Love Letters From Hell

32 | no boys allowed

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THE UNIVERSE HAS IT OUT FOR ME. I'm convinced this is the culmination of all my sins. My unholy punishment. I'm going to hell but first I'm going to have to suffer here just a little bit longer. I expect a divine laugh track to start up any moment now to make fun of the not-so-funny sitcom of my life. That time I broke my mother's watch when I was nine and lied about it? What is it? Thou shall not lie? Or when I was sixteen and stole Petra's car keys to drive to Abe's for ice cream with Dima in the passenger seat, nearly crashing ten times on our seven-minute journey. Thou shall not steal. All those times I didn't pet Cinna? Thou shall pet thy dog. Anyway, this is what I get for kissing boys. Thou shall not kiss boys.

I turn so sharply in my seat that I almost upend my water glass, a thousand scattered little pieces. If not for Dija's quick handle of the glass, her pink, sparkly nails bared instinctively over the rim. Her lashes beat against her cheeks as she catches my expression. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," I snap, tone harder than I mean for it to be. She clearly doesn't believe me by the expression on her face, likely a reaction towards my own wild expression. A deer caught in headlights. That's exactly what I must look like. Wincing, I quickly say, "I'm sorry. I'm just— surprised."

That's an understatement.

I don't dare turn around, back poised straight as a board and desperate to remain unseen by those in the doorway.

But he saw me. I know he saw me. We'd locked eyes. Fuck.

These are literally the last two people on the planet who I want to run into today. What are they doing here?

Some part of me hopes that they would just vanish into thin air, nothing but a figment of my imagination.

But, no, just as Dija's brows draw together into a worried line, there rests a small, warm hand on my shoulder.

Kajal Shankar is the most non-threatening person I've ever come across. Yet, from the way I nearly spring out of my seat when she touches me, it might as well be a loaded gun she's pointed in my face.

Honestly, I'd take a loaded gun over this.

Kajal, dressed in a sage green blouse with puffy sleeves, two pretty braids pinned away from her face, the rest in a waterfall of dark waves, little pearl drop earrings bobbing at her ears and warm eyes that remind me of her cousin's, leans over my shoulder and says something but all I hear is the shuffle and scrape of feet behind her and my name on familiar lips.

"Mira," he says just as Kajal lets me go with a passing look that leaves me certain of two things.

One. She knows. Of course, she does. Aryan gives me bits and pieces of information and I don't ask for more. I'm not pushy like him and he's not cagey like me. And maybe just maybe I live for those little moments when he hands me novel pieces of himself of his own accord. Hold up—definitely not. But I do get the gist of things with his relationship with his cousin and that Kajal's barely spoken to him recently and that it bothers him. I understand my part to play and I understand that I've been too selfish to acknowledge it.