After All This Time (21 page)

He dialled her number again. Even if she had decided to stay back in Goa and taken the flight they had booked beforehand, she ought to be back in Delhi by then. Then why was her phone going straight to voicemail?

He contemplated calling her home. But what if she had already left for New York? Maybe that was it. She could be on a flight back to the US, or fighting jet lag or something. He had been up all night, calling her in India, but if she was in New York, the time difference is only three hours. Maybe she was asleep. That could explain it.

He tried to believe that reasoning, but couldn’t. It could be that she was infuriated at him and never wanted to talk to him again. He cursed himself. He should have called her sooner. But he couldn’t have. He had to be absolutely sure before he did anything further. He had not meant to hurt her in the process. But it wouldn’t be wrong of her to be angry with the man who confessed his love for her and then left her alone in a town hundreds of miles from home, with a note.
That note
. He wanted to kick himself. Why did he think it was a good idea? It was just stupid.

Not able to control himself, he finally dialled the Suryavanshis’ home number. He made up his mind to just ask casually about how things were. He didn’t want to cause trouble or raise concern in case Lavanya wasn’t there. It was almost midnight in India, but the phone was picked up before he could disconnect.

Mrs Suryavanshi greeted, ‘Hello?’

‘Oh, Aunty. Hello! This is Shourya.’ He realized he was whispering, even though it was broad daylight in California and there was nobody around. He spoke louder, ‘I am sorry; I didn’t realize what time it is there.’

‘Shourya!
Beta
, is Lavanya there? Wait—she can’t be already, can she? What time is it there?’

‘A little after ten in the morning. I’m back in the US now. Lavanya isn’t here . . .’ He was confused.

‘I know that you went back. Lavanya is on her way there to see you. Something about a note and your gall at having given it to her. She didn’t seem happy about it. Didn’t she tell you she was coming?’

Shourya burst into laughter, suddenly releasing all the tension from his body that had kept him on edge ever since he had left Goa. ‘No. No, she didn’t tell me she was coming here. I guess she was counting on the element of surprise.’

Now that Lavanya was at his doorstep, she felt lost. Her hand was raised, knuckles about to knock on the door, when she paused. What if he didn’t want her there?

When Dr Shah had told her she had time, her disease was at a manageable stage, the first thing she had done was tell her parents that she loved Shourya. Her mother was not surprised, and even though it did come as a shock to her father, she knew he had always approved of Shourya.

She only waited long enough for her doctors to work on her treatment regime. Once they did, they put her on it, and assigned her drugs and a timetable. She got on to the first flight she could find to San Francisco and boarded it, promising her parents that she would return soon.

She had not taken into account the eighteen hours she would have to spend in the air. The first flight, New Delhi to Tokyo, was eight hours long. Thankfully, she slept through most of it and time passed by easily. It was the three-hour layover at Tokyo airport and the ten-hour-long flight to SF following that that almost killed her. Time had come to a standstill. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t even concentrate on her movie or book. It was torture.

She thought of a hundred different scenarios, painted pictures in her mind of how the confrontation with Shourya would pan out. But all those hours of thinking had not prepared her for the actual event.

She dug around her sweatshirt pocket for his note and fished it out. It was crumpled; she must’ve read it a thousand times.

I love you. But you deserve better, I think. I mean you deserve better than me for sure, no doubt about that, but there’s a chance I could be good enough too. I want to find out. I don’t know what I’m saying. Sorry for ditching you like this though. But Goa is fun. Have a happy new year. I’ll make this thing as quick as possible. And then, let’s see. Maybe we could be something. I do love you. Bye, S.

What the hell did that even mean? Every time she read it, her fury mounted. It was not like Shourya to be confused. She did not even understand what exactly he was confused about.

She knocked on the door. If nothing else, she could at least find out what the stupid note actually meant. She knocked again.

A tall, skinny guy with a huge red pimple on his right cheek, just above a hideous goatee opened the door. ‘Yes?’ he questioned. He looked annoyed at the intrusion. Maybe it was the incessant knocking.

‘Hey. You must be Avik. Is Shourya here?’ Lavanya asked.

‘I don’t think—’

‘Lavanya?’ came a voice from behind the lanky guy.

She stepped in, to find Shourya coming out of a room, towards her. Avik rolled his eyes and went inside, to what Lavanya assumed was his room.

‘Shourya Kapoor,’ she muttered.

‘Lavanya . . .’ He was wearing a navy blue T-shirt with the words ‘Peace, Love & Metal’ written across his chest in white. It was late at night, and he looked like he had been woken up by the knocks on the door. She was making a habit of waking people up in the middle of the night.

He came and stood right in front of her, and her legs, as always, went weak. She barely managed to stay upright. It was all she could do to not reach out and hold his arm.

‘The note,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Yeah. What the fuck was that thing?’ she pushed it into his face. ‘What am I supposed to make of this?’

‘Whoa! Easy. I was just trying to figure things out. That was what I said. I love you, but I wanted to figure out if I was good enough for you. That’s it.’

‘Oh, is it? Read this and tell me if this makes sense.’

Shourya took the crumpled sheet of paper from her. After a moment, he said, ‘Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty stupid, wasn’t it?’

Lavanya almost smiled, and then checked herself. ‘So, what does it mean? Have you figured it out yet?’

Shourya wasn’t being funny, he wasn’t saying anything light-hearted. In fact, he was being sincere. He looked serious. He was not smiling. It scared her.

‘I only wanted to make sure I was being true to you. That there was nothing between me and Deepti. Because you deserve someone who will devote his everything to make you happ—’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Lavanya cut him off. ‘Tell me. What did you decide? Do you still love her?’ Her stomach felt queasy.
He still loved Deepti, didn’t he?
She knew it. She knew there was still something there.

