12: poisonous

"What do you think of Nila?"

Vijay could see Farah hiding a smile as she walked in front of him. He grabbed her bag and brought her to a halt. "Just say it to my face. Even if you don't like her," he told her. It would crush him to pieces if Nila and Farah didn't get along but at least he had to know.

"Because it won't affect how you see her?"

He wrapped an arm around her neck. "Of course not. I'll consider what you have to say. Don't act as if you've lost value since Nila is here."

She turned around. "I didn't even think that way. But this means that you have! Don't you dare try to replace me or even think of it. I'll hunt you down and make sure you learn your lesson."

"Jeez, Farah. You know I'll never do that. It's not how you've raised me," he said, grinning. Farah's eyes stayed narrowed for a moment longer before she shrugged off his arm and folded her arms across her chest.

"I'll tell you what I think of Nila. First, wipe that disgusting grin from your face. If every time I say her name, you smile like that, it's going to be a problem," she said. Vijay quickly schooled his expression into a curious one. "From the conversation I had with her, I think she's really sweet. You know, not that trying-really-hard-to-impress-his-friends kind of sweet but that's-how-I-am-take-it-or-leave-it sweet. To be honest, I thought you exaggerated her beauty because you are wearing your love-tinted glasses but she is so pretty. I mean, I get why you are obsessed. And I may or may not have caught her eyes being drawn to you like you were the only person in the entire mall."

Vijay beamed, his dimples out under the evening pink sunshine. There was also a matching blush on his cheeks.

"She seems mature, mature enough to handle an immature idiot like you. So you better treat her right," Farah said. "She is good for you, Vijay. Don't fuck it up, okay?"

"That's it? What did you talk about when we were gone? I know it was about me."

Farah feigned ignorance and turned around, continuing on her path to the parking area. "I don't know what you are talking about, Vijay."

"Don't lie!"

"Even if I did know, I can't tell you."

"Can't or won't?"

"Will it make a difference?"

Vijay sighed and walked alongside her with a sports drink in his hand. Every day, it was a ritual to walk her to the parking area every evening and reroute towards the bus stop. Farah tipped her chin towards the bottle in his hand. "Since when did you start drinking that? You don't usually buy that flavour."

Vijay shrugged. "I developed a taste for it."

Farah gave him a suspicious glance before getting in her car and speeding away.

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Vijay was preparing for an upcoming marathon. His coach, for some reason, decided that he wasn't serious about practice and had sent him an updated schedule with a five minute long voice note. He knew that voice note didn't contain anything good.

He looped his arm around the handle and zoomed into the blurred picture of the hand-drawn schedule and routine. He might just have to get a clearer copy of it when he met with him the next morning, he decided, giving up. His coach was in his late 40s — he looked younger than that but acted like a 70 year old man stuck in the past. It took him an 8-month long continuous pestering from his wife, his two daughters and Vijay to switch from his keypad mobile phone to a smartphone. He refused to adapt to the growing technology, making excuses that these advances were nothing but slow poison.

Vijay pulled out his earphones to listen to the voice note, surprised his coach had mastered this feature. When he played it, he wished his coach hadn't known about it. In his gruff voice, his disappointment seeped through, pinpointing all the days he had skipped practice and had half-assed his training. Vijay was accused of not taking anything seriously these days, being playful like 'a monkey let loose out of his cage' and not giving his one-hundred-percent. It ended with a clipped but harsh 'You better show up at 5:30 in the morning, sharp. We'll discuss more then.'

Fuck. He was in trouble.

His legs already felt like giving out at the thought of all the extra laps he'd be doing tomorrow.

Vijay had been so engrossed in his phone that he hadn't noticed passing Nila's stop. He searched for her and found her standing four people afar. She caught his eye but did not spare him a smile. Her lips were pressed into a thin line like she was disappointed with him as well.

He wondered what kind of trouble he had gotten in with her now.

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Icy green flames of jealousy licked her into a state of clenched jaws and burning heart as Nila watched the girl standing too close to Vijay. She could clearly see the strap of her ID card, a disgusting pink, which meant she also went to Joseph's with Vijay.

Did he know her? But he hadn't looked at her even once. That should be reassuring to Nila but it did nothing to extinguish the flames. It rather burned brightly at the sight of the girl inching closer to him, even though there was enough space behind her. There was no need to take that step forward.

Nila gave it a few minutes before she acted upon this strange feeling. She regarded the girl again, watching her like hunting for prey. She had caught that girl glancing at Vijay twice but it could have been mere glances. She needed concrete evidence before Nila acted on her feeling.

Vijay caught her eye but she couldn't return his smile. She was trying not to boil over and scream out a possessive claim over him, ordering the women to step away from him. They weren't dating or official or anything but Vijay was hers... in a way. Her friend. Her companion. Her... guy. This girl had no right to lust all over him in front of her.

And when she caught her looking at him again and shyly tucking in a strand of hair that didn't need tucking, Nila lost it.

