Page 123 - The World's Best Boyfriend

‘That’s a short story, not the long one.’
‘I banged the door on it,’ said Dhruv.
‘James Joyce’s Ulysses was 265,000 words and that was a long story and

you’re shit but yours had just eleven words. I’m sure you can do better. Let me
guess. Was it around the time your parents got separated?’
‘A little before that.’

‘You fit every cliché in the book, man. It’s like watching a bad soap and you
are the intense, brooding hero with a heavy backstory. You’re an insult to every
normal kid from a broken family.’

‘Fuck off.’
‘Fine, fine. Tell me. Stop being a girl!’
Dhruv waved his middle finger in Sanchit’s face. He didn’t say a word for the

next ten minutes or so. Sanchit sat there calmly, staring at the wall in front of
him, and Dhruv envied him for his stillness. Dhruv was always restless, bristling
under his skin, always looking for confrontation, excitement, disappointment, he

wanted life to fly at him, keep him occupied, unlike Sanchit who could sit and
do nothing and be nothing.
‘I had to miss a cricket match,’ Dhruv finally started.

‘I’m listening,’ said Sanchit.
‘I was seven. It was a Sunday morning. They had been fighting a lot. I knew

they wouldn’t talk about it if I stayed in the house, if I could just make them
laugh or cry or be concerned or anything that would keep them together. I
wanted to stay in the house.’
‘What about the match?’ Sanchit asked.

‘My friends kept shouting from below, “Dhruv! Dhruv! We have a match, we
have a match,” and that I couldn’t ditch them at the last moment. They were

right. I had led them to the finals of the local tournament and deserting them
would have meant sure loss. They were sulking outside. So I slammed the door
on my wrist.’
‘And?’

‘The doctor said it was a hairline fracture. My parents sat there crying for me,
together. Seeing my hand in the cast, the opponents agreed to postpone the finals

till my wrist healed, and my team was ecstatic.’
‘Not sure if you’re a sorry bastard or an evil mastermind.’
‘Let’s go outside,’ said Dhruv when a few more people walked into the