And gradually, we fell apart.
My mother left when I was nine.
She didn’t just walk out of the house. She walked out of our lives. And when she left, she took my father’s soul with her. He had never been the same since.
Before that, he used to laugh loudly and shamelessly. He used to pick me up and throw me into the air until I screamed. He used to sit beside my bed and tell me stories about the first plane he ever built, about how the sky once terrified him too.
After she left, the laughter vanished. So did the warmth. He buried himself in work, and I grew up in the shadow of machines and achievements that could never hug me back.
At the club, my phone felt heavier than it should have. I pulled it out without thinking, my thumb moving on its own. I scrolled through old photos, old messages, old proof that we had once been a family.
Then I found it.
Our last family photograph.
It was my birthday. I was standing between them, grinning too widely, holding a cake with badly shaped candles. My father had one hand on my shoulder. My mother was smiling, not the politekind, but the one that reached her eyes. She looked happy and alive. My chest tightened as I stared at the screen.
After that day, everything changed. She took her suitcase and left. She didn’t look back, not at me, not at him and not at the life she was abandoning. It was as if she had simply erased us.
She forgot she had a son and a husband. But before walking out the door, she knelt in front of me. She cupped my face in her hands, her fingers trembling, her eyes wet. “I’m helpless,” she whispered. “I don’t have a choice, Saurav.”
I never understood what that meant. I still don’t. But I remember standing there, too young to stop her, too small to follow her, watching the woman I loved disappear down the driveway. And in some ways so did my father.
I locked my phone and closed my eyes, the music from the club thudding through my chest. People were laughing around me, living, touching, moving forward. And I was stuck between who I was and who my family had wanted me to be.
I sighed, shaking my head, forcing myself to stop thinking about the past. It was useless digging up ghosts that refused to stay buried. I signaled the bartender, grabbed the drink he slid toward me, and gulped it down in one go, the burn in my throat the only thing loud enough to drown my thoughts.
“Another,” I muttered. Actually, more than another. “Keep them coming,” I told him, because tonight I felt low in a way alcohol was made for. Before he could respond, a sharp, piercing voice cut through the music.
“How much?” the woman snapped. “Fifteen hundred rupees for this small glass?”
I glanced sideways as she held the glass up between two fingers, frowning at it like it had personally offended her.
“This is too little!” she gritted her teeth, slamming it down on the counter. “I’m not paying for this.”
People around her turned to stare. The bartender stiffened, clearly used to drama but not particularly fond of it. I took two steps closer, studying her face and then realization hit.
“Kavya?” I blurted.
She shot her eyes toward me. First there was irritation, then confusion, and finally recognition settled in.
“Saurav?”
“What on earth are you doing here?” I asked, my gaze running over her petite frame. Kavya was… cute. Soft. A little chubby, a little small, nothing like my usual type. Yet there was something about her that always pulled attention without trying.
She wore loose jeans and a crop top, her hair tied in a messy ponytail. If I hadn’t known her age, I would’ve thought she was still in high school.
She stepped closer, her head barely reaching my chest. “Who on earth are you to ask me that?” she chirped, forcing cheer into her voice. “Of course I’m here for fun.”
Her breath reached me before her words finished. “You’re drinking something very toxic,” I said quietly. I could smell it on her.
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t remember asking you to be concerned about the toxicity of my alcohol.” She turned back to the bartender. “Another one.” Before he could move, he looked at me. I met his eyes and mouthed, Water.
He nodded.
Kavya took the glass he gave her and gulped it down, then paused. She stared at it, confused. “Why does it taste normal?” she frowned.
“Everything tastes normal once you’ve reached the peak of alcohol toxicity,” I said as I pulled out a two-thousand-rupee note and placed it on the counter. “Keep the change.”