Shourya took another step towards her, covering the rest of the distance between them. He cupped her face in his palms and looked into her eyes. Lavanya’s heart was beating out of her mouth. As she gazed into his piercing eyes, she felt she would stop breathing any second.

‘Do you still love her?’ she croaked. Her legs had completely given up by then. If Shourya let go of her, she would fall to the ground.

‘Lavanya Suryavanshi,’ Shourya said, his breaths shallow. ‘Ever since I left you in that hotel room and came here . . . all I’ve thought about is you.’

There. Just like that.

Lavanya wrapped her arms around him and nestled her face in the crook of his neck. ‘For a minute there . . . you scared me,’ she muttered into his skin.

His hands were around her waist, securing her in his arms. ‘I love you,’ he said, his voice gruff.

‘I love you,’ she said. She wanted to stay there forever, eyes closed, breathing in his scent, protected in his embrace. But she had not forgotten that she had something to tell him. It was time. She dropped her arms to his waist and tried to pull back. ‘I have to tell you something.’

He let her go back a step, but still held her by her waist. ‘I know,’ he said.

‘You know . . . that I have to tell you something?’ Lavanya asked, confused.

‘I know what you have to tell me.’

How? How did people already know things when she was on the verge of confessing?
First her mother, now Shourya. She was confused. There was no way he could know.

‘What . . . do you . . . Do you mean you know that I have—’

‘HIV? Yes. I know,’ Shourya said and pulled her back into his arms.

Shourya held her close to his chest. He could feel her resisting, but he needed this hug. Ever since she had found out about her HIV, he had not been able to think about anything else. He was in shock. It refused to leave his mind even for a second.

‘How do you know? When did you find out?’ Lavanya asked, speaking into his T-shirt, her voice stifled.

‘Today morning. You were on the flight here. I had called your home. Aunty told me. Lavanya, why didn’t you tell me before?’ Shourya finally set her at arm’s-length as he spoke.

‘I thought you would hate me.’ Lavanya spoke quietly, not looking at him.

‘No.
What?
Of course not! I could never hate you. Why would you think that?’

‘Because I hate myself.’

‘Lavanya, no. I am worried about you, I cannot believe this is happening to us, and I am scared of losing you . . . I am scared to death . . . but I don’t hate you. How can you think that? Don’t ever think that.’ He could feel Lavanya’s body tremble beneath his hands.

‘I am scared too.’

‘It will be okay. It will be all right,’ he said quickly. When Mrs Suryavanshi had told him about their meeting with the doctor, Shourya’s world had stopped. He couldn’t believe that he had spent the last month with Lavanya but failed to notice that she was dealing with something as big and terrifying as HIV. All by herself. ‘You should’ve told me. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘What good would that have done? I thought I was dying. And I thought you would go back to your life and forget about me. I didn’t want to be the reason you got hurt again. My death wouldn’t have affected you if you were far away . . .’

‘Like hell it wouldn’t have. God. Do you not know
anything
about me? I can’t even think about . . . If anything were to happen to you . . .’ his voice got caught. Just thinking about something happening to Lavanya felt like someone was constricting his throat. ‘Never say something like that . . .’

Lavanya nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t think like that. I’m here now, I am with you. Your dad sent over all the reports to me and the treatment regime. I am getting a second opinion from a specialist here. We will find the best treatment for you. I’m going to take care of you.’

Mr Suryavanshi had told him all about Lavanya’s treatment plan. He said that her team was positive about it, and that there was no cause for panic, as long as she was under the treatment and her condition was monitored on schedule. After the phone call, Shourya had spent most of the day at his computer, researching HIV and finding out as much as he could. He made calls to hospitals that specialized in providing treatment to HIV patients, and found an article about a study that said now in America the average HIV patient lived longer than people who did not have HIV. It is so because they take such good care of their health, that they avoid the usual severe problems like cardiac arrests and hypertension. Shourya would make sure Lavanya was one of them. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

A big part of him still had not been able to digest the information. Twelve hours were not nearly enough to process something of this magnitude. He was terrified inside. He deserved some kind of a medal of valour for putting up a strong front before Lavanya. One of them had to be strong, and given that she was the one dealing with HIV, had been dealing with it alone till now, he had to step up. He had to be strong for her.

‘I don’t want to die.’

Her voice was so low, it barely reached him. He hated how miserable she sounded. ‘Everyone dies. Today, or fifty years from now. What does it matter?’ he said in a low, sincere tone.

Lavanya looked confused for a second. ‘Are you saying you don’t care if I die—?’ Her brows knit in concentration. Shourya had always found that adorable about her. ‘Oh, wait. Did you just quote
Troy
to me?’

‘You will never be lovelier than you are now. We’ll never be here again.’

‘Seriously! Stop with the
Troy
quotes!’

Shourya chuckled.

‘God. Talk about poor timing.’

But she was smiling, a smile that slowly bloomed into laughter. Shourya joined in, and they both laughed loudly at the absurdity of his timing. They laughed as if there was nothing wrong in their lives any more, as if everything was suddenly okay, or they did not care if it wasn’t. And then, in that moment, he knew . . . together, they could move mountains.

Shourya pulled Lavanya to his chest, and silenced her laugh with a kiss. His lips brushed against her, and his thumb stroked her collarbone. She wrapped her arms around him and dug her fingers into his back, pulling him closer. She was warm and soft and sweet. Holding her in his arms, kissing her, Shourya saw his entire life in her. He promised himself he would always protect her, he would do anything for her.

Words could not describe what he felt for her, how much she meant to him. But he tried. ‘We will make it through this, okay? Just have some faith. I am right here with you, I will always be there with you; we are in this together.’

Lavanya nodded.

‘We’ll be all right,’ he said.

‘We’ll be all right,’ Lavanya repeated.