It was Aryan's fault.
This was the conclusion Vijay arrived at approximately two hours after the fact, lying on his hostel bed and staring at the ceiling with the particular expression of someone whose evening had taken a turn they had not anticipated and were not entirely sure how to process.
Aryan's fault. Completely. Entirely. Without question.
Because it had been Aryan who had shown up at the lake.
It had started innocently enough.
After the auto dropped them back near college, Vijay and Ishani had walked slowly neither of them in a hurry, the evening still warm and the conversation still going and somewhere near the college gates they had run into Aryan and Priya, who had apparently escaped Sara's dinner celebration on the grounds that Sara had ordered enough food for approximately fourteen people and needed time to negotiate with the restaurant.
Aryan had a bag.
A bag that clinked.
"Celebration," he said, by way of explanation, holding it up. "Cultural fest. You two won, technically, even though it wasn't a competition. I feel this deserves acknowledgment."
"We didn't win," Ishani said. "It wasn't a competition."
"You got a standing ovation," Aryan said. "From Sara, but still. It counts."
Priya had looked at the bag and then at Vijay and Ishani with the quiet, assessing expression she used when she was deciding whether to intervene. She had apparently decided not to, because she said nothing and simply fell into step beside them.
They had ended up back at the lake.
All four of them, on the grass near the water's edge, in the full dark now with the city lights reflecting on the water and the stars above the old trees and Aryan's bag open between them containing two bottles of something that he described as "light, celebratory, perfectly appropriate" and that tasted, Vijay thought, like bad decisions dressed up as good ones.
Priya had one small glass and then quietly stopped. Aryan had his usual amount, which was apparently calibrated to exactly the level where he became funnier without becoming incoherent. Vijay had more than he planned to the evening was warm and the company was good and the lake was beautiful in the dark and it was easy, in that kind of evening, to lose track of how many times a glass had been refilled.
And Ishani...
Ishani, who was usually so precise about everything, who timed her sleep and knew the campus by heart and had an opinion about the correct way to hold a book Ishani had also had more than she planned to. He had noticed this gradually the way her posture had eased from its usual careful straightness into something more relaxed, the way she had laughed more freely at something Aryan said, the way she had looked at the lake with an expression that was even more unguarded than usual, if that was possible.
At some point Vijay was not entirely sure when Aryan and Priya had wandered off along the path around the lake, Aryan pointing at something in the water and Priya following with the patience of someone who had accepted that evenings with Aryan frequently involved following him to look at things in water.
And Vijay and Ishani were alone.
On the grass. Near the water. In the dark.
The way they had been earlier in the evening, except that earlier in the evening everything had been clear and golden and certain, and now everything was dark and warm and slightly...tilted. The pleasant, disorienting tilt of an evening that has gone somewhere unexpected and doesn't particularly want to come back.
They were talking about something.
Vijay was not, afterward, entirely sure what they had been talking about. Something about books it was always something about books or maybe it had been about the performance, or about the lake, or about the particular quality of the Pune night that made everything feel like it was happening inside a story rather than in ordinary life.
Whatever it was, they had been talking and laughing quietly, sitting close together on the grass closer than they usually sat, the careful distance they usually maintained somewhere dissolved in the warm dark and at some point the conversation had slowed and they were not talking anymore. Just sitting. Just looking at the water.
And Ishani had turned to say something.
He had turned to say something at the same moment.
Their faces were close. Closer than they had been even during the lift sequence the two beats, the amber light, the held breath. Closer than the backstage corridor. Closer than the overhang in the rain.
Close enough that Vijay could see the lake lights reflected in her eyes.
Close enough that when she turned and he turned, the space between them was barely space at all.
And then in the warm dark, by the silver lake, with the city lights soft behind them and the stars above the old trees it happened.
He was not sure who moved first.
He would think about this afterward, lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, and he would not be able to answer it with certainty. He thought maybe her. He thought maybe him. He thought maybe neither of them moved at all and the distance simply stopped existing the way distances sometimes do when two people have been circling something long enough.
The kiss was soft. Brief. Warm.
It lasted perhaps three seconds.
And then all at once, at exactly the same moment, as if they had rehearsed this too they both came slightly more awake. The pleasant tilt of the evening became, briefly, a sharper thing. The kind of sharpness that happens when something real cuts through the warm blur and says pay attention, this is happening, this is real, this is
They pulled back.
Not dramatically. Not with alarm. Just back. The small, careful distance reinstating itself between them like a sentence that has been interrupted and is not sure how to continue.
Silence.
The lake moved gently in the night breeze. Somewhere along the path, Aryan's voice drifted back saying something about the reflection of a star, probably, or a fish, or something equally unlikely to require this much commentary.
Vijay looked at the water.
Ishani looked at the water.
Neither of them looked at each other.
The silence lasted approximately seven seconds, which was, Vijay felt, both very short and approximately four thousand years long.
It was Ishani who spoke first.
"I..." she started.
Then stopped.
Vijay waited.
"I should..." she tried again.
Another stop.
He looked at her sideways. She was looking at the lake with the expression of someone whose usually reliable internal vocabulary had temporarily gone on leave without notice. Her dupatta was slightly askew. There was a strand of hair near her cheek the usual strand, the one with its own opinions and she was not pushing it back, which meant some part of her was occupied with something other than the usual management of her appearance.
She looked, he thought, slightly flustered.
Ishani. Flustered.
He would have found this charming under any other circumstances. Under these circumstances he was too busy being flustered himself to appreciate it properly.
"I think I..." he started, helpfully.
She turned and looked at him. He looked at her. For one moment they both just looked. Two people who were very good at being honest with each other, staring at each other in the dark by the lake, both of them completely, entirely at a loss.
