From Twinkle, With Love by Sandhya Menon (20)

Twenty

Thursday, June 25
My room

Dear Mira Nair,

It makes me laugh now that I thought my life sucked before. Haha, Universe. Joke’s on me. I get it.

Where do I even begin with chronicling this train wreck? Where?

Oh, yes. The path and the footsteps. It turned out those belonged to none other than Sahil, who came to sit by me on the boulder. I scooted over and wrapped my arms around my waist.

“You cold?” He immediately took off his hoodie and set it around my shoulders.

I protested, but only mildly, because it smelled incredible, like lemon and stars and boy. And it was also very, very warm. I pulled the sleeves over my fingers and moved close to him, so our thighs were touching. “Thanks. You’re so warm.”

“Sure.” Sahil put an arm around me for good measure. He should hire himself out as a portable heater for outdoor spaces. “Things didn’t go so well with Maddie?”

I glanced up at him. “You saw that?”

“A little bit of it, not much.”

“Yeah. She wasn’t interested in accepting my apology. I’m not who she thought I was or some such.”

He pulled me closer, and I let my head fall against his chest. “That doesn’t seem very fair. Especially since Maddie has changed so much over the past year.”

I looked at him. “Right? That’s what I said. It’s not just me?”

“Psh, no way. I mean, even I could see it, and I rarely speak to Maddie.”

“Exactly! And she was all, ‘How could you do those interviews with my friends, blah, blah.’”

“Wait, the interviews at the cabin?”

I nodded. “Yeah. You know, the ones you set up?”

“Yeah … but we talked about it that night. I thought you decided not to use those.”

“No, we’re definitely using those. And we’re not editing anything out either, even though I know you told Maddie we were.” I scrunched up the sleeves of his hoodie in my fists.

“But … you wanted to apologize to everyone for the way you acted.”

“I did. I do.” I shook my head. “That doesn’t have anything to do with the interviews, though.”

When I saw his face change, I added, “Don’t worry, most of them told me to air that at the festival. They’re—they’re vicious, Sahil. They’re not like us.”

He was still looking at me, and he pursed his lips.

“What?” I asked, getting a little annoyed at the look on his face. Why couldn’t he just agree with me?

“Maybe one or two of them have had their unpleasant moments. But for the most part? They’ve been great at working with us. You just told me you’ve even begun to consider some of them your friends. I saw you and Victoria out there. I was looking around while you were making your speech. Francesca? Lewis? Taylor? Sherie? They were all so excited and happy for you. I’m pretty sure they all consider you their friend too.”

“So just because they consider me their friend I shouldn’t tell the truth about them? I should be hypocritical?” I asked, feeling my temper rising. “It’s because I’m their friend that I have to do this, Sahil. They need to see themselves unmasked. And you know what? After this? I won’t be invisible anymore. I won’t be that disposable wallflower Twinkle Mehra. Everyone will realize I have important things to say and that they should listen to me.”

“I’m not saying you don’t have important things to say,” Sahil said, his face serious. “And I’m not saying that they haven’t done bad things. Some of them are downright jerks. But do you want to stoop to their level? Do you want to risk all the friendships you have made, all the minds you have changed? Is this the type of art you want to create? Because when we first talked, T, you were all about empowering people. About breaking glass ceilings to champion the underdogs, about speaking pure truths.” He shrugged. “So maybe this isn’t about revenge anymore. Maybe this is about speaking the truth. But still. It … it doesn’t feel pure. It doesn’t feel like you.”

I stared at him, arguments dying in my head. Was he … right? Had I completely lost sight of my art, of why I was doing all of this to begin with? What would I achieve by showing people at their worst? If I wanted to empower people, to make them feel included and seen, this definitely wasn’t the right way.

So maybe … maybe Maddie was right too. Just because those people had lost their heads at the party, just because they’d gotten mad at each other, didn’t mean I should air their secrets and grudges publicly. I thought about all the fights and arguments Maddie and I have had, all the things I’d said about her to other people like Dadi and Sahil and Skid and Aaron. What if someone recorded those and then aired them at the festival for everyone else to see? For Maddie to see? How would I feel?

