Page 140 of Glass Jawed
Advik, thechutiya.
With his smug face, his too-perfect hair, and—of course—a goddamn purplesherwanithat matched hers. It wasn’t justsimilar. It wasdeliberate. Coordinated. Like they’d planned it. Like he had the right.
Fuck. Maybe he did.
His arm was around her waist. His hand brushed her back. And every time he leaned in to whisper something, she laughed. Laughed.
I wanted to bite through my glass.
“Is matching outfits a thing?” I asked Kiki Aunty, trying to sound casual. I didn’t.
She giggled and patted my hand. “No, no,beta. It’s just something this younger generation does.”
She was looking at Ishika and Vikram when she said it. They were also coordinated—gold and cream, traditional and warm. But they were gettingmarried, dammit. They wereallowed.
So why the hell was Aarohi matching withhim?
I don’t know what expression I wore the rest of the night, but I do know my chest didn’t stop burning. Not for one second. Every glimpse of them together chipped away at my already brittle sense of belonging.
But then—then shedanced.
And everything inside me went quiet.
She moved like the music was coded into her bones. Like rhythm was an inheritance. Hair swirling around her face, laughter spilling out without self-consciousness, feet stamping to the beat with a joy I hadn’t seen in months. Maybe ever.
She was so beautiful it hurt.
Not in the poetic sense. In the literal, punch-in-the-gut, breath-snatched-away way.
I stopped drinking my iced tea. I stopped blinking. I didn’t even realize Kiki Aunty had said something to me until she waved her hand in front of my face.
She danced like she’d choreographed it in her sleep. Like she’d been born in the exact bar of that exact beat.
And when the second song came on, sheownedit. Every flick of her wrist, every roll of her hip, every spin of her lehenga was devastatingly hypnotic.
And the best—maybe worst part?
She didn’t even know she was doing it. She wasn’t performing for anyone. She was just...being.
My chest ached. My hands shook. I don’t know how I didn’t fall to my knees with the sheerreverenceclawing up my throat.
Because it wasn’t just attraction. It wasn’t just guilt or yearning or jealousy.
It wasawe.
She is—was—will always be the most painfully, luminously human person I’ve ever known.
And I threw her away. Like an idiot. Like a goddamn coward.
She looked at me one more time—briefly. Right in the middle of the second chorus. Our eyes met, and I swear to God, she almostfaltered. Her lips twitched. But then she swiftly resumed her grace.
And I... I just stood there.
Like a ghost at his own funeral.
The rest of the night was a blur.
A blur of music I didn’t know, songs I couldn’t sing, and so much shouting that I was sure I’d lost 20% of my hearing permanently. ButGod, it was... alive. The energy pulsed through the courtyard like a current. Laughter and movement everywhere, like the whole place had been set to a different, faster rhythm than the rest of the world.
