ALMOST!

“Can you pick up some flowers on your way? I forgot 😋” 

I checked Diya’s text while trying to pass the sharp end of the earring through my partially shut ear piercing. I didn’t know what was more annoying, the text or the pain my earlobe was experiencing at that moment. So I wrote, “I’ll try.” Then deleted, and wrote, “Sure!” and sent. I put the phone down on the couch and went to check if I had shut the balcony door. I heard a short buzz but didn’t bother to check my phone because I knew it would be Diya’s usual “Thanks babe! You’re a saviour.” text.

I hate attending birthday parties. What am I kidding? I hate attending parties. Period. Unending episodes of small and shallow talks, holding the same pint of beer for hours only to dump it in the end or getting high and passing out reaching home, trying to avoid casual sexist jokes on being single, and telling people what I am watching on Netflix these days only to get showered with an unsolicited list of recommendations, has started to get to me. 

I have a list of go-to excuses that I use to evade parties and dodge plans. Unplanned office meetings and a migraine attack have the highest success rate. I would have tried to avoid Rakesh’s birthday, too, but Diya and I work for the same organization. In fact, she’s a teammate. She has access to my calendar and is well aware that I don’t step out of my house without a strip of Vasograin, come rain or shine. I promised her that I would make it to her party only on the condition that she will not force me to stay back post 11:30 pm and she will not slip into the self-appointed wing-woman mode and try to set me up with random guys around there. 

By the time I got all dressed up, my cab arrived and as I boarded, I sweet-talked the driver into stopping by Giftrose, a flower-and-gift shop. I looked at the screen of his phone as the trip duration changed from 24 to 32 minutes with the pitstop.

I got down and walked into the shop, a cozy little outlet that looks straight out of a rom-com. Coloured with pink and purple, this store was a delight. I headed straight to the flowers section and looked for yellow roses. The storekeeper, a tall and lean guy with bushy eyebrows and a broad smile, walks up to me. “May I help you ma’am,” he asks. “I need a bunch of these yellow roses. Could you please pack these up for me quickly? My cab’s waiting outside and…” “Yes, right away, come” he said, cutting me short. He picked some roses out of the bunch and walked towards the cash counter. I followed him. He pulled a sheet of fancy cellophane to wrap the flowers carefully. I saw the reel of red ribbon at the billing counter and pushed it towards him to make it sooner. He gave me the most genuine fake smile and nodded to thank me. I took out my wallet to pay when I noticed that he was looking for something. He was trying to hold the ribbon in place while trying to open the drawers next to him. “The scissors….,” he said, without looking at me.

I was tapping my debit card on the counter while waiting for him to find the pair of scissors. He could see that I was just beginning to get impatient. So, he put both his hands into opening the rest of the drawers to find the pair of scissors. I shifted my gaze from his search to a stack of cards on display at the counter. 

I picked up the bundle and started going through them to distract myself. Some of them were too colourful, some of them were flashy, and mostly all of them were verbose. Do people still buy cards, I thought. When was the last time I bought a card for someone? Do they have birthday cards? Should I get one for Rakesh? What should I write in it? Bad idea? Thoughts, mostly in the form of questions, rushed through my mind as my fingers were rushing through those cards. In that gushy and glittery stack of cards, I came across one that had just one word written on it. Just one word. The card looked so out of place in that stack that I felt it’s asking me to buy it to free it from its misery of being buried under all the other cards with all those other words. I took the card out along with an envelope and pushed it towards the storekeeper who was now on his knees, trying to reach the pair of scissors that was lying under the table at the counter, I saw. 

In a few minutes, I was in my cab again, resuming my trip to the party. The bunch of flowers was lying beside me while the card lay on my lap. I rolled down the windows and took the card out of its envelope. A blue card with the word “ALMOST” written on it in green. There was no other word or punctuation accompanying. Nothing at all! 

My gaze was stuck at the word, ALMOST, as my mind was racing. All the souls from past lives through names, faces, smiles, tears, songs, more songs, more faces, more names. I felt like I was watching a movie at 10X speed. A movie that I have watched several times. A movie that I was painfully well-acquainted with. I felt as if my mind was spinning a memory wheel, and I knew exactly at what point the wheel was going to stop and I was all anxious. I rolled down the window because I knew I was about to feel nauseous. I knew I was about to relive that roller coaster ride of emotions, and I was bracing myself. I knew the questions that would follow, I knew the answers to them, too.

