“You told our brothers.”
“Yes.”
“You let them—” Akriti could not finish it. She laughed once, ugly, shocked. “Vivek? You let Vivek be in that room and then you let him hug me like nothing. I asked him about a pickle cupboard.”
Sonam’s hands were shaking.
“Raja Bhaiya knows I—” She stopped. Started again. “He knows the work. He knows the photos. Does he.”
Puja’s silence was the answer.
Sonam sat down on the ground. Not gracefully. Just her legs giving up the argument. Akriti did not sit. Akriti stared at Puja as if Puja had become a stranger wearing a sister’s face.
“We were leaving it,” Akriti said. “That was the plan. No more nights. No more men who pay to forget our names. You said after this month. You said we were done.”
“I meant it.” Puja’s voice broke and she hated that it broke. “I still mean it. Last night I was stupid and I was broke in my head and I said yes to a thing I should have burned. Then it was them. Then I could not unmake it. I thought if I hid it, the hiding would rot us. So I brought them here to meet you like a coward who still wanted a hug first.”
Sonam wiped her face with the heel of her hand, furious at the tears.
“They will look at me and see a booking.”
“They will look at you and see Sonam if I have to stand in front of their eyes and hold them there,” Puja said. “Listen. Please. We wanted out. That part was real. Now they know. Now the worst person who could know already knows, and they are still standing on that grass instead of running to tell a colony. That can be a knife. It can also be cover. Brothers who know, and who don’t get to pretend we are only study and train tickets.”
Akriti shook her head.
“Don’t dress it up like support so you can sleep.”
“I’m not sleeping,” Puja said. “I’m asking you not to decide the rest of your life in one minute on this field. I told them we want to stop. I told them they don’t own that information. I told them if you walk away they walk away. Lunch. That is all I am asking. Eat. Let your hands stop shaking. Evening we talk properly. No grass. No audience of pigeons.”
Sonam looked at Raja across the distance.
Raja was not smiling. Raja looked like a man who would accept being hit.
“He’ll never talk to me the same way.”
“Then he will have to learn a better way,” Puja said. “Or you don’t call him Bhaiya again. That is your right. I’m not selling you a happy ending in ten sentences.”
Akriti pressed her fingers to her eyes.
“I want to scream.”
“Scream later. There are children.”
A breath. Another.
Sonam stood up. Her voice was raw.
“Lunch. Not because I forgive you. Because if I stay on this ground I will say things I can’t take back. Evening we talk. You don’t get to joke it away at the table.”
Akriti nodded once, sharp.
“If Vivek looks at me like last night is a story he gets to keep, I’m leaving the restaurant.”
“I’ll tell him,” Puja said. “I’ll tell all of them.”
They walked back.
The boys saw their faces and did not ask, in the path, what had been said. They did not need to. Shock had a shape.
Puja spoke before anyone else could ruin it.
