Borrowed

by Archana Nair

In this story by Archana, a young woman meets someone after going through a breakup. Confused about naming the kind of relationship they share, the two people draw comfort from their company in the short time that they borrow from each other’s lives.

We met at my friend Supriya’s surprise birthday party, Harry and I. He wasn’t someone who caught my eye at first glance.

It was the day I had finally packed up and left my boyfriend. Because my boyfriend wouldn’t let go of me, I had to do something drastic to put an end to the one-year-old relationship. I had taken a pair of scissors, cut my hair and left the house finally on a Saturday night.

I sat in Supriya’s living room with uneven hair and a glass of whiskey. My bags were tucked away under her bed. Supriya was the only one who knew what I was going through and she was the only one who hadn’t commented on my hair.

When I heard Harry tell someone that he was from Goa, I had looked up. I didn’t know anyone who hailed from Goa. I only knew the kind that went to Goa for a vacation.

He was sipping on a bottle of beer and talking to Anjali, Supriya’s sister. My ex-boyfriend had always told me to dress and carry myself like the graceful Anjali, whom he probably had a crush on ever since they were kids. Right now, I wanted to hurt her somehow, so I took my glass and cut them mid-conversation.

‘You know I never thought that there were people who lived in Goa.’

‘Well, born and bred.’ He looked at me amused.

‘Well, you sound interesting.’ Even I cringed at my flirting skills.

‘Well, with hair like that, you are the most interesting person in the house right now.’

So he had noticed me.

When Anjali moved away from us, we talked more freely. He was here with Supriya’s boyfriend and didn’t know anyone, so I introduced everyone to him with funny one-liners.

‘Ajay – drinks till everything is over. Meera – starts dancing after two pegs, Sachin – drops the girls home…’

‘What do you do? What’s your one-liner?’

‘Umm, Anusha, cuts her own hair.’

‘Brilliant, cheers!’

We lost the count of drinks after a while. I talked about everything but my breakup. He told me he was a sucker for love poems and I told him that I had stopped reading anything new after I turned twenty.

‘What do you mean? You read the same books over and over?’

‘Yeah, all the time.’

I even showed him my withered collection of Jane Austen, from under Supriya’s bed.

‘Because it’s a risk picking up a new book, what if it isn’t good enough?’

By the time I ended up in his bed at 3 am, I knew everything about him. He was interested in Commerce but his parents had forced him to do Engineering. His longest relationship was in college with his classmate, who left him because he was insensitive. He had worked at IBM for two years, gone to Germany for a year, came back, left the job and was now heading Marketing at a startup in Bangalore for three years. He hated Bangalore and wanted to do something in the tourism industry in Goa.

In return, I traded him my bio. Every relationship, every job, every friend of mine. But not about the boyfriend whom I had left that night. I erased that year from my life in that narration to Harry, like it never happened.

When Harry told me about how he had lost his pinky toe in a fight at school, I showed him the scars on my stomach from when I had burned myself as a kid.

He then went down on me. I faked an orgasm quickly because I didn’t want him to hurt his neck. When he got inside me, I moaned louder and faked another orgasm, which made him come quick.

I thought I would leave after we washed up in the bathroom, but then we got to talking more and started discussing our dreams.

He had many and I had none.

‘But there must be something you have always wanted to do.’

‘No, I like my job, it’s easy on my brain. I don’t like challenges.’

‘No Anusha, there must be something other than your job. Writing, travelling, painting, something.’

‘Ok, there is something, but don’t laugh.’

Putting my head on his pillow, I raised my legs up in the air into a perfect headstand. But after three seconds, I fell back on his bed, giggling.

‘I like turning upside down.’

He was stunned for a minute. ‘Yoga, you like yoga.’

‘I have never tried yoga. I just like turning upside down and hanging in there.’

‘Oh my god, I have never met someone who knows exactly what to do with her life.’

I must have fallen asleep before him, because I didn’t remember at what point we stopped talking and passed out. I woke up to my phone ringing at ten in the morning. It was Supriya.

‘Where the fuck are you?’ She was screaming into my ear.

‘On my way home. Sorry.’

‘Fuck, Anu I was scared, I thought after the hair, you had cut your veins or something.’

Funny thing, I had been missing since two, but she called me eight hours later.

‘On my way.’

