Page 91 - The World's Best Boyfriend

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Three hours later, he was on the ledge of the hostel roof, soaked in the emptiness

of the hostel campus. Sanchit wasn’t around and the alcohol hadn’t completely
worn off. Every time he closed his eyes, his world started to spin and it felt like
he was falling.
At a distance, he could see the girl’s hostel, and a little blinking light on its

roof. He ran and got a pair of binoculars from his room. It was one of the many
gifts his mother had sent him over the last eight years, one he had kept but never

used. How would she know what he wants? She didn’t. So she sent him a
different gift every year. Once it was a paintbox, in case Dhruv had artistic
pursuits, and the other time it was a mini tool box, if he was into boyish things.
He trained the binoculars in the direction of the girls’ hostel, adjusted the knob

for maximum magnification, and it worked like a dream even though he
ritualistically cursed the binoculars and his mother.

He saw Aranya slumped over the laptop, crying.
Was it because of him? he wondered.
Minutes passed and he kept looking at her.
‘DUDE!’ a voice startled him and the binoculars dropped out of his hands.

Fuck. He watched them fall to the ground below and shatter.
‘Shit!’

Sanchit was standing behind him, leaning on a pillar for support.
‘You are into voyeurism? You earn my respect today.’ Sanchit saluted him.
‘We should invest in a high-powered telescope. I know a guy in customs who

can get us that. Cheap. It even records.’
‘Get the fuck out of my face.’ He pushed Sanchit away and ran down the
flight of stairs to the ground floor where the broken binoculars lay.

As he picked them up, he surprised himself at how clearly he remembered the
day they had arrived at his doorstep, wrapped in a red gift paper and an orange
ribbon.

He had cried himself to sleep that day, imagining his mother with her new
daughter, cradling her, loving her, his half-sister who had a full family while he
rotted with his alcoholic father. Fuck you, Mom.

The binoculars were beyond repair. While he walked back to his room his