Then Ishani said very quickly, in a tone that was trying for composure and achieving perhaps sixty percent of its goal "I just remembered I have an assignment due tomorrow morning."
Vijay blinked.
"An assignment," he said.
"Yes," she said. "A reading response. For Professor Mehta. It's due at nine and I haven't I need to" she was already gathering her dupatta from the grass, already reaching for her bag, already doing the things people do when they have decided to leave a situation and are committed to leaving it quickly. "It completely slipped my mind. Which is unusual. I don't usually anyway. I should go."
She stood up.
He looked up at her.
"Ishani," he said.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she said. Quickly. Slightly breathlessly. With the expression of someone who had a very specific destination in mind and was going to reach it if it killed her. "Tell Aryan and Priya I said goodnight. The auto stand is just I know where it is. Goodnight Vijay."
And she walked away.
Quickly. With the controlled, purposeful speed of someone who was not running because running would indicate something and she had decided nothing was being indicated.
He watched her go.
The night swallowed her figure after a minute the familiar blue dupatta, the familiar walk, the slightly-faster-than-usual pace and then she was gone around the bend in the path and he was sitting alone on the grass by the lake with the city lights reflected on the water and Aryan's voice drifting from somewhere and the very specific silence of someone who has just been kissed and then immediately abandoned to an extremely questionable assignment excuse.
He sat there for a moment.
Then he looked at the lake.
Then he lay back on the grass and looked at the stars.
Then quietly, helplessly, into the warm Pune night he started to laugh.
He lasted approximately four minutes after Ishani left before he also remembered something urgent.
"I just " he said, to Aryan and Priya who had returned to find him lying on the grass laughing at the sky. "I have to there's a thing. A thing I forgot about. Very important thing."
Aryan looked at him. Then at the path Ishani had taken. Then back at him.
"A thing," Aryan said.
"Urgent thing," Vijay said, already standing up, already reaching for his bag.
"Incredibly urgent," Aryan said, in the tone of someone who understood exactly what was happening and found it magnificent.
"Completely urgent," Vijay confirmed, not meeting his eyes. "Tell Sara I said actually don't tell Sara anything. Goodnight."
And he walked away in the opposite direction from Ishani, because his hostel was that way and also because following her would have been he did not complete this thought. He just walked. Quickly. With great purpose.
Behind him he heard Aryan say to Priya, in the satisfied tone of a man whose evening had exceeded all expectations
"Worth every rupee."
In the auto back to the hostel, Vijay sat with his bag on his lap and looked out at the passing Pune streets and thought about three seconds by a silver lake and the specific, warm, completely certain feeling of something that had been building for twelve days finding a single unguarded moment and happening.
He thought about her voice saying goodnight Vijay. Quickly. Breathlessly. With sixty percent composure.
He thought about an assignment for Professor Mehta that he was approximately ninety percent sure did not exist.
He thought she ran.
Ishani Sharma, who never ran from anything, who recalibrated under pressure and answered questions without raising her hand and said true things directly and memorized last stanzas without trying she had absolutely, completely, at full speed, run away.
He found this he examined his feelings on the subject carefully he found this deeply, entirely endearing.
He also found, if he was honest, that he had also invented an urgent thing and walked away quickly, which meant he had also run, just in a different direction, which meant neither of them had handled this with particular grace and they were both, apparently, equally capable of being completely undone by three seconds by a lake.
He sat with this information.
Then he smiled.
Softly, privately, out the auto window at the passing Pune streets.
Tomorrow, he thought, was going to be interesting.
In her hostel room, Ishani did not open her diary.
She sat on her bed in the dark not turning on the lamp, not changing, just sitting and thought about whether there was, in fact, an assignment for Professor Mehta due tomorrow morning.
There was not.
She was aware of this.
She pressed her face into her pillow for approximately ten seconds.
Then she sat back up.
Her heart was doing something loud and complicated and entirely outside her usual management. Her dupatta was still slightly askew. The strand of hair was still near her cheek. She pushed it back now carefully, automatically and sat in the dark and tried to organize her thoughts with the usual precision.
The thoughts declined to be organized.
She thought about three seconds. About the dark and the warm and the lake lights in his eyes or had she imagined that? She had not imagined that. She remembered it clearly. The lake lights. The warmth. The particular feeling of something that had been inevitable for twelve days finally, briefly, happening.
And then her own voice, saying words about an assignment that did not exist, with the composed certainty of a woman who was absolutely, completely, entirely making it up on the spot.
She had run.
Ishani Sharma. Who had walked into Professor Mehta's class late and taken her punishment with quiet dignity. Who had sat in poetry corners and told the truth about her father's book and said thank you like she meant it from somewhere deep. Who had written fourteen pages of honest feeling into a brown diary and not crossed out a single word.
She had invented an assignment and run away from a kiss.
She pressed her face into her pillow again.
Longer this time.
When she sat back up, something had shifted the embarrassment still present but something else alongside it now. Something warmer. Something that was, if she was honest with herself and she was always honest with herself, eventually something that felt a great deal like happiness.
Three seconds.
Soft and warm and brief and real.
She looked at the dark window. At the Pune night outside. At the stars she could just see above the hostel roof.
She thought tomorrow is going to be complicated.
She thought I am not sure I mind.
She lay down in the dark and looked at the ceiling and let the warmth stay, just as it was, without organizing it or examining it or filing it into the correct category.
Just warm.
Just real.
Just his voice saying her name in the dark, and the lake, and three seconds that had changed the particular quality of everything that came after...
She closed her eyes.
Smiled once.
Softly. In the dark.
Like someone who ran away from something and is already, quietly, thinking about turning back around.....