“I am trying to get over it,” Mishka said in a weak voice.
“Sure as hell you are. Really, now. He didn’t even deserve you,” Lipika retorted.
“All best friends say the same thing, Lipika,” Mishka spoke again, her voice stronger now.
“Ah! It is the right thing to say! What should I tell you? You are wrong and he is right?” Mishka began saying something. Lipika interrupted, “No no. I get it now,” she waved her hand, “that’s what you actually want to hear. He can’t be wrong, you think. He’s no god, Mishka. Stop obsessing over him. We have coffee here. What else do you want? Let me see. Paneer tikka. That’s your favorite.”
Again Mishka began to say something. “No more talking about Ansh, okay?” Lipika ended the conversation.
Mishka’s mind wandered. She was shut up. She couldn’t talk about him, she could think about him. She could still feel him everywhere. Near the fence of this roof-top café, under the umbrella tables, she could she him smiling. Smiling like he used to when he looked at her for long time. And then he would say how lucky he was to have her. She saw him beside the waiter who brought Paneer Tikka. Paneer tikka was his favorite too, you know, she wanted to say, so please don’t order it. We had it with coffee. Don’t. No use now. She knew not a morsel would go down her neck. It would be difficult to even pick one. But Lipika was adamant.
“Let’s go party tonight,” Lipika snapped her out of her thoughts.
“I don’t want to,” Mishka’s voice had gone weak again.
“Sure as hell you don’t want to. Come on now. Ansh won’t be around. You’ll have fun,” Lipika insisted.
“It’s at Blue-O Lounge.” She spoke the name like it was a casual word to be carelessly tossed around between one’s sentences.
Blue-O Lounge. Mishka tried hard not to think about it. That was where she had met Ansh. He did not have blue eyes or six-pack. He was just ordinary, a sheepish smile always on his face which grew wider the moment he saw Mishka. It was almost love at first fight. Mishka had been mad at him for being a careless bartender. He let the boys mix Vodka with Lipika’s Strawberry Crush. Ansh hung his head in shame. Guilty for the crime he didn’t commit. He saw the way she moved her lips and it made him want to kiss her. He knew it was a very bad idea. He didn’t even know what she was saying. He could only see her lips making patterns. She had slammed hard at the table and announced that he was the worst bartender ever. And that she was never going to come back there again. But she came, again and again and a lot of times. And by the time she caught him staring at her for the fifth time, she knew it was inevitable. The next morning, he had woken up beside her and told her for the nth time, Mishka, you’re so gorgeous, I don’t have words. And then he said for the first time, I think I love you. Mishka had sat up straight on the bed. She almost couldn’t believe it. It was too good to be true. But it was. She’d pinched herself, she remembered now, and it had turned so red that Ansh had to kiss it over and over again for the rest of the day which they’d spent together. She didn’t know how to heal his wounds, so much bigger than hers, as he lay dying. His wounds were physical and emotional. She had known him so well that she wouldn’t have let him suffer. But that was earlier. Now, she didn’t know…
“EAT, MISHKA,” Lipika’s voice sounded like thunderbolt, shaking Mishka out of her sweetly melancholic memories. She put a piece in her mouth, unmindful of the fact that she hadn’t finished the one she had kept inside her mouth 10 minutes earlier. Lipika was saying something. “Need time out…good boy…Prakhar…no-nonsense…meet him…Blue-O Lounge…” Mishka knew what she was saying, but she blocked half the words from her speech and the rest, that she had caught, from her memory.
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