I put a hand to my mouth. “Oh my God,” I said softly. How had I turned into such a monster? How had I become this person who couldn’t even see what she was doing was so blatantly wrong? And after I’d apologized to Lewis and the others, too.

Sahil smiled softly down at me. “It’s okay, T,” he said. “We all make mistakes.”

“I can’t believe I … I couldn’t even see it, though.” I blew out a breath and looked at the stars glittering in the lake. “I think I was beginning to lose myself there, Sahil.”

“That’s okay,” Sahil said gently. “Because I’ll always be here to find you.”

I looked back at him. At his deep, kind brown eyes. Those bushy eyebrows. That strong, stubble-dotted jaw. “Why are you so nice to me?” I asked, my heart racing. I brought one hand up to stroke his jaw, his chin, his chest and, without even thinking about it, moved even closer to him.

“Because, in case you haven’t figured it out,” he murmured, cupping my face with one big hand. He brought his face closer; his lips brushed mine. “I’m a total fool for you.”

In the distance, I heard, “Yo, Neil! You made it!”

I jumped back. Sahil stared at me, his hand now cupping empty air instead of my face. “Are you okay?”

“Fine!” I said, smiling brightly. “I just … I have to go do something.”

“Right … right now?” His eyebrows were raised all disbelievingly.

“Yes. But! We’ll pick up where we left off, okay? I promise. Sahil, I’m ready now. To take things forward between us.” I held his gaze.

A slow smile spread across his face. “Really?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Really.” I took a deep breath, got up, and handed his hoodie back to him. Going up to Neil wearing his brother’s hoodie just felt wrong.

It was time. It was time to end this whole N thing once and for all. I had made my decision. Part of the shiny, future Twinkle dream or not, Neil wasn’t someone I wanted to be with. He was something I’d thought I desperately needed for a while. I’d needed to believe I was meant for bigger, better things, and the only way I’d known how to do that was to invent this love interest for myself who was bigger and better than me. But now I saw it: Neil wasn’t bigger and better than me. He wasn’t bigger and better than Sahil. He was just him, and we were just us. Sahil was the one for me. Sahil was the only one who made sense.

I had taken only a few steps when I heard crunching footsteps and then Brij was suddenly in front of me. I glanced at Sahil in confusion to find him watching us curiously. “Uh, hey, Brij,” I said. “I’m in a little bit of a hurry now, but we’ll talk later—”

“Twinkle, wait.” He was looking at me weirdly, his almost-black eyes bright and intense. He licked his lips and tucked his hands into his camo jacket. “I have to tell you something.” He glanced at Sahil. “Hey, Sahil.”

“Hey, Nath.”

Brij looked at me again. “Can we just …? Do we have to talk here?”

I sighed and tried not to let my impatience show. This was either about Maddie leaving with Lewis or the film, neither of which were high on my list at the moment. “Look, Brij, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of Sahil. Just … can you please make it quick? I have to go do something.”

He stared at me for another long moment in silence. I waited, my eyebrows up, and then sighed as I tried to push past him. “Okay, well, if you aren’t going to say anything, I’m just gonna—”

“I’m N.”

I stopped breathing. To be more accurate, it felt like the entire world stopped breathing. The wind kept whistling and pushing, but the rest of it—the stars, Sahil, the lake, the earth—everything stilled. After a while, I realized I was shaking my head and forced myself to speak. My voice came out like a croak, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Wait. What?” I stutter-laughed. “That doesn’t make any sense. Your … Your name is Brij.”

“You’re the only one who calls me that,” he said quietly, digging the toe of his shoe into the dirt.

“Right.” I heard the blood whoosh through my ears. “Because everyone else calls you Nath.” Nath. N. How had I not seen that? “And your middle name is …”

“Indresh.”

BINadmiringyou. Brij Indresh Nath. I nodded and swallowed. “You … you like me?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I did at first.” He glanced down at his shoes. “But then …”

“Maddie,” I said. It wasn’t a question. It was pretty clear to see that he liked her. That she liked him, too, even though she had temporarily lost the plot and was going after Lewis Shore for some reason.

He nodded. “I kept trying to make things work with you, wanting them to work because I’d already e-mailed you and you’d e-mailed back and everything. But the more I spent time with her …” He shrugged.

