Chapter 1: chapter 1

Prologue“Come home now!” Maya rolled her eyes at her mother’s hissed command. “Amma, give it a rest, no? I just wrote my last exam today. God knows when I’ll see my friends again.”“Hopefully never,” Amma snapped back. “Useless good for nothing crowd.”Maya groaned. Behind her, she could hear the party heating up. She wanted to be in there living her life not out here arguing with one half of her helicopter parents. “Amma please,” she said, tersely. “Appa and you have already got my entire life planned out. You’ve left me no choice in my future. At least let me have the present. Let me have tonight.” Grim silence met her outburst. “If you are not home by midnight, I will tell Appa to lock you in your room till your wedding is over.”“Fine. Whatever.” Maya ignored her mother’s threats. They weren’t new and they rarely panned out. “I’ll see you at home.” She disconnected just as her friend Kanak burst through the front door of the nightclub they were at. “Maya Papayaaaa,” she crooned, high as a kite. “What are you doing out here? You’re missing all the fun. Come on, we’re doing tequila shots.” Maya let herself be dragged into the commotion and chaos that was their MBA batch’s graduation party. The last one year she’d spent in the residential program had been sheer heaven. It had been the only chance she’d had to live away from her parents before they bartered away her freedom in the guise of an arranged marriage. She lined up with the rest of the gang and slammed a shot back, screeching like a banshee just like everyone else. If she was going to have just one night to live herself, then she was going to make the absolute most of it. “Easy there, tiger,” Ved, one of her batchmates laughed as he took the empty shot glass from her. “No, no, no.” She waggled a finger at him. “Tonight is not about taking it easy. Tonight is about madness.”“Alright then.” He gave her an amused smile. Ved was the responsible one in their group. The one who was going to change the world with the NGO he was setting up post their graduation.“Salud!” Maya exclaimed, swigging another shot. She was starting to feel vaguely queasy now, but it wasn’t going to deter her from drinking her fill tonight. The floor tilted alarmingly beneath her feet and she grabbed Ved’s arm to steady herself. “Stop moving,” she grumbled at him when the room continued its little disco whirl around her. “I’m not the one moving,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist and dragging her to the closest booth. He hailed a passing waiter and got her a bottle of water. “Don’t want water,” Maya slurred, pushing it back towards him. She was so sleepy. She let her head fall down on the table in front of her. “Maya?” Kanak slid into the seat across from her, squinting at her. “Are you okay, honey?” “I am fine,” Maya declared, her forehead still plastered to the table. Kanak laughed. “I guess that’s the end of the party tonight. Who is our designated driver?” “Me,” Ved held a hand up. “I’ve had just one beer. Where’s Karam?” “Probably screwing someone in the bathroom,” Kanak said, looking thoroughly out of it. “And Vikram?”  “There.” Kanak pointed. Vikram seemed to be dirty dancing with a chair in the middle of the nightclub. Did he know it was a chair? Maya peered through the smoky darkness but couldn’t make out much more. Maya groaned and slid under the table until her head was resting on Ved’s lap. He was so comfy, she thought sleepily.Kanak laughed. “I’ll go get the rest of them and then we’ll head out.” “What’s the time?” Maya asked Ved’s groin. He ran his fingers through her hair, unconsciously soothing her. “Around one in the morning.”“My mother is going to kill me,” she told his crotch. “Lock me up forever.”His fingers stilled. “You’re joking right?” “No.” She shook her head, the motion making everything spin. “Oh no,” was all she managed before she threw up all over Ved’s crisp black formal pants.“Oh shit!” he yelped, jumping up. Her head dropped from his lap and bounced on the hard seat. “Oww!” she moaned, mortification pulsing through her. Kanak was back with Vikram and Karam just in time to witness her humiliation. “Oh no!” Kanak hauled her up and dragged her to the ladies restroom to clean up. She caught a glimpse of Ved running into the men’s for the same reason. “Leave me here to die,” Maya moaned as Kanak rinsed her face and got her to clean up as best as she could. Kanak giggled, more than a little tipsy herself. “It happens to all of us,” she said. “You’ve puked on a guy’s crotch too?” Maya peered at her blearily.Kanak paused. “No. Maybe that happened only to you.” Maya groaned, burying her wet face in her hands. “Come on. Time to go home.” The two of them weaved and stumbled back to where the guys waited for them. Vikram was sitting on Karam’s lap, arms wrapped around him as his head drooped with sleep. Maya darted a look at Ved’s crotch but the beauty of black pants was that you couldn’t see wet patches. Thank God for small mercies. “Come on,” Ved said, authoritatively, the only sober one there. “I’ll bring the car to the front.” The cold night air hit her face like a slap, making Maya feel slightly more awake. An arm wrapped itself around her waist. She looked to the right to find Vikram smiling sweetly at her.“What?” she asked.“I love you Maya,” he smiled broadly. “So much.”“I love you too,” she said, automatically. “You’re one of my best friends.” “Not like that,” he whispered, putting a finger to his lips. “I looooveeee you.”Maya knew this conversation was dangerous. She was engaged to someone she’d never met and Vikram was a friend, just a friend. Ved’s battered old car pulled up in front of them. “Come on Vik,” she said, gently. “Let’s go. You take the front seat.” She opened the passenger door and shoved him in so she wouldn’t have to sit with him at the back. She didn’t want to hear any more drunken love declarations. Especially ones that could go nowhere.Kanak, Karam and she slid into the back seat, Maya in the center. She tilted her head on to Karam’s shoulder, letting the cool air from his window calm her.