Well, almost. I already knew that now I don’t have to worry about having small talks at Rakesh’s birthday party because my mind is going to be preoccupied with fighting the urge to send that message that I haven’t in the last two years. My night was sorted, I knew. I knew that I was going to spend the night excusing myself in between conversations that I was not paying any attention to in the first place, to rush to the loo to stop waterworks. I knew that I would now have to convince Diya to let me go home by 9 pm instead of 11:30 as in another hour or so, I would start yearning for my blanket. The excuse? I will figure something out. I knew I had a night of emotional warfare ahead. I knew. I have been through this before. And several times. I knew I was going to open Whatsapp constantly just to see that display picture, type a “hey” only to delete it once the blank chat window slaps and humiliates me.   

Why did I have to pick this card? 

The word ALMOST was staring back at me while the memory wheel stopped spinning and took me back to the moment when I first met Akshay. At that moment, I had no idea how my life…my entire life was going to change forever. 

I met Akshay in a phase of my life that I like to call a freefall: unintentionally unmindful. 

I was in a rebound relationship with his best friend, Vishnu, who I had asked out after getting drunk out of my wits one weekend post breakup. I was spending days exploring genres like British Indie folk while reading tons of non-fiction with a cigarette dangling from my lips. Those days, I was working as a journalist for a popular daily in Bangalore writing about the theatre scene in south India.

My memories of my first meeting with Akshay are mostly made of his memories. So, there’s a lot more to what went wrong than what went right. I was out drinking with Vishnu in a shady bar at some corner of Brigade Road. By 1 am at night, both of us could barely walk. We needed someone to drop us home. So, Vishnu gave Akshay, his best friend since school days, a call to pick the two of us. According to Akshay, I hadn’t spoken a single word in the car. I had rolled down the window and tilted out my head scaring the daylights out of him, but I hadn’t puked. Apparently, I was just looking for “more air to breathe.” As I said, I have no memory of my own. If I had known what life had in store for me, I wouldn’t have gotten drunk that night. I would have made sure that my memories of the first time I saw him were a little less embarrassing. But unfortunately I don’t think physics works that way.

The next day, I woke up to a text from Vishnu asking me if I was feeling alright. “Akshay wants to drop us at a de-addiction therapy. LOL,” the next text read. That same night, Vishnu and I had made dinner plans with Akshay, to thank him for being our saviour. That night, I noticed Akshay’s sheepish smile. While Vishnu dished out one embarrassing drunken story one after the other about me, all he did was laugh. For some reason, I was amused to see him laugh even if it was at my expense. I laughed with him while making failed attempts to justify my blunders.

A week later, Vishnu, Akshay and I decided to catch a play. Then there were concerts, stand-up comedy shows, open mics. We started to hang out together a lot. There were times when Vishnu wouldn’t make it to the event because of his odd working hours. Akshay and I went ahead with the plan and would end up having dinner together. And gradually we started meeting without Vishnu knowing. Not in hiding though, but we just went with the flow. Our conversations weren’t limited to Vishnu and his antics anymore. I was gradually becoming a friend to him. My identity as his best friend’s partner had faded away long before we had realized it.

Akshay was always a man of few words. It took some effort to make him talk. However, I could see that he was slowly warming up to me as he was not shy to be vulnerable in front of me anymore. Vishnu had told me that Akshay didn’t like to talk about his sister, who had passed away in an accident and was immensely close to her. So, I never brought it up. One night, as we were walking home, Akshay started to talk to me about his sister. He told me how her death had scarred him for life. He told me that soon after his sister’s death, he had lost his mother, too. That night, I felt as if he was in some kind of a trance. It felt as if he wanted me to know everything about him in just one night. I could feel the agony and depth of unspoken memories.

We didn’t talk much on the Whatsapp group that Vishnu had created for the three of us. However, we texted each other throughout the day. Our chat window was a treasure trove of PJs, good Indie music, pictures of our respective failed attempts at cooking and cruel jibes. We would laugh at everything and anything.

Each time he would drop me home after an event, we would spend some time in his car surfing through the internet to find our next event. Before I realized it, I had started to crave to see him more often than I already was.

One night, as I was settling down with a book to wrap up my day, I received a text from Akshay: “You awake?”
“Hey. Yes. Was going to begin reading,” I replied.
It took him a fraction of a second to follow up. “Oh! Which book?”
“The Sense of an Ending. By Julian Barnes. What’s up with you?”
“Can’t sleep. Hey, I was wondering. Do you want to go for a walk tomorrow?” he asked.

