Page 331 - The World's Best Boyfriend

remember: DON’T. LET. HER. GO.’

*

Other students had started milling about the lawns, counting time backwards,
nervous about the impending results. A few closed their eyes and said little

prayers. Others talked to their parents, and a few discussed the trend of marks in
the last few years.

Dhruv and Aranya finished the bottle between them and were reasonably tipsy
by the end of it. Enough to know that drinking more would get them drunk but it
was probably too late to stop.

‘Whoever loses buys the next bottle,’ said Dhruv.
‘You mean you. And I thought the stakes were higher, weren’t they?’ asked
Aranya and giggled.

‘Not funny at all.’
And just then, a few people from the administration department walked
towards the notice boards with the rolled up result sheets under their arm. Dhruv

and Aranya sat up. They were sober within a split second. They staggered
towards the boards where the fates of 200 first-year students were stuck with
little pins. A sea of people had descended near the area and swarmed it like

locusts. Dhruv and Aranya were pushed to the back.
Dhruv’s heart pounded and he crossed his fingers. He, too, said a little prayer.
Students in front of them shrieked and lamented with equal intensity and then

moved out of their way. After about five minutes, they reached the board. Dhruv
noted Aranya’s marks first and then his own. It was a close call from the look of
things. They both started tapping their phones furiously, calculating the weighted

average of their marks. A pall of gloom descended on Aranya’s face, a brief
smiled appeared on Dhruv’s.
‘What the—’

Dhruv interrupted. ‘Looks like I won. Stop calculating it over and over again.
It’s 78.34 and 78.31. You have lost by a convincing 0.03.’ Dhruv pumped his
fist.

Aranya double-checked, still incredulous at her defeat at the hands of
someone whom she was labelling as an ape a few moments earlier.
‘What do you want?’

‘Spend some time with me before you go,’ said Dhruv and walked a few steps