She chuckled softly to herself, imagining the two of them, now as grown adults, building a pillow fort in the living room and eating chocolates after midnight.
Yeah… right. Sapne dekhna band kar, Urvin.
Vyom looked up when he heard her chuckle. He raised a thick eyebrow as Urvin looked at him with a warm, genuine smile.
“Main funny lagda haan tainu?” he asked, his voice low and serious.
She shrugged her soft, bare shoulders.
“Kise time lagda si…,” she murmured with a soft sigh, meaning he used to be fun once upon a time, and went back to sketching on her pad.
Another hidden memory suddenly hit her mind. She had been fourteen years old, and Vyom only twelve, on a family trip to the cold mountains of Kasauli. She and Vyom had a small, private tent to themselves while Papaji and Mummyji slept in the larger one next to them. They had stayed up late because the pitch-black mountain woods terrified her. Even though he was her younger brother, Vyom had bravely taken up the role of her protector. He had held her incredibly closely as they sat up: she settled back between his legs, her soft back pressed tightly against his young, developing chest, his thin but protective arms wrapped completely around her shivering body. In his left hand was a battery torch. In his right, an Archie comic book. He read to her quietly, his adolescent voice trying its best to sound deep, calm, and soothing, keeping her mind away from the scary forest noises, while her fingers helped turn the pages. With each word he spoke into the cold night, she felt warm, comforting tingles dance their way up the back of her neck and across her scalp. He held his elder sister like that for hours until she fell asleep, feeling entirely safe and secure wrapped in his arms.
She had secretly wished, in that purely innocent moment, that one day he would grow up to be her boyfriend, because he was the absolute best person in the whole world. She didn’t understand at the time how deeply impossible, how entirely forbidden, that naive wish was.
Now, sitting at the small, round dining table in Chandigarh, Urvin scoffed aloud at the ridiculous memory. Koi chance hi nahi.
Vyom looked up from his heavy books, raising his brow again.
Urvin looked at him and shrugged as if to say, “Pata nahi ki si.” He gave her a weird, long look before opening his thick physics book and turning the pages.
She may have just spoken out loud to reject her younger self’s silly, innocent thoughts… but deep down, in the quietest, most hidden part of her heart, she really did wish he had never changed. She missed the old Vyom.
Her Vyom.
Deeply.
Just four weeks later, brother and sister had settled into a sort of uneasy, delicate rhythm. They spoke less, which simply meant they argued less. That made the heavy, choking tension in the small apartment a little easier to breathe through.
Urvin came and went quietly. She spent long, exhausting hours in the university studios working on a new material: clay. Sometimes she’d come home looking totally messy and physically drained. Her platinum blonde hair was tied up in a wild, messy bun, and soft smudges of dried grey clay were painted across her glowing face and bare, creamy arms.
