The Rebound Theory

01 | Aashi

01| Aashi

"Let me leave."

"No, I won't."

Words die on the back of my soft palate, and I try to sputter lines but then, that is a hoax. I wanted him to stop me and hold me more as long as eternity takes.

"This is wrong. So, so wrong."

"It's right. Things never felt so right."

I push him away, hold him at  arm's length and gaze at him with crazy eyes (eyes that hold the fire and passion of all the past years) and try to choke back my vile words that will taint every beautiful, fleeting memory that I can take back with me at this very moment.

"Leave me alone.

"I have to go," finally his arms droop to the sides of his torso and for a hasty second there, I see the same warmth his eyes had held for so many years. The same warmth that made me tell him everything.

He looked at me like a toddler who has been denied his favorite toy. And that's all I was to him. A toy to be toyed with.

I mentally kick myself for drowning in them once again.

You deserve better, Aashi. You know that, right! Right?

I walk away from him. Something, that I should've done so many months ago. Before all those threads that disentangled.

Boy, I've held on to those flickering moments of the past for this, this long that it makes me so sick to my stomach.

I feel the bile rise but I push it down my chest by my resilience. I still hurry to the nearest girls' washroom. Once in, I ignore the questioning glares of girls talking about their momentary love interests and periods and lock the gate to my stall. I close the toilet's seat and sit on it.

I take out my cell phone from my skirt's pocket and text my best friend.

"I'm bunking the next period. I'll see you at lunch."

She responds almost immediately.

"Where are ya?"

I ignore her message because I really needed some peace and quiet. I'm not ready to antagonize under her "I told you so" stare or answer any of her reluctant questions. But then again, she won't ever exactly say that to me, even when I know how she feels about our arrangement.

To digress to the present moment, a girl's washroom is not a place to find the peace I needed. All the hiding places in this school are either confiscated by lovers doing their thing or the others were enveloped by smokers and porn addicts doing their thing. I didn't know where to go.

All I knew was to leave the girls' washroom this minute because the stench is slowly, burning holes into my lungs.

Again, I push the stall gate open and rush from the school corridor to the music room.

I know what I need right now.

I knock at the music room's door to check if there's any teacher because they'll need to see a permission slip. Conveniently, I keep my all- the- time( because it had no dates on it)  signed slip from my music teacher in my breast pocket so, I can formerly bunk because escapades with Rohit always seemed to take a period or two.

Luckily, there is no one. And the door is also unlocked. Must be scheduled for a junior's class in a period or something.

I'll definitely be done by then. I walk with clammy hands to the piano and sit on the stool. I run my fingers over the keyboard and start reminding myself my redundant routine.