Two Threads
I crash through my bedroom door, and I’m sure that some splinters slipped into my arm. With a flick of my wrist, my grimy suit is in my hands. Most times I can blink and I’m stunning as Mumbattahn’s most stylish spider. But this time it feels like the fabric is catching every snag on my body, from my knee to my elbow.
I don’t even take the time to adjust my mask properly before I’m falling out my window, and my bangle is snapping itself around the neighboring cupola. Curiously, my attention is taken by my elbow, where the breeze is biting harder.
Oh, right.
The hole in my suit.
Y/N promised she would stitch it up. Maya auntie has insisted on doing it over the years, but as she gets older, the needle is hitting her finger more often than the fabric. Seeing the many band aids on auntie's fingers, Y/N had asked me to start coming to her instead.
“Is she still buying our story? Was it too far-fetched to say that her stitching is making your suit invincible? ” Y/n has mischief in every tooth of her smile, her eyes focused on the stitch in front of her. My left arm is under her gentle grip, and my right is holding up my chin.
“Oh, not only is she convinced-”
“Really? You’re a terrible liar!”
“You came up with this one!”
“Still, you’re the one that has to sell it..”
“As I was saying before I was insulted,” My accusatory glare evidently doesn’t outway my smirk, as Y/N just continues to smile contentedly. “...she boasts about it all the time.”
Y/n giggles, and my grin is now as big as hers. “I can hear her now.” She says. Finally, I get to put on a show. I raise my voice to a pitch I have mastered: “I told you bhateeja! My stitching is just as strong as your spider silk. Stronger! Perhaps I should have been the Spiderman.”
“Aww!”
“I told her she would have made a great Spiderman, and then she really went off-” she has to steady my arm as I launch into:
“‘I told you! I am not as old as you pretend I am. I could be the Spiderman now!’ and then she tried to jump on the couch! She is 57! And I love her! She can not be risking her knees to jump on couches!”
Y/N’s laugh is going to earn me a scolding from his downstairs neighbors later, but even though I wince at the decibel, I can’t stop smiling.
“Pav stop I- oh crap I dropped my needle.”
I should probably lay off a bit, don’t want to give her stomach cramps. I’ll resign to verbal impressions for now.
“Of course I had to rescue her, I’d never let her fall. And then she said: ‘Perhaps you really are the better Spiderman.’”
“Yeah,” Y/N says. She holds my hand with both of hers, and my chest warms as she moves them close to her own. I can feel the heat of her adoration on my skin.
“The best spiderman.”
Oh. Oh goodness.
I suddenly can’t breath so well.
Something she used to say.
I doubt she’d think it now.
But hearing Y/N say it, it’s almost good enough.
It almost convinces me.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s just, I wish Gayatri was here.”
I think I see Y/Ns smile fall a bit, but I blink and it’s back, just smaller. Her eyes are pooled with grief as she says: “Yeah. Her laugh was my favorite.”
—-----
I have been searching for two hours, and my muscles are no less tense.
“Come on.” I’m shaking them off for the nineteenth time.
My mask is sopping wet, and I’ve been tempted more than once to throw it into the streets.
“Aw screw it.”
I rip free of it, my hair bouncing as it lands around my puffy eyes.
“Great.”
But then my heart stops. Completely refuses to beat.
Because there she is.
In the back of an autorickshaw. Having an animated argument with the driver. I can see her swinging her hands from here. Despite it all I chuckle, of course she’s being stubborn about something she can’t change.
And for what I’m sure is the first and last time in my life I utter: “Thank goodness for the traffic”
The autorickshaw shakes when I land, my hands clamped around the poles. In seconds I’m sliding into the blue padded seats, finally face to face with her.
Her cheeks have red streaks on them, and her wrist is showing again.
I can’t breathe.
“Pa-Spiderman!? You can’t be here!”
But she is already swept up in my arms, I don’t think I can ever bring myself to let go again. My shoulders no longer ache. But my arms have certainly tightened, protecting us from the pain of seperation.
“Sorry sir, but this beautiful woman is coming with me.”
“What! No!” I hope she doesn’t claw out my eyes. Glad I put the mask back on.
“Oh thank goodness.” the driver whispers.
“Hey!”
But she doesn’t get another word out. Instead she’s letting out a gut wrenching scream as we swing through the air.
—----
When I land on the rooftop she quickly loses her balance, and when she falls I yelp, horrified that she might be bruised. ‘More bruised.’ My brain supplies.
