PROLOGUE
PROLOGUE — 3:22 AM
Viddhi
At 3:22 in the morning, while the rest of the world is busy celebrating a new year, I tell a boy I have never even seen that he is my boyfriend.
Outside my hostel room, music is still thudding through the corridors. Girls are screaming, laughing, and dancing under cheap fairy lights strung across the courtyard. Somewhere downstairs, someone is setting off a firecracker that sounds like a gunshot. The new year has arrived in the loudest way possible.
And I am sitting cross-legged on the stairs, whispering into my phone.
I should be downstairs with my friends.
I should be celebrating, dancing, instead I have been declining their calls like anything and arguing with a boy in Delhi about who is supposed to propose.
“You do it,” he says.
“No. You do it.”i countered
“I never propose first.” he said smugly.
“Well, this is my first relationship. I’m not proposing.” i said as if it was sensible point to stand on.
His laugh crackles through the speaker, warm and infuriating and so familiar that it no longer feels strange to hear it.
Three weeks ago, he was just a profile picture attached to a research competition I joined because I was bored.
Now he is the first person I want to talk to when something good happens. The first person I want to call when something goes wrong. The last voice I hear before I sleep.
I glance at the digital clock across the room.
3:22 AM.
My heart is beating so hard that I can hear it over the static of the call.
“Okay,” I say.
He goes quiet.
“So it’s 3:22.” i say
“Hmm?” he says anticipatingly
“You and I are girlfriend and boyfriend.” i say as if its a fact.
There is a pause.
Not the awkward kind.
The kind that changes your life.
Downstairs, my friends are still dancing or playing games or something. The world is still celebrating the beginning of a new year.
But it feels as though something much quieter and much more dangerous has just begun.
Because I have fallen in love with a boy I have never even met.
A boy whose hand I have never held.
A boy whose face I know only through photographs and not through memory.
A boy who somehow feels more familiar than people I have known for years.
I do not know how long will last.
I do not know what my parents would say.
I do not know whether life will allow us to keep what we are starting tonight.
All I know is that when he says my name, the fear inside me softens.
And for the first time in my life, being loved feels less frightening than being alone.
Few months earlier, I joined a research competition because I was bored during vacation.
I thought I was looking for a teammate.
I had no idea I was building the first great love story of my life.
