Second, a girl from the bank’s probation batch — Nidhi — who knew what she wanted and said it. Hotel near Shivajinagar, twice, her money the second time. She put me on my back and used my mouth like a tool. She liked it from behind with her chest on the bed and her face turned so she could watch us in the wardrobe mirror. She swallowed once, made a face, drank water, said don’t look so proud. She had a boyfriend in Nashik. I was a season. I did not fight to be more.
Third, the one that lasted — Rhea was not her name; I used a name because the real one still sat in my phone under a family of blue ticks. Eight months. She had a small apartment in Aundh, two buildings off our lane, which had made the whole thing feel like a rehearsal for being caught. She liked morning sex before office. She taught me the patience Sneha had not had the words for. She would hold my head between her legs and count, actually count, until she shook. She did not like anal and said so at once. She liked to be told she was pretty and hated to be told she was mine. She ended it in a café because she was moving to Bengaluru and because I had never offered a sentence that sounded like a future. I had not cried. I had paid the bill.
The fourth was a colleague’s cousin at a wedding in December, a store room, standing, her lehenga around her waist, my hand over her mouth. Five minutes. No names worth keeping.
I told her all of it.
Aparna listened the way she listens to a child explaining a fever — without interrupting the first pass.
Then the questions started, some of them almost sweet, some of them with no blouse on.
“The first one. When you went too fast. Did you apologise or did you hide.”
“I hid.”
“Coward. Did she finish at all that night.”
“No.”
She nodded, as if a mark had gone into a register.
“The bank girl. The mirror. You liked watching yourself.”
I felt my ears. “I liked watching her face.”
“Don’t be poetic. You liked the picture. It is all right. The mouth thing — you learned it there or you learned it on the internet.”
“Internet first.”
“I knew. The collection was not shy.” A small smile. Then, bolder, without blinking: “Anyone ever put you in their mouth until you forgot your own name, before me.”
The before me went across the sofa like a hand.
“Nidhi. Once. Not until I forgot.”
“So I am on the list.” She drank water. “Good. Size — don’t look at the mute TV. Did any of them say anything. Too much. Not enough. Be honest.”
“One said I was thick. She said it like a complaint and a compliment together.”
“Which one.”
“The eight months.”
“She was right.” Said like weather. Then, worse: “Did you ever think of someone else while you were inside them.”
I looked at her.
She did not help me.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Who.”
“Not a name. A… type.”
“Type.” She tasted the word. “Older. Heavier in the chest. A waist that has had a life. Don’t protect me from a type I already saw in your folder.”
I did not deny it.
She asked if I had ever been with two people in a day. No. If I had ever paid. No. If I had ever been in love or only in rooms. Rooms, I said, and then, because the khichdi was sitting wrong, I said I had been fond of the eight months in a way that frightened me because it still was not enough to follow her to Bengaluru.