I can taste blood.
I’m frantically trying to get her standing again.
“Oh crap, I’m so sorry, are you oka-”
“Don’t touch me!”
The nerves on my cheek surge with an echo.
“Y/N please,”
“No! You don’t get to ask me for anything! You don’t get to show up here, you don’t get to kidnap me. You just don’t get to Pav!”
She is using my nickname, which is good.
“You know I never wanted to push you away. I can’t lose you!”
“But you did.”
My
heart
just
stops.
There is a ringing in my ear, and a pressure in my head, as if a sludge hammer was taken to it's side. All my senses dull as if cushioned by cotton. The whole world is tilting and I feel like I'm slowly falling, my body slanted and sick, a level of glass between me and the rest of the world. Everything is quiet, everything is soft. Until it slowly creeps in, a futile sound in the face of all this nothingness.
I can hear my breath. It’s fast, way too fast.
“I lost you?”
She pauses for a moment, her gaze going to the floor. But then I see resolution creep up into her hardened features. And I have only feared one other thing as much as I do her next word.
“Yes.”
If I don’t hold my chest together, all the shards of my heart are going to fall out.
My mouth is completely dry, but I manage to choke it out. I have to “Don’t say that.”
“What?”
“I said don’t f***ing say that.”
She takes a step back. A look of shock in her face, and my feet follow hers almost instantly. Even like this, our dance is attuned to the other entirely.
“Y/N don’t you ever f***ing say that. My hands are on her wrists, and I’m panting, I’m literally gasping for air.
I-
“I can’t I can’t breathe.”
In almost every one of my moments like this, she has been there. She has been the stabilizing hand on my chest, the rise and fall of my shoulders as they regulate, the oxygen that comes back into my lungs.
And before her it was Gayatri.
“Y/N.”
But now she is frozen, and I can’t figure out why, until my vision focuses enough to see her eyes. They are filled with raw terror. I imagine this is what a tiger sees when it lunges for its prey. And yet, I recognize it.
Y/N’s eyes are just like right before. Right before the fall.
I am acutely aware of how close we are to the edge.
I shouldn’t have picked a rooftop.
I try to pull her into my chest. To pull her away from the danger, but she tugs back.
What?
I can feel her shaking through her wrists, it’s trembling through her whole body.
“Hey let me get you away from the edge.”
She shakes her head.
What is she doing?
I grit my teeth to try and keep from crying. “Y/N please.”
“No.” it barely escapes from her throat. A warbles and warped plea.
“I’m sorry, I can’t-
I pull her away and into my arms. Trying to hold her body close to mine. Usually, she is the only warm thing left in the world, but now I find her cold.
And I hear her crying.
“Hey, hey meri jaan it’s okay.”
“Stop.” It’s another frail little thing that has to drag itself from her mouth. It washes away with the wind.
“You’re safe now, you’re okay. I promise.”
A promise I broke to Gayatri-
I feel her push away from me, the cold of her tears still staining my suit, and realization strikes me like a harpoon through the chest.
She. is afraid. Of me.
“Y/N.”
“Pav, stop.”
She's backing up now, closer to the edge.
"Y/N!"
"Pav just stop!"
Her voice is coming back, but that shred of relief can’t drown out the dread of what is coming.
"I'm fine okay, I'm fine, I just-"
She must see it in my eyes, in how my hands hold themselves open, anticipating.
Because she takes a couple steps to the right. Away from the edge.
And away from me.
I wasn't anitipating the ragged breath of relief that comes out of me.
We stare at eachother a moment. I can hear the honking of the cars below, the yelling of the drivers, the music blasting from a random apartment down the road. I can hear the cows mooing and the call of vendors on the street. And among with all this noise, I'm bubbled in silence. A silence that is teeming with years of a thousand things unsaid. Things I should have said, and things she thought she shouldn't.
Her hair is gently pushed by the wind, her coat tightly wrapped around her shoulders. And with all those unsaid things, I still don't know what words to use now. I take a step towards her and her hand jumps up. And it calmly stays stationed there, a barrier against everything I'm fighting for. She has her eyes closed in concentration, and when she lifts them again to look at me, I feel caught in some unexplainable way.
She finally speaks.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
The look she shoots me is appalled.
“Why do you want me to come back pav?”
“Because I-” I stumble.
She waits.
“Because, because I-” my voice dies out again. I’m panting. Again.
