Page 126 - The World's Best Boyfriend

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Aranya had had her cake, red velvet no less, and she had been waiting for Dhruv

in the canteen for the last three hours, plotting every second of her revenge.
People think of debaters as people with the gift of the gab and spontaneity and
that might be true, but the pioneers are ones who plan every detail to the last
second, who control the entire narrative and sit there smiling as it slowly

unfolds. And with revenge, it just makes more sense to plan it out and
understand the ramifications and how it will rupture the future, than just react in

a knee jerk and not know how it will all turn out.
It was already seven-thirty and the canteen was deserted, the helps were
cleaning the tables, stacking up chairs, and Aranya twiddled her thumbs
nervously. Nervousness is always good, it keeps you aware, she had heard

somewhere. She had done what she was about to do on Skype previously, on a
call, on texts but never while looking into the eyes of a pervert.

It was seven forty-five when she saw Dhruv walk in with Ritika and Sanchit,
his arm firmly around Ritika’s shoulders. They sat on a table at the far corner of
the canteen. She hated Ritika’s hot pants, an anomaly in an engineering college
like theirs, a blasphemy of sorts, and like ‘how-could-she!’

She reminded herself of Dhruv’s words and the missed meals and the little
slips in class participations and gathered them all in a little snowball that she

intended to transform into a fucking avalanche to drown him out.
And it was showtime. It was her stage and the audience was in ridiculous hot
pants. She strode towards Dhruv as Dhruv looked at her walking towards him.

She cocked her head to one side and said, ‘Hi, I want to talk to you.’
‘I don’t,’ said Dhruv and waved her away.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Aranya and braced herself. She was mush inside. It

reminded her of her first debate; she was a nervous wreck, close to a breakdown,
but outside she appeared a rock. She reminded herself. Be a rock. She bent over
and breathed her words into his ear. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to talk?’ If

there’s one thing Aranya could do to seduce, it was to modulate her voice, and
right now she could have been a voiceover artist to leading porn stars. ‘Is that
because I’m ugly? Or is it because you think my intelligence turns you on a