Zara broke the silence. “They’re sharing him.”
Ayesha tried to shrug, tried to sound neutral. “Maybe he’s just a placeholder.”
Zara gave her a look. “With tongue?”
Ayesha gripped her notebook until the spirals dug into her palm. The tal bit in, and still, she didn’t let go.
Because if she did, sothing else might snap.
She looked away from the scene - from Marisol’s easy smile, from the shadow of Sarah’s kiss still lingering in the air - and stared down at the blue-and-gold school logo on the tile floor.
And that’s when the voice in her head finally scread what she didn’t want to hear.
You chose wrong.
She’d told herself it was strategic.
On Day One, when she and Bharath had shared a cab from the airport - all nerves and new beginnings - he’d been sweet. Endearingly awkward but still charming. The kind of guy who listened. Who laughed at her jokes like he actually ant it. Who looked at her like she mattered.
For a mont, she thought maybe…
But then Day Two happened.
Zara’s snide comnts. The disapproving once-over. “You’re talking to him?”
And Ayesha, like a fool, had laughed. Had shrugged. Had distanced herself. One step at a ti, she edged toward the cool crowd. Toward safety. Toward what she thought success looked like.
It worked. Sort of.
Her rise had been fast. Her na floated around the freshman girls like a brand. People invited her to everything. Upperclassn flirted. Guys looked. Girls imitated.
But it was never free.
The parties were exhausting. The guys - older, bolder - often treated her like decoration. Their hands slid too low, too often. They slled like vodka and entitlent. And when she’d flinch or pull away, they’d laugh like she was a silly little girl.
She justified it.
It’s just part of the ga.
This is the price. Everyone pays it.
Just stay sharp. Stay cold. Stay wanted.
But each ti she laughed off a grope or let a hand linger too long on her waist because the guy was a senior with access to off-campus housing, sothing inside her shriveled a little more.
She hadn’t had a real conversation - a real, kind mont - since August.
Since that cab ride.
With him.
She glanced back across the hallway.
Bharath was saying sothing to Marisol, and she laughed again - that effortless kind of laugh that sounded real, like it had breath behind it.
And it killed her.
Because Marisol wasn’t the nice girl from orientation. She was sharp. Sarcastic. Territorial.
Yet with Bharath, she was soft.
Gentle.
Almost… protective.
It didn’t make sense.
Marisol should’ve been the one with the upper hand - the one using him.
That’s what Ayesha had assud all along.
But now? She looked like she would bite anyone who tried to hurt him.
And Sarah?
Sarah had looked like she could have anyone - anyone - on this campus. But she had co back, in the middle of a school day, just for a kiss.
Ayesha shook her head.
It wasn’t fair.
Bharath hadn’t changed a thing.
Still the sa quiet boy with the low voice and that weird, deliberate way of speaking. Still the sa eyes that looked straight at you like he wasn’t distracted. Still soft-spoken. Still humble.
He didn’t chase clout.
He didn’t try to be cool.
He just was - and now?
Now he was famous.
And her?
Ayesha had reshaped herself into the perfect campus butterfly - stylish, witty, part of every important circle. She was visible. She was relevant.
And she was so damn tired.
Zara’s constant edge although she was a true friend. The backhanded complints from the others. The fake friendships that lasted only until soone prettier entered the room. The way people only wanted to talk to her when there was a party coming up or a guy needed soone on his arm.
She hadn’t told anyone about the ti a grad student had cornered her outside a frat house and whispered sothing disgusting in her ear, his hand gripping her wrist too tightly.
She hadn’t even processed the way she sotis laughed when older n leered - because it was easier than starting a scene, easier than being “the girl who made drama.”
She used to love talking.
Now it felt like every conversation ca with a filter and a price.
That taxi ride in August?
It had been the last ti she spoke freely. With soone who looked at her without calculation. Without agenda.
She rembered what Bharath had said when she told him she was nervous about GT.
“You’ll be great. You have that energy. Like... you light up the room.”
He ant it. Not like a pickup line. Just - ant it.
She rembered laughing. Genuinely. No performance. No armor.
And then she gave that up.
For what? For Zara?
For frat mixers and shallow eyes and that horrible, constant ga of “Who’s looking at whom”?
Bharath had kept being himself.
And now?
Now he had real friends.
People who wanted him - not because he was convenient or hot or popular, but because he mattered to them.
And she had Zara.
Who was currently speculating in a half-loud whisper whether Bharath was “a really polite wizard” or just “so kind of sex alien from Chennai.”
Ayesha didn’t respond.
Because her throat was thick with sothing sharp and miserable.
She looked at Bharath again.
Not his body - though now that she noticed, he was fit. Not bulky, not showy - just lean, cut. Quietly powerful. Like he’d always had it but never showed it off.
He didn’t need to. Because he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. And sohow, that had beco magnetic. The universe had rewritten the rules, and no one had told her. She had followed the script: flirt, play hard to get, stay pretty, stay visible.
But Bharath had thrown out the script and written his own part - and now he was living it, while she was stuck onstage reciting lines she didn’t believe in anymore.
Zara snapped her fingers in front of her. “You good?”
Ayesha blinked. “Yeah. Just… tired.”
Zara scoffed. “Girl, sa. I need, like, three Red Bulls and a good facial.”
Ayesha forced a nod.
But her mind was far away. Sowhere between August and now. Sowhere between the sweet boy in the cab and the legend walking the halls with two won who looked like magazine covers and treated him like he was worth the world.
She had thrown him away. And now? She was watching everyone else pick him up. That was it. She couldn’t take this anymore. Who the hell did he think he was? Ti to let that nerd know his true place in the real world.
The hallway had barely begun recovering from The Kiss - Sarah’s volcanic display, the girl-on-girl smooch, and the casual "I’ll be back for lunch" that had broken at least three freshn’s brains.
People were still murmuring. A guy by the bulletin board was whispering about “tantric coding sessions.” A girl near the stairwell declared, “This is better than anything on Dawson’s Creek.” A crowd had ford - not intentionally, but magnetically, orbiting the gravity field around Bharath, Marisol, and the now-departed Sarah.
And in the center of it all?
Bharath, standing slightly dazed, lips a little swollen, shirt a little rumpled.
Marisol, arm hooked through his, smiling like this was all exactly as it should be.
Then-
“You should be ashad of yourself!”
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