Chapter 2: Forbidden Desires in the Night
The floorboard in the hall creaked, a familiar, traitorous sound. Dev froze, one bare foot suspended in the air, his heartbeat a frantic drum against his ribs. He waited, listening for any shift from behind her door. Nothing.
He had told her he was going to bed hours ago. He’d heard her door click shut, the soft rustle of her settling in. The flat had fallen into a silence so deep it felt like its own kind of noise. He’d lain in the dark, the diagram of the heart’s valves scrolling behind his eyelids, each flap morphing into the sway of her hip against the kitchen counter.
He exhaled slowly, lowering his foot. The wood was cool. He moved forward, a shadow in the dim light from the streetlamp filtering through the living room curtains.
Her door was ajar. Just an inch. She often left it like that, she said, for the cross-breeze. He saw it as an invitation, or a test.
He pressed his eye to the gap.
The room was bathed in the soft blue glow of a reading lamp on the nightstand. Priya was propped against a pile of pillows, a stack of files and a calculator balanced on her bent knees. Her reading glasses were perched low on her nose. She was frowning at a spreadsheet, the tip of her pen tapping against her teeth. She looked professional, focused, utterly separate from the mother who made poha. This was the woman who managed the accounts for three local businesses, who had kept them afloat after his father was gone.
Dev watched the concentration on her face. He watched the way a strand of silver-flecked hair had escaped her bun and curved along her jawline. He watched the rise and fall of her chest under the simple cotton nightgown.
His own breathing synchronized with hers. Out. The primal rhythm of life. He knew the mechanics of that, too. The diaphragm contracting, the intercostal muscles, the exchange of gases in the alveoli. It was all so clinical. And yet here, in this quiet hallway, it was the only liturgy he believed in.
She sighed, a sound of pure fatigue, and pulled off her glasses, rubbing the bridge of her nose. She looked toward the door.
He didn’t move. The darkness of the hallway hid him. He was a statue.
Her gaze drifted past the door, over to the framed photograph on the nightstand. Dev knew it well. The two of them on a beach in Goa, fifteen years ago. He was fifteen, gawky and grinning, arm slung around her waist. She was smiling too, but her eyes looked tired even then. She picked up the frame, her thumb tracing the glass over her own younger face. A long, silent moment passed. Her expression was unreadable, a mixture of fondness and something else—a hollow yearning that made Dev’s stomach clench.
He wanted to step in. To tell her he saw it, that he felt that same hollow thing. To promise he would fill it.
She set the photo down, turned off the lamp, and slid down under the covers. The room was plunged into near darkness, shapes dissolving into shadows.
He waited. He counted her breaths, each one deeper and slower than the last. When he was sure she was asleep, he pushed the door open just enough to slip inside.
The air smelled of lavender from her laundry and, faintly, of the almond oil she used in her hair. It was her sanctuary. He was an intruder.
He stood at the foot of the bed, a trespasser in a sacred space. The details from the viva, the sneers of his classmates—it all melted away, leaving only the sound of her sleep. This was the only place where the world made sense. Where he wasn’t the Corpse, or Mama’s boy, or a failure. He was just her son, in the dark, keeping watch.
A car passed outside, painting a brief stripe of light across the wall. It illuminated her face, peaceful in sleep, the lines of worry smoothed away. She looked younger. She looked beautiful.
A need, sharp and physical, clawed up his throat. It wasn’t lust, not in any simple way. It was a desperate, all-consuming hunger to belong to this peace, to be part of this silent tableau forever. To not be on the outside looking in.
He took a step closer. The floor was silent here, carpeted. He could see the curve of her shoulder above the blanket. He imagined resting his head there. It would be so easy.
His hand lifted, of its own volition. He wanted to touch that strand of hair, to feel its texture. To have something of her, a tangible connection she hadn’t actively given.
“Hmmm?”
The sound was soft, muffled by sleep. He snatched his hand back, clutching it to his chest as if burned.
She stirred, turning onto her side, facing him. Her eyes didn’t open. “Dev?” she murmured, her voice thick with dreams. “Is everything okay?”
He couldn’t speak. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.
“Did you… did you have the dream again?” she asked. The childhood question. The nightmare about falling he used to have.
He seized the excuse like a lifeline. “Yes,” he whispered, the word cracking.
“Oh, beta.” She shifted, pulling the blanket back slightly in a sleepy, instinctive gesture. An invitation from another time. “Come. Sit. Just for a minute.”
She thought he was ten. She thought he was scared of shadows.
He should leave. He should run back to his room and lock the door and drown in his shame.
He sat on the very edge of the mattress, the springs groaning softly beneath him. The warmth from her body radiated toward him. He stared rigidly at the faint pattern on the rug.
“Your viva,” she mumbled, already drifting again. “How was it?”
“Fine. I knew it all.”
“Of course you did.” A smile was in her voice. She reached out, her eyes still closed, and found his hand. She gave it a limp, comforting squeeze. Her skin was warm and dry. “My clever boy. Now sleep. Big day tomorrow.”
She held his hand for three more seconds. Then her grip went slack, her hand falling back to the sheets as sleep reclaimed her. Her breathing evened out.
He sat there, paralyzed. The point of contact tingled, a brand. He was simultaneously a child being comforted and a man committing a profound violation. The two feelings twisted together inside him, inseparable.
Finally, he stood. His legs were weak. As he turned to go, his eyes fell on the nightstand, on the photo. On the happy, uncomplicated past. On the beach.
His gaze dropped to her pillow. The stray strand of hair lay against the white cotton like a stroke of ink.
Before he could think, he bent. He plucked the single hair from the fabric, so gently it was like lifting a filament of glass. He wrapped it around his index finger, feeling its impossible fineness, its strength.
He slipped from the room, back into the cool darkness of the hall. He didn’t go to his bedroom. He went to the bathroom and locked the door. Under the harsh fluorescent light, he unspooled the hair from his finger. He looked at it, this pathetic, stolen token. His proof.
He opened his wallet, a worn leather thing. Behind a faded receipt, he placed the hair, carefully smoothing it flat. He closed the wallet. He pressed it against his chest.
In the kitchen, the faint scent of the promised aloo gobi still lingered from dinner. The silent flat waited for morning. He had never felt more alone, or more painfully connected. He had his answer for the hollow yearning. It was wrong. It was his. And it was the only thing he had.