Stories Of Young Love by Abhilash Gaur Page A

wasn’t a trophy
catch like my ex but it might be easier keeping an affair with her
under wraps.
    When that class
ended, I murmured to her, with the right amount of hesitation
thrown in: “Heard about you and him”. She nodded fixing her gaze in
her lap where the fingers of her cupped hands were intertwined.
“Terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to poke.” I was watching the girls
on the bench before us to make sure they overheard nothing. I was
venturing on very thin ice.
    She didn’t look up
and I said, “You probably heard about me too?” She nodded again,
but more easily. She was rubbing her thumbnails together. This time
I murmured so softly I didn’t hear myself above my beating heart:
“We could be a pair now, what do you say?” The same nod and a
beautiful, wide grin.
    I felt very bold
after that. My heart was still thudding but like a hunter’s after a
chase, not his prey’s. “Put your hand inside the shelf,” I said.
Then I reached inside and held it. It was the seal on our compact.
Nobody saw us because we were in the last row by the wall, and
anyway, what’s wrong with two students reaching inside their desk
shelf to pull out notebooks or stationery?
    Her skin was
moist, her arm limp. I knew I had the upper hand in this affair,
but the joy I had expected was missing. How do I describe that
feeling? Say, you are out in the market with time to kill and you
buy a shirt because it has a 65 percent discount on it ... It’s not
a shirt you want particularly but you take it because it’s
available cheap, and the movies are worse and cost more. What do
you do after the shirt’s been packed and the bill paid?
    After the first
rush, I wanted to call off my offer. Hey, I had hoped to sit and
swap notes with my friends, not commit myself to a girl. But the
gloom passed like a sugar crash and when the last bell rang, I
asked her whether she would come to train in the evening. Her thin
skin and visible veins were the fruit of diligent middle-distance
running while I was a promising cyclist.
    The rain had
stopped but the sky was overcast. “I will try,” she said
doubtfully. “One more thing,” I said, “let’s keep this
top-secret”.
    “Yes,” she
said.
    ***
    I was so
excited I went back to school earlier than usual in the evening.
The ground was wet, there was no sign of the coach and my scooter
was the only vehicle in the park. Another spell of rain seemed
unlikely and I was hopeful of her coming. But I couldn’t just hang
around in the park, so I changed into my shorts and started warming
up as usual. There was water everywhere so I jogged around the
basketball court. Every time I faced the vehicle park, my eyes
darted there in hopes of seeing a blue moped, and when I faced away
from it my ears strained to catch the tut-tut-tut of the small
engine.
    I was doing my
stretches when the coach arrived. She was going to see a friend and
had just looked in, not expecting anyone to be around in that
weather. She looked surprised and pleased to see me. “Do you intend
to stay on? I don’t see anyone coming to practise today,” she said,
“besides, the ground is too wet to cycle on”. I said I was feeling
very rusty after two months away from the track and wanted to work
out in the gym. “All right,” she said, “I will leave the keys with
you, and you can hand them over to the guard on your way out”.
    I didn’t want any
keys, and was thinking of pushing off myself, but had to lie to
explain my presence in school.
    She drove off in
her little white Suzuki and I was again all alone on the court. How
long could I go on stretching? How long could I pretend to be
drawing in deep breaths. I could have brought a ball from the store
and practised shots, but my mind was fixed on her and, truth is I
couldn’t and wouldn’t have done anything else.
    Finally, after
many ‘last minutes’, I was walking in the direction of the park to
hand over the keys when a moped rounded the corner at speed. I
looked up