I got butterflies in my stomach. I didn’t want him to know that I was already looking forward to this idea. The idea of spending time with him alone. To make him laugh, to watch his sheepish smile, to hear him talk and to finish his sentences. 

“What time?” I asked. 
“Evening? After you finish work. I’m WFH tomorrow. So, I can pick you up whenever,” he texted promptly.
I wrote, “Awesome.” And, deleted it. I wrote, “Sounds like a plan.” And, deleted it.
I finally settled for an “OK.”

Next day, as we walked, I often caught myself smiling like a fool. While crossing roads, Akshay touched my elbow, to lead. Each time he did that, I moved a little closer to him. Once I moved so close that before he could touch my elbow, I held his hand. It was a loose clutch. In fact, our pinkies were tangled for a good couple of minutes. That evening, we were painting the town red. I remember how we walked into a shop and used the scientific names of common vegetables at the counter while faking an accent. We walked with an earphone splitter plugged to my phone and took turns to play our favourite music. We went to a public library and decided to pick a mutual favourite book and leave a secret note for each other from the book. We went through the rack of books and shared our perspectives on novels we have read. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac was the one we finalized to quote from. I tore out two pages from my pocket note and gave one to him. I quoted “It all ends in tears anyway.”; folded and slided it into his shirt’s pocket. Akshay, on the other hand, gave me one of his sheepish smiles again and handed his note to me which I carefully placed between my notebook.

That night, both of us got drunk at a neighbourhood bar which was too flashy for its own good. It was almost midnight and Akshay was walking me home. He was telling me about how this is the most drunk he had gotten in a long while and he wasn’t even guilty. There was a Gulmohar tree right in front of my apartment that always used to turn the slithering black road red with its flowers. There was a tiny concrete bench underneath the tree, mostly covered in bird poop. Akshay tried not to sit for a while, then I heard him utter, “What the hell” before he parked his ass on it. I followed suit. I don’t remember what exactly I was thinking about at that moment. For some strange reason, the only thing that I remember from that moment was Akshay’s olive green T-shirt and his dark, voluminous wavy hair and his long and bony fingers that rested entangled on his lap. I don’t think my mind was focussed on a single thought but I was certainly lost. I heard him mumble something. Since I couldn’t catch it, I asked him to come again.

“I wish I could do this every day,” he said.
“Yeah, today was fun,” I said with a chuckle.
“With you…I wish I could do this every day with you,” he said, trying to look straight into my eyes. He could barely keep his eyes open. 
I was looking for something nice to say but being drunk wasn’t helping…at all!
“It might sound weird but I am going to say it anyway. I like you,” he said with that smile that could help him get away with murder, in my opinion.
“Why do you think it’s weird? I like you, too,” I said.
“Yes, but do you like me enough to fall in…,” before he could finish his sentence, my phone rang. It happened to be my birthday and my parents were calling to wish me. 

So, here’s the difference between friendship’s flashy cousin, love which mostly comes uninvited. And, by the time you realize it, it already starts to occupy space in your mind and heart. Then no matter how troublesome it turns out to be, you find reasons to make it your own. Like you would for a new pet.

It took a mountain of effort to be able to answer the call that had cut Akshay short. However, I did answer the call and kept it short. As the call was nearing its end, my mind was racing. What if Akshay goes ahead and finishes the question? What would I say? What is the ideal thing to say? Wait, am I in love with him? Is he in love with me? Is this really happening? What is happening? Once the call ended, I turned off my phone because I was anticipating more calls. I turned to Akshay and said, “Sorry about that.” I don’t know if I should have followed it up with, “So, you were saying….” because I didn’t. I didn’t. I wanted to, with every ounce of desire my heart could generate. But I didn’t. I saw him looking at me and I might have been drunk at that moment but trust me, I knew that look. I could see that he was struggling for the right words because so was I. I was waiting for him to find the words. I wanted him to at least begin with some word…any word. But just begin. At that moment, I knew that I wanted this guy more than anything in this world. The desire to hear him ask me what he was going to, in the first place, broke me out of my drunkenness. I wasn’t drunk anymore.