“That’s why you canceled our meet-up at the Perk. And why you sounded so unenthusiastic.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s okay. I was … I was about to tell, um, N tonight that I wasn’t interested. That’s where I was going.”

“Right.” Brij frowned. “But you didn’t know it was me. So … who did you think it was?”

I glanced up the path, where Neil and his swim-team buddies were hanging out, laughing.

“Neil Roy?” Brij’s face was alit with disbelief. “You thought Neil Roy was e-mailing you?”

I glared at him, offended. “You don’t have to sound so surprised. It could happen.”

“Wait.” Sahil was suddenly standing beside us. Ohhhhhh crap. I’d forgotten for a moment that he was listening to everything. Oh, no, no, no. “You had a secret e-mail admirer who you were e-mailing back and forth with, and you thought it was my brother?”

Brij shifted. I saw him in my peripheral vision as Sahil and I stared at each other. “Um, guys? I’m gonna … just … yeah. Okay.” He hurried off.

My heart was sinking, but I rallied. This was bad, but not unsalvageable. I mean, I could just explain. He had to understand. “I did think it was Neil. But I was going to tell him tonight that—”

“You know what?” Sahil scoffed, putting his hands in his hoodie pockets. “I am such an idiot.”

“What?” I frowned and reached for him, but he stepped back. “No, you’re not. Don’t say that.”

“No, I am, actually.” His eyes were full of a brilliant, burning hurt. “Because I thought that for once in my life someone important to me was appreciating me for who I was. I thought you were falling for me, that you saw me just for me, outside of my brother.”

“I did,” I said, my heart breaking at the pain in his voice, on his face.

“No, you didn’t! The entire time, you were comparing me to Neil. The entire time I was falling for you, Twinkle, you were falling for who you thought was my brother. You were weighing your options. That’s why you wouldn’t fully commit to me. You wanted to see if my brother would be better boyfriend material. That’s what it was all about. But don’t you know by now? In the comparison between Neil and Sahil Roy, Neil Roy will always come out on top. He’s smarter, more athletically gifted, Harvard bound. He’s the golden boy. I could’ve saved you a lot of time if you’d just asked me.” He laughed mirthlessly and kicked a rock.

“Stop,” I said, tears filling my eyes. “That’s not what I was doing at all; I wasn’t weighing you against him! Sahil, I was falling for you, too. That’s the realization I was coming to this whole time. That I liked you. I had this idealized, fantasy version of Neil in my head. But my fantasy wasn’t about Neil at all. Okay? It was about me, my need to be more than just some wallflower!”

“But Neil was the one you wanted. I’m not even surprised.” He looked away, out at the lake.

I grabbed his upper arm and he looked back at me. “So what? So what that I thought I wanted Neil? I’ve fallen for you, Sahil. That’s what I was going to do tonight—to tell Neil I didn’t have feelings for him. Because you’re the one I want.”

Shaking his head, he pulled his arm from my hand. “It’s too late, Twinkle,” he said, thrusting a shaky hand through his hair. “We can’t be together now without me constantly wondering if I’m just some—some sloppy seconds. Your e-mail admirer wasn’t my brother. Your feelings for him are still unrequited. That will always, always be between us, like a shadow of him there. You never just CHOSE ME!”

“I’m choosing you now! And my feelings aren’t unrequited.” I tried not to yell, but I was getting desperate. This couldn’t be it. It just couldn’t. Sahil had to understand. “My feelings were never for him, Sahil. They were always for you.”

Sahil shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and began to walk backward, away from me. “Well, I wish you would’ve realized that sooner.”

“Wait, Sahil—”

He turned and was gone.

Victoria tried to rope me into staying late, but I literally felt like my entire body was numb. I could barely talk. So she gave me a ride home instead. She asked me a few times what was wrong, but when I just kept shaking my head, she left me alone and told me to call her if I wanted to talk to her later.

I don’t want to talk later. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I’m a horrible person. I deserve to live out the rest of my days underground, like the naked mole rat that’s absolutely revolting to look at and lives forever in darkness and isolation.

—Twinkle