Page 329 - The World's Best Boyfriend

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An hour had passed and they were still sitting on that bench. Dhruv played

Candy Crush, the phone held upside down, and Aranya stared blankly at the
board. Time crawled at a dastardly pace.
‘Did we decide to sit here and wait?’ asked Aranya.
‘We didn’t but that’s the beauty of it.’

‘You’re such a drama queen, Dhruv. If only you had been brought up on
books rather than a diet of daily soaps there would have been a sliver of a chance

of you beating me.’
‘Says the girl who sent mails to see if it still bothered me,’ said Dhruv.
‘Of course I knew it bothered you. That was the whole point. To make you
feel bad, which you did. See that little paunch peeking from over your belt.

That’s what I gave you.’
‘So you’re saying your effect on me is just a bit of bad cholesterol?’ Dhruv

laughed.
‘You know what I mean. You still are head over heels in love with me and it
crushes you to know that I’m with Raghuvir,’ said Aranya.
A couple of more hours passed and Aranya dozed off on the bench. She woke

up to find Dhruv drinking from a plastic bottle. It looked like Coke but going by
Dhruv’s crinkled face she was certain there were other miscible liquids in the

bottle.
‘What’s that?’ asked Aranya. Her face was imprinted with the pattern of the
bench she had rested her face on. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘You look funny.’
‘Tell me something new,’ she said and snatched the bottle away from him and
put it to her lips. Dhruv counted the seconds. Ten seconds. She gave it back to

him. ‘Alcohol makes everything better. Wonder what took me so long to warm
up to it.’
‘Your tyrannical parents perhaps?’

Aranya nodded and smiled weakly.
‘Thirty minutes more to go. I will just go to the washroom and come. We will
then start the countdown to your defeat,’ said Dhruv.

Aranya waved her middle finger in his face and Dhruv left for the washroom.