could not look beyond her face.
I was not seeing right, I was not hearing right. I was just lost in the reflecting pools in those beautiful eyes. My heart pounded so hard it felt like it would pop out of my chest any moment. She asked me how I was doing; her voice was music to my ears.
Drugs? Alcohol? Leather? She would not even know all that. I did see the remnants of a piercing just above her left eyebrow, and sure enough, a tattoo peeked out from under her sleeve: a red swastik sign. I told myself it was just a dream and I didn’t just see the prettiest girl ever.
I managed to answer her in what seemed like my fourth attempt at speaking after the first three ended in some soundless flapping of my tongue. It was a strange feeling—I was nervous, shit nervous. I felt small. I felt ugly. I felt insignificant. I looked at her and smiled stupidly. I wondered if her dog looked cuter than I did.
I spent the evening trying not to stare into those fall-in-love-with-me eyes.
I like your nose, can I touch it? I wanted to say.
I like your lips, are they for real? I wanted to say.
I like your eyes, can I stare into them forever? I wanted to say.
I truly have not seen someone who is so perfect in her existence that you feel worthless and depressed. The simplicity of what she came wearing, the honesty in her smile, the serenading voice, the depth of her eyes—unforgettable.
It has been four hours since I took her leave but I cannot get her out of my head. That smile, those eyes … they are just not leaving me. As I sleep today, I wish to see her again. Soon.
This was the day that marked the end of my reckless dating days, when the only consideration while choosing a girl used to be whether she would kiss me or not. That day was different. I needed her.
It had been three and a half years since then, and I had fallen in love with Avantika every single day of the twelve hundred and seventy-five days that we had been together. I have been more in love with her every new day. Between that day and today, she has only got more beautiful, more charming, more adorable and lovelier.
Why me, of all the guys she could have dated? I had never managed to figure that one out. I closed my eyes and thought about what had got me here, alone and suicidal.
1
I had been tense for the last few days. Interviews for summer internships at Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, had started; Avantika and I did not want to go to different cities for our internships.
I had first met Avantika when I was studying engineering at Delhi College of Engineering and she was studying at Shri Ram College of Commerce. We graduated from our colleges, and joined the same firm in Hyderabad; things were going perfect for us. We were just twenty-two but had started planning our future together. On days when we were sure that we would always be together, she even told me what names she had decided for her kids. We were that serious.
It had been a while that we had been working when recession hit our firm and I was thrown out of the company. I worked for a smaller firm for a couple of months but it wasn’t really the same. That is when we decided we needed to study further and started studying for the management entrance examinations. Three months later, we were at MDI, a top-rung management institution in Gurgaon, and we couldn’t be happier.
I hadn’t stayed away from her for a really long time now, and the prospect of going to different cities for our internship scared me.
‘I am sure I will screw this one up,’ I said, rubbing my sweaty palms together. The company had shortlisted fifteen students for the interview stage. They had planned to take just four. Avantika and I were among the last few in the preference order that the company had stated.
‘You will not screw it up. Relax,’ she said and rubbed my hands.
‘But what if they take the first four guys and leave the campus? We might not even get a chance for an interview!’ I grumbled.
Many companies did that. They did not want to interview a whole lot of people to choose their interns. They specified an order in which the students should come. If they liked the person, they would take him or her and close the placement process. The students lower down in the interview schedule often didn’t get a chance!
‘Let’s hope for the best!’ she said.
‘Avantika? Rubbing your hand like that on my shoulder would only distract me,’ I pointed out.
‘You clear the interview and I will do it without your clothes on,’ she winked.
‘I won’t get through.’
‘You will. Trust me,’ she said.
When two beautiful eyes look at you and say something with conviction, you cannot help but believe it. She smiled at me and it calmed my nerves a little.
The first interview was over. The guy came out smiling and with an offer letter in hand. My hopes died. There were just three more seats to fill up and there were ten interviews before me. There was no way Avantika and I were clearing this interview together.
‘Now what!’ I said.
‘Relax, Deb. There are still three seats left.’
‘And ten guys to interview! What if they choose even two?’
For the first time that morning, I saw her a little tense. ‘I should go talk to the guy handling this thing.’
‘What can he change?’ I asked irritably.
‘Let’s see,’ she said and handed over her file to me.
Avantika looked stunning that day. She seemed to have jumped out of a women’s formal-wear fashion magazine: the short business skirt she wore looked fabulous on her, and a perfectly fitting blazer and shiny black pointed stilettos completed the power-woman picture. She made the clothes look good and not vice versa. There were whispers in the corridors of our college that morning, ‘Obviously, she will get through! She is so hot!’
Avantika got up and walked up to the college representative who was handling the interview process. There were hushed whispers around me. I saw Avantika tell him something, her eyes stern, but her smile was in place.
‘What is she doing?’ I heard the guy sitting next to me ask his friend. Avantika talked to that senior for a little while, came back, and sat next to me.
‘What was going on there?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. Just be prepared. You will be the next one to be interviewed. Do well,’ she pulled up my tie.
What!