I collected all my things and left Harry without waking him. When I saw his flatmates sitting in the living room, I smiled out of courtesy and ran out to catch my Uber.

‘Where did you go yesterday night?’

I put my head on the table after drinking three lemonades.

‘You went back to him, didn’t you?’

I felt like everybody was on loudspeaker, I could hear even the maid’s voice from next door over Supriya’s questions.

‘He is toxic, stop seeing him.’

‘It’s over, it’s over. Finally, it’s over. Just find me a place to move this weekend.’

Just thinking about finding a new place and moving in with my two bags made me feel exhausted. I didn’t have the strength to set up another house or paste the photos that I had torn out the previous day on a new bedroom wall.

‘I will, after we fix your hair. God, you look wild.’

***

I met Harry frequently after that. We didn’t have any sex though. Sometimes he kissed me mid-conversation, and when I looked at him surprised, he would just shrug and change the topic.

Sometimes I went to his place with a book and read all night while he worked on his laptop. Other nights, we got drunk and told each other stories from our childhood.

His Goan household wasn’t much different from my Kerala one. We both loved our fish deeply fried and chicken in a thick gravy. He preferred a masala gravy and my favourite had coconut and cut raw mangoes in it.

But every conversation of ours ended with his plans for converting his farmhouse into a backpacker’s hub where he would hold workshops of every kind. Every week his plans to create a perfect travel escape for people got clearer and clearer.

‘What if you get a clean four-foot-long white canvas and paints of every colour? Would you paint all day?’

I nodded.

‘You will love it there, I can’t wait for you to visit.’

I never told Supriya anything about all this. Because I didn’t know the kind of friendship this was. For some reason, I couldn’t imagine Harry in the same setting as the rest of my friends.

He had just come one night into my life and chosen to stay for a while. I had the feeling that he was temporary and that I had to return him to the universe someday, because there was no space in my life for him. I had a great set of friends who were ready to help me get through my break up the second I turned to them. I knew a few guys who would definitely hit on me, now that I was single.

But I chose Harry. I chose to spend every evening after office with him. I turned up every weekend at his place and slept on his bed next to him. While I enjoyed my temporary limbo, I kept everything else on hold – dealing with my breakup, finding a house, or even getting agitated about my boss’s complaints that I was distracted at work.

‘I think you should start dating,’ Harry said one day when we were trying out different types of tea in an expensive café in Indiranagar.

‘Why?’

I was sipping a hot cup of chamomile tea with lotus petals.

‘It’s healthy for you. You make people around you happy.’

‘Noted.’

He waited for some kind of retort from me, but I sat silently sipping my tea.

‘What are you thinking right now?’

We did this all the time, trying to get inside each other’s head. I would just turn suddenly and ask him what was on his mind and he would give me the funniest answers.

‘I am thinking, this tea is shit.’

‘Yeah, let’s get out of here, but I was serious about the dating bit.’

***

My instincts were right, Harry had decided to quit and start his business in Goa. He had been on the fence for some time but one evening, he told me he had made his decision.

‘What? You quit your job already? Wow!’

‘Yeah, yesterday you were like, what’s stopping you, and I realised nothing was, so I did it then.’

He had been craving a milkshake and texting me about it, and I had replied, ‘What’s stopping you?’

I looked at him in horror and then hugged him.

The day he left, we had been friends for three months. I didn’t drop him to the airport or anything. I said goodbye at his doorstep where we took different cabs in different directions. He kissed me for a full minute though. I felt weirdly happy for him. There are few people who are capable of creating something and fewer who realise they are capable of it. Harry was among them. I had spent the night before at his place for his farewell party, after which I had helped him clean up and pack. I had to pack and move some of the stuff that I’d left in his room over the last few weeks. I had been living between Supriya’s spare room and Harry’s bedroom all this while.

The moment I reached Supriya’s room I threw my bags and fell asleep on the couch.

When I woke up in the evening, I missed him. I couldn’t just walk up to his house with a book anymore. I tried to read on the couch, but there was something wrong.

My phone piped and I picked it up to check the message.

‘Landed. Don’t hang in there upside down, Anusha, get a move on.’

I smiled at his text and realised I needed to move out and then maybe buy some new books.

Archana Nair writes short stories when she is not working or day-dreaming. A BWW fellow and Dumphukt workshop alumni, she writes stories that are closer to home for her and depicts her Malayalee upbringing.

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