“Because you love me? No that’s not it? Is it because ‘you can’t lose me’? Is it because ‘you can’t lose me like you did Gayatri-”
“STOP!”
“You’ve been thinking about her this whole time Pav, haven't you! And I know, I know I'm a jerk to say it! Because I know that you're hurting and I'm so sorry. I’ve been trying to heal that hurt for years! And I know it takes time, I know it takes time okay! But every moment I’m with you I feel like I’m dying. I feel like I’m competing with someone who's not even here and I’m always losing. And I know that’s not fair and I’m sorry, but I can’t keep getting hurt every day because when I look in your eyes I know you don’t see me. You see some second chance with her, and you see something to be afraid of cause you might mess it up again. I'm your friend Pav! Even if that's not all I am, before everything about us I was your friend, and you haven't treated me like one since the day she died. ”
She looks away, and the glow of the city is on her face. Purples and reds. She is wiping away her snot on her sleeve.
“And the worst part was that it was almost worth it. It was almost worth it because I love you so much.” She puts her hand over her mouth, her tears are lacing through her fingers.
“And if you loved me back maybe I could have kept going-”
“I do.”
She stops.
“I do. Y/N I do. I love you.”
“No, no you don’t. Or you can’t. Not now.”
The silence burrows itself into my bone marrow, it stretches my wrinkles deeper.
We wait.
Her tears are harsh and painful, and I can feel her sobs in my chest, like a worm eating away at my heart. She’s holding herself together, her arms across her chest, her nails digging harsly into her sides, guarding herself from me, from anything that would exhaust her further, from everything, no matter what face it wears. In this moment, she refuses to let any of it near her.
She’s choking it back now, she does not have even a shred of patience left for her tears.
I feel the apathy of broken things. When something shatters and can't be put right. Every fracture has collapsed into a demonstrous, gapping hole, and it leaves me numb.
“Can we just be done Pav? Can you do one last thing for me and just let this be done?”
Maybe for her sake I should let it be over. But I can’t. Everything in my body and soul recoils and then thrusts itself against the idea, screaming and trying to force it as far away as possible. But amidst all this, my heart gently calls out:
“Let her go.”
So I will. I will, and it will be the first thing I do in our relationship that isn’t selfish.
“Okay." I say, and a part of my soul drifts away on the breeze.
"Okay we can be done.”
She looks up at me, her mouth slightly open, as if it’s not what she really wants. But then she closes it, and with the downward tilt of her head, I see her acknowledge it’s for the best. She starts to walk past me to the door.
And I promised I would let her go. So I will,
But…
“But y/n, can you promise me something?” I beg any love she has left for me to allow me this.
She stops, and she turns around, exhaustion in her eyes, but with that soft smile I’ve never wanted to kiss more than in this moment. I should have taken every chance I’ve ever had to.
“What Pav?”
I swallow.
“In…two… in three years, let me come back into your life, and I’ll do it all right this time. I’ll love you exactly as much as you deserve.”
“Pav-”
“Please.”
The breeze slowly drifts across the rooftop.
“Pav I won’t wait for you. I can’t. I won’t let myself.”
“I know, I won’t ask you to. I just ask that you … keep the door open for me okay?”
She looks at me, and I know in that moment she is seeing me completely as I am, every flaw, every vulnerability, and I let her look. I let her decide if she still wants me now, and if she’ll want me then.
I’ve heard that your life flashes in front of you before you die. But at a crossroad like this, we also have miraculous visions. I didn't know that until now, as I watch brilliant colors flicker in her eyes like fireworks, followed by relentless shadows, and cool gray mornings filled with ache, which becomes a soft white glow that nestles in her iris.
She is seeing an entire life. Lives. Many of them.
She is seeing all the turns I can take where inevitably I leave her heart like this again. The streets of time where I leave her on the corner of a moment and never look back.
But with the most sacred hope, I watch the faintest glimmer of light trace her eyes,
And I pray that she saw even just a sliver of a life where I do not turn any of those corners.
And instead walk up to a tiny Mumbattan apartment, where a pocket of light radiates through the streets of this rushing city. Where I can hear the laughter from where I stand. Where she walks out onto the balcony, and sees me smiling up at her, and I receive my reason to live in the grin she gives back. Where she is the beating heart of my entire world.
It is a life where I always return home to her.
And then the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen slowly spreads on her face. It doesn’t reach her tired eyes, but they are holding something else, the love that kept me together all these years.
She nods.
“Okay.”
Then she opens the door.
And walks away.