The guy from the interview room came out. He was not selected.
‘Debashish Roy, you’re next,’ the college representative said.
I got up and entered the room. The whispers of other shortlisted students grew louder; no one was happy that Avantika had charmed her way into getting her boyfriend into the interview room.
No one said anything to her.
Avantika had always been intimidating for people who did not know her. One stern statement from her and the authority crushes you. One smile of hers and you are charmed, lost in those beautiful sparkling eyes and the dazzling smile. It had been three years and I was still trying to cope with these.
The interview was slightly long, but I had been taught well by Avantika. Soon, they slipped the offer letter in front of me. I signed the document and came out smiling. People looked at me, disgusted. ‘Fuck you,’ I muttered under my breath.
I sat there with Avantika and hoped no one else made it. The next few went in for the interview and no one got selected. Eat that, motherfuckers, I said in my head every time someone left that room without an offer.
Finally, they called Avantika in. There were still two seats left. And as expected, she came out flashing an offer letter.
‘To my room,’ she said, even before I could congratulate her.
Twenty minutes later, we were in her hostel room, wrapped around each other. Our well-ironed suits lay crumpled and strewn across the floor. Our bodies were a tangled heap, intertwined, our fingers wrapped around each other’s. She was still wearing her stilettos. My socks had still not left my feet.
‘That was good,’ she said.
‘Good? That was awesome.’
‘Yeah. You were good. I was the awesome part of this entire session,’ she winked.
I was still tired and panting from the lovemaking, when I saw a few tears in her eyes.
‘Aw! What happened, baby?’ I asked her.
‘I heard someone call me a slut today,’ she answered.
I knew people would talk. ‘You’re mine, baby,’ I said.
‘They don’t matter anyway. We do,’ she said and wiped off her tears.
‘Just curious—what did you say to him?’
‘I just requested him that since you have no other shortlists, you should be allowed in first. That this was your last chance at a decent internship …’
‘Didn’t he know that I had three more shortlists?’
‘He forgot,’ she smiled naughtily.
We kissed.
I was happy that we had got into the same company and were going to the same city for our internship, but I did not like that she had to flirt with someone to get it done. People talked about it for a few days and then forgot. It hurt her when people said things about her behind her back, but she tried not to show it.
Assholes.
2
‘Hey!’ I waved my hand from the lift lobby.
She looked, ignored my frantic hand movements across the hallway and went back to the computer screen. I walked slowly through the cubicles on both sides, and smiled at people who knew me and they smiled back at me. Most of them knew where I was heading to.
‘Good morning,’ I said. Her perfume wafted into my nostrils. The perfume was my third anniversary gift, three bottles of it, and she had vowed to wear it every single day. She had made the fragrance her own. Three days in a swampy tent in Ooty and she would still smell the same.
‘What the hell were you doing there?’ she asked angrily, not sharing my enthusiasm. Her frown and her wide open eyes didn’t scare me; it just made her look more adorable. It’s as cute as a puppy wrestling a rubber ball.
‘I was just excited to see you.’
She turned away from me and flicked her hair behind her ear, ‘You don’t have to show the entire floor that you were excited.’
‘What? Everyone knows that we are together,’ I argued.
She had got fairer, if that was possible. Her nose looked a little red from the chill in the air; her lips a little more red and cheeks a little more pull-able. She looked gorgeous.
‘Not the bosses. They don’t know about us and they don’t have to.’
‘So what? What if they know?’ I asked, as I pulled up a chair from the nearby desk.
‘They are old people, Deb, they don’t understand all this. Office romances are not seen in a kind light, Deb.’
‘First of all, we are just interns here. And second, this is not a romance,’ I said. ‘This is just a fling. All I bear for you is unprecedented lust.’
She caught me in a gaze, her lips slightly parted, infinitely sexy. ‘Is it so?’
‘It sure is,’ I said.
‘Then you really don’t mind,’ she turned away from me and tapped on the keyboard, ‘if I check out other guys’ profiles on Facebook … Oh, I think this one is hot. Should I send him a friend request? He would be hot in bed too, I guess. But why look outside, when I have Kabir right here in the office?’
My heart shrank. Even as a joke, it wasn’t funny. It didn’t help that Kabir was taller, fairer, handsomer and more accomplished; also he had always harboured a soft corner for Avantika.
‘Why, why, why would I mind? Go ahead. Sleep with him for all I care. I don’t mind. Did I tell you about last night? Last night was awesome. Malini is incredible in bed. I mean, she is really good.’
Avantika looked at me, her eyes quivering and still big, ‘Never say that.’
‘You started it.’
‘Never.’
‘Okay.’
3
Avantika and I had been going out for quite a few years now, and except for one break-up that lasted a little while, it had been a smooth ride. Well, not really. The days were smooth, the nights … rough. I wasn’t complaining. Three years and empty classrooms, hostel rooms, secluded roads and movie hall: things like these still excited us. We still couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and we still acted like teenagers on a hormone overload. A girl like her had no business to even kiss a guy like me, but she did, and I was thankful for that.
