Page 41 - Till the Last Breath . . .

‘For two years …’

Two years? Creep! Or … really sweet? Dushyant had turned beetroot red.
He couldn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he gazed at his own weathered palms.
He looked vulnerable, embarrassed and needy. Maybe even a little high.

Kajal let a little smile slip. Dushyant caught that and blushed a little more.
‘So, tell me, what do you read?’ Kajal asked. Two years?

Dushyant smiled, and his eyes lit up like the fourth of July. Quite frankly,
his choice in books scared her.

They dated for eight months. They had come a long way from the time they
had first met in the library and had talked about books, his waning

obsession with weight training, her growing dissatisfaction with her career
choice, his problems with his parents, her loving sisters, and last but not the
least, his enduring fixation with her.

Dushyant was never the perfect boyfriend. Her friends hated him with all
their heart, but not as much as her sisters. Kajal was tall—almost 5’5”—and

never had a hair out of place. One could imagine a news presenter for an
idea of what she looked like. Her clothes, understated, were always
perfectly matched. She wasn’t fond of bright colours and never aimed to

stand out. She aimed to soothe. Her fair skin, the defined nose and the
confident walk meant business. She wasn’t a pushover.

Dushyant was abrasive. He was quarrelsome. He was possessive. It took
Kajal one month to realize that Dushyant was beyond obsessive, almost to

the point of being schizophrenic. He drank too much, he smoked too much,
and he loved her too much. He had waited two years to tell her he loved her.

He swore he would spend a lifetime doing it. Sometimes, it was sweet. It
looked to her like he cared; on other occasions, she was scared. Not scared
that they would break up and never see each other again, but scared of what

he would do to her. Within a month, she had changed into someone she
didn’t recognize any more.

At first, Kajal used to like the little tabs Dushyant kept on her. He used to
get jealous at the mention of her ex-boyfriends, fume at her for spending

more time with her friends, chide her for staying out till late, and ask her to