She pushed through the people standing in between them. "Excuse me. Can you come over to this side? Thanks," she repeated, letting them shuffle over so that she was close to Vijay. When she was standing just behind the girl, Nila's streak of civility ended.

Nila wedged herself right between them, giving the girl no choice but to take a few steps back. The girl retaliated by glaring at her, opening her mouth to say something vile but she shut it tight when Nila brushed non-existent lint off Vijay's shirt. "Hi!" she said, looking into Vijay's eyes for the first time.

Then she turned around to the girl. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know he was waiting for me on this side of the bus. I got on the opposite side. I hope you don't mind." Her words were too sugary to be not poisonous.

Nila didn't give the girl a chance to respond before she turned her back to her and faced Vijay. "So, what were you so busy looking at on your phone? You missed my text."

"I-I did?" Shock and thin lines of amusement framed his face.

"Yes. Is something wrong?" she asked. Act cool, act cool, act cool, she told herself.

He shook his head slowly. "Nothing. Everything is perfect. Just perfect." At the end of his words, a smile kissed his lips.

Nila hoped he hadn't caught onto her feelings of jealousy. Even if he had noticed it, she prayed he wouldn't call her out on it. Now that she was next to him, green flames turned to vapours, vanishing into thin air and leaving her with an aftertaste of embarrassment for what she had done.

Had she stooped too low? For a man who wasn't even hers? Oh God, she wanted to find the darkest cave in the world and hide in there. It was her first time doing something like this, that too for a man. She kept a tight leash on possessiveness because she knew it was one of her major flaws. Nila had already let it ruin her friendship with someone back in school and she had regretted it deeply. She turned into a bitch if she let it take control of her.

"Nila." Vijay called. And then louder, closer. "Silver."

"Huh?"

"Whatever you're thinking, stop it," he said.

"How do you know what I'm thinking?"

"Your eyes. They are not smiling. They are far away, lost in something that is clearly upsetting you." Vijay pulled out some change when the conductor was near. "I don't like it. Either you talk to me about it or stop thinking about it."

"It's nothing," she brushed it away. She watched him get her ticket quietly, cringing at how she had lost control of herself a few minutes ago.

"It's not nothing. Talk to me. Is it about how you were jealous of the girl standing next to me or about how much I fucking loved it? Because I don't think it's something to be upset about."

Nila hid her face. "I wasn't jealous."

He poked her arm. "Come on, Nila. I told you I loved it. No need to hide it now."

"I don't want you to think I did it for you, you idiot. Feeding your arrogance is the last thing I want to do," she grumbled, looking down. "I can't handle it."

He wrapped an arm around her head, as if to hold her in a headlock, and said, "Too late, silver. But the good news is that I'm pretty sure you can handle it." His arms were warm and sturdy, and he smelled like something that articulated Vijay and only Vijay — playful but bold musk, a bit of homey detergent and protective manliness. The gesture raised some preying eyes in the bus but she didn't mind.

She liked being held by Vijay. When they were at the mall, she had watched him hold Farah like this and had felt a pang of yearning to share that type of closeness with him. Even if it wasn't anything like the bond they shared, this small gesture of his meant a lot to her. Plus, as an added bonus, she was sure the girl from earlier was fuming or dripping with jealousy. Like any human, it felt incredibly good to be the object of envy.

"Would you please forget it? I don't know why I even did it!" she said, half-heartedly attempting to remove his hand. But his hold on her was firm but yet gentle. For this, a voice in her head echoed, you did it for exactly this.

"Nila, can I tell you something?" he asked, his voice coming down from the high that was his relentless teasing. "I am going to be very honest here. I had no idea she was standing there. I didn't even notice her standing and if she did something to gain my attention, I had no clue. Even if I had noticed, I would have turned away.

"When you squeezed into the tiny space between us, leaving your manners behind and spewing sugar venom at her like a little dragon spewing fire, you showed me a side of you that you never usually did. It was raw, real and do you know what I realised? I want more. I want more of your jealousy, your anger, your tantrums, your possessiveness and your stubbornness that you keep bolted shut in your tight vaults. Open them up and show me who you really are— your perceived ugly and pretty. You can be yourself when you are around me, silver. Because no matter what, I'm not going to dislike you."

With a short laugh, he added like an affectionate post script, "I think it's a little too late for that."

Nila didn't respond. She was quiet, letting herself soak in the words that were in stark contrast to what she had been told all her life. They felt foreign and illegal to listen to like the preachings of a prohibited cult but at the same time, it brought a strange comfort. As if she had been returned something that she didn't know had been stolen from her. Her eyes threatened to tear up. She could barely hold it in.

"You will regret it, Vijay," she said slowly, hoping the noise in the bus masked the shakiness in her voice.

"Try me, silver."

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a/n: for once, let the woman be possessive, right? anyway, i've begun stocking up chapters so you might get surprise updates now and then! it will be on random mondays (as per the poll results on my instagram) so keep your eyes open!

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