He looked away and sighed while I continued to look at him. He turned towards me and smiled. “You are….I wish” he had begun a sentence but gave up. His voice was softer than usual. I could see his eyes tearing up. He stood up and said, “I think I should leave.” I could see that even he wasn’t drunk anymore. “I will just walk. I need to walk,” he said. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. We hugged each other tightly. Both of us knew that we didn’t want to let go of each other. I could feel his breath on my hair. If there was one thing I wished for at that moment, it was for time to stop. I didn’t want that moment to end. I didn’t want any other moment in my life. No more. “Read the quote” he whispered into my ear as we were letting go of each other. He left.

I came back almost running to my apartment and settled down my anxiety. I felt as if the answer to every question I had in my mind was in the quote from The Dharma Bums. I took out the notebook from my purse and unfolded the note which said, “One day I will find the right words, and they all will be simple.” 

I layed myself back to relax holding the note and I am sure I must have read the line at least 50 times and each time, I fell in love with Akshay just a little more. And, of course, I knew that this feeling was mutual. I also knew that neither of us was going to confess. I knew we were heading towards a tragedy and the only way to avert it was to not talk about it. We knew we had Vishnu in our lives and no matter what, even if it was a rebound, I knew I would end up hurting him if I told him that I was in love with his best friend and not him. I knew speaking up was not an option. So, we chose silence.

Akshay and I didn’t speak of that night ever again. But each time we met, we knew that we were growing fonder of each other. We knew that the intensity of the feelings we shared was growing with each passing day. Our days began and ended with texts from each other. We were growing closer while Vishnu and I were getting distant. I think by then, Vishnu had realized that I wasn’t in love with him. Not even close to that. So, somehow, he even started drifting away. We knew that there was nothing left in between us but we may be, neither of us had the heart to take the initiative to end it. This went on for almost a year and it was driving me crazy.

It was December and Vishnu was going to be in the US for five months to attend a short-term course. A night before he was scheduled to leave, a friend of ours decided to host a send-off party. While everybody was busy celebrating Vishnu’s new journey, I was trying to make up my mind to tell him that it was over between us. I didn’t know how it was going to affect him but I desperately wanted to leave. I didn’t want to put up with this facade any more. However, somehow, I didn’t have the courage to be the bearer of this bad news that night, a night that was meant to celebrate the person I was going to break up with. In fact, I couldn’t be the bearer of the news, ever. 

A month later Vishnu left, I was ready to leave the city as I got a better job in Mumbai. A week later, Akshay was also ready to leave the country as he had bagged the opportunity of a lifetime to be a photographer for an international wildlife magazine, something he had been dreaming of for as long as he could remember. 

A day before I was leaving the city, Akshay and I met. He was scheduled to leave two days later. We spent the day together. Laughing at random things, watching a movie, talking about what we were going to do in the new cities that we were going to call home. As the end of the day drew closer, we started falling short of words. By midnight, both of us fell silent. He was walking me home and we knew that this was the last time we were walking this road together. Maybe that’s why we held hands. This time, the grip was gentle but not loose. 

We sat on the concrete bench under the same Gulmohar tree. There was a long moment of silence. It was as if we were already mourning what was in store for the two of us. We knew that we couldn’t be together. By now, it was clear that he didn’t know how to handle the guilt of being with someone his best friend was dating and I didn’t know how to be with the best friend of the guy I was “dating.” It was clear that neither of us had it in us to do it.  

My eyes were blurry from crying. I wasn’t making an effort to fight the tears. Neither was he. We let them roll, exploding into spells of laughter in between. I looked at him as his lips quivered and his eyes blinked. Then he said something that made my heart sink. My throat dried up and I felt weirdly nervous. 

“We had it. Well, almost….,” he said as tears rolled down his cheek.  

The day I left the city, Akshay had come to drop me at the airport and on his way back, he sent me a text. “I have never felt so weak in my life. We met at an unfortunate time in our lives. I wish someday, I gather the courage to put all of this in words.”

A month after I moved to the new city, Vishnu and I broke up. I knew Akshay had come to know about this. We never spoke about it. We rarely messaged each other. 

A year later, I received a postcard from the country Akshay was in. He had quoted Bruce Lee, randomly. I took a picture of the postcard and sent it to him. “I had sent this to you around five months ago! Did you just receive it? Also, I still don’t know why I sent you a quote by Bruce Lee,” he said. I never replied. 

It’s been almost two years since we last spoke. We follow each other on every social media handle. He checks out each of my stories on Instagram and I check all of his, but we never leave a reaction or a comment. 

I was trying to think of a word to describe my bond with Akshay when the cab driver woke me out of my past. I had reached my destination.
I looked down and I found the word written in bold letters, lying on my lap: ALMOST…