Akriti’s eyebrows rose.
Sonam’s voice was flat.
“Say the rest, Sanjay Bhaiya.”
Sanjay swallowed.
“Once or twice I wanted to watch Sonam. Once or twice Akriti. Not a plan. A thought I should have killed. The gym at home. Raja lifting. Vivek running. And then the girls coming through with water, with a towel, with a question, and my eyes going where they should not. I told myself it was one second. It was not one second.”
Raja made a sound.
“If we are doing this,” Raja said, “then I also wanted to watch Akriti. Vivek’s sister. Not always. Enough that I remember a particular afternoon and a particular lock of hair stuck to her neck. I wanted the door to be more open than it was.”
Vivek stared at Raja, then at the sheet, then at Sonam as if the sheet could not save him.
“And I wanted to watch Sonam. Raja’s. I thought about her in that bathroom the same way I thought about Akriti. Not as much. Enough that I am a hypocrite for shaking on a promise this afternoon.”
The three of them sat naked with that piled between their feet.
Puja broke the girls’ side because someone had to.
“Truth. Home gym. You three with shirts off like it was an accident every evening. I watched. Then I went to my room and I fingered myself imagining Sanjay. Not a poetic crush. Fingers. His mouth in my head. The way he wiped sweat. More than once. If you want a number I don’t have a decent one.”
Sonam’s face was burning. She did not hide her body. She hid nothing else either.
“Same gym. Raja with the cheap dumbbells. The sound. The smell of that oil he used. I watched from the kitchen side like I was checking dal. Then I lay down and I used my hand and it was him. Sometimes only him. Sometimes the idea of getting caught. I am saying this naked so I cannot pretend later it was a small thought.”
Akriti leaned her head back, eyes on the ceiling, then on Vivek.
“I hated that treadmill and I still stood there. Vivek, you. Arms. That concentrated stupid face. I went to the bathroom, sat on the floor, back to the door, and I fingered myself imagining you coming in instead of knocking. A few times. Not once. Don’t look proud. It was messy and I washed my hands like that would delete it.”
She flicked a glance at Sanjay, then Raja.
“And yes. Not only mine. One time the picture slipped. Sanjay. One time Raja. I stopped it. I also remember it. That is the confession. We are all disgusting together. Congratulations.”
The tube light hummed.
Six naked people. Three brothers who had admitted to getting hard at a bend, a neckline, a bucket behind a door. Three sisters who had admitted the gym and the locked room and the hand between their legs with a Bhaiya’s name in the dark. And the extra rot: each man wanting, once or twice, a sister who was not even his to watch.
Sonam let out a long breath.
“So last night was not a meteor. It was homework we never submitted.”
Akriti looked around the circle, at cocks that had not stayed polite through the speeches, at her own bare skin, at Puja’s mouth.
“Game’s over if you want it over. If you don’t, somebody say what the next sentence is. I am not spinning a bottle to find out we already used up the truth.”