“All okay, Maya?” Karam asked, his deep baritone breaking through her muddled thoughts. She nodded, sleepily. “I’ll miss you guys.” He kissed the top of her hair. “We’ll stay in touch,” he promised softly. “We’re family remember?” And they had been. For the last one year, the people in this car had been her everything. Her friends, her family, her world. And now, they were all going to scatter across the world. Different jobs, different lives. Everything was going to change. “All okay at the back?” Ved asked, his eyes on the rearview mirror. Kanak mumbled incoherently back. Beside him, Vikram snored, his head falling forward on to his chest. Maya shut her eyes, waves of sleep pulling her under. A split second, that’s what it felt like. She heard a scream, a loud screech, a strange grinding sound.And then…nothing.Chapter OneFive years later…“Maya!” She turned at the sound of her shouted name, her weak foot twisting. Maya grimaced as she struggled to find her balance. Embarrassment washed through her as she realized she was going to fall in the foyer of her office building. Pain shot through her as her ankle gave way and she fell forward. She landed with a loud clatter and thump, her head colliding with the wooden floor. She heard people shout out and run towards her. Maya kept her eyes tightly closed. Maybe she could pretend to be unconscious. At least that way she didn’t have to face her colleagues. For now. In this moment. In this current moment of acute humiliation…And then someone stepped on her hand and she shrieked. So much for pretending to be unconscious. “Maya?” That same familiar voice asked. She cracked one eye open and stared into a face from her past. And not, necessarily a welcome face.“Ved?” she asked, disbelievingly. She struggled to sit up and her old friend put out a hand to help her. People started dispersing the minute they realized she had someone to help her. Self centered bastards, she thought irritably. She let Ved pull her to her feet and immediately fell against him as her ankle gave way again.“Shit!” she swore, sweat beading her forehead. “Are you okay?” Ved asked. “Should I take you to the hospital?” She shook her head, limping over to a worn out couch in the corner of the office lobby. “Just need to take the weight of it a bit,” she gasped, collapsing on to the hard cushions.Ved came to sit beside her, his worried gaze taking in her no-doubt pale face and pain filled eyes. “What are you doing here?” she asked, abruptly, suddenly unable and unwilling to put up with this intrusion from the most painful part of her past.In the aftermath to the accident, they’d rallied and held onto each other like drowning people with a liferaft but then the ugliness that followed had them slowly drifting apart. Except for Kanak, who’d hung on to Maya like a tick on a dog. Nothing could convince her to drift away.Ved inhaled, his still impressive chest puffing out. At over six feet two, built like a long distance runner and with the clean chiseled lines of his classically handsome face, Ved turned heads wherever he went. Even when he looked distant and aloof like he did now. “Aayushi called.” It felt like time screeched to a halt. “Aayushi called you?” Maya asked carefully, still unable to believe she’d heard those words coming out of his mouth.He nodded, grimly. “She wants us all to come to their family vineyard in Nashik. They’re having a memorial event for Vikram.” Even hearing his name said aloud had tears rushing to her eyes. Vikram, sweet, sappy Vikram, was never going to smile at them again, make terrible jokes or even flirt like an idiot with anything and everything that walked by. “She would like everyone he loved and everyone who loved him to be there.” “Even us?” Maya rasped, her throat feeling like it had been shredded by slivers of glass. “Even us.” Ved looked down at his hands, his face haunted. Maya knew how difficult this must be for Ved, even more than the rest of them. He was the one who had been driving that fateful night and he was also the only one of them who’d walked away unscathed. At least the rest of them had walked or as in Maya’s case, limped away. Vikram…Vikram was gone. Their lives had all fallen apart after the accident, in different ways but fallen apart nevertheless. Maya looked at Ved who was still staring down at the ground, his face drawn in tight lines. “Why are you here?” she asked him. “You could have just called or Aayushi could have. I’m pretty sure she has my number.” “I told her I’ll reach out to you first,” he said, his voice low and tense. “I don’t know if I can do this, Maya. To go back and face what I’ve done…I don’t know if I have it in me.” “It wasn’t your fault,” Maya said, automatically. “You weren’t drunk or anything. The tyre burst, Ved.” “The tyre was frayed and old because I didn’t have the money to have it replaced. I don’t care what the police report or anybody says, I know it was my fault. And I am the only one who didn’t suffer for it.” Maya thought he’d probably suffered the most but she kept that thought to herself. She glanced down at her watch. If she didn’t get to her desk in the next ten minutes, her manager was going to slap a penalty on her. “Are you going to go?” she asked Ved. He didn’t look at Maya. His gaze stayed firmly planted on his feet. “Ved?” Maya prompted. “Will you come with me?” he asked her in return. “We could drive down together.” It was very hard for Maya to meet his hopeful gaze. “I don’t know, Ved. I’m not sure if I want to dig through those painful memories again. I’ve moved on.” “Have you, Maya?” he asked, softly. “Have you really?” Maya’s phone pinged and she looked down at it so she didn’t need to meet his eyes. It was a furious message from her manager. Shit. She was in trouble. Again. “Will you at least think about it?” Ved asked. “I need the moral support. I need my friend.”Maya glared at him. “Cheap shot.”Ved laughed, the lines of stress on his face easing and making him suddenly look years younger. “Let me know alright?” Maya nodded. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t go but she could think about it.Ved stood up and Maya got to her feet too.It was time for her to go up and face the music. It was going to be a very unpleasant start to the day.She stayed in the foyer a few seconds longer watching her friend walk away. And then slowly, very slowly, she limped towards the elevator and made her way to the tenth floor. “Finally,” her manager snarled when he caught sight of her. “Do you think you’re too good to turn up for work on time?” Maya looked at her tiny, crowded table with her ancient desktop system and then at Mr. Desai’s furious, red face.With a sigh and an apology, she sat down to her reality. The one the accident had carved out for her. The one she knew she could never escape.Â