Chapter 26: chapter 26

SRUTHI“How are you holding up?” Gabe asks pulling me into a hug.“Not great,” I  reply sitting down on the purple chair. The ‘Purple Café’ as its name suggests is famous for its purple colour. Everything in here is in the shades of purple. But thank heavens, the coffee they serve here is in its original colour. Though it is named ends with a café, it is famous for its grape juice. The waiter comes to take our order. Gabe orders a cold coffee while I order their famous grape juice.“Is he a violent man?” Gabe asks me after the waiter leaves us. I don't need to ask her who she is talking about.“You already know the answer to that question. He is a violent man,” I answer but something nags my mind. As I think about my response to her question, I feel conflicted. Violence no longer fits with the narrative I have constructed around Madhav’s character.Memories of the moments we spend in the store room come back to me. His gentle gaze and comforting hands were what pulled me out of my darkness. The thought that I had judged him wrongly keeps floating in my mind. There is more to Madhav than what I had originally imagined and what the media portrayed. He has layers and I am going to peel them one by one to find the real man beneath all that violence and temper that he shows the world. “Do you still like him?” I ask my best friend as the waiter brings our order to the table. He places the cold coffee before her and the grape juice before me. “I don’t,” she replies when the waiter walks away. “I may have had a crush on him but now he is your husband and men who are married are off-limits for me. The rule number one of friendship is never harbour feelings for your friend’s man.”“Madhav is not my man,” I argue but I am relieved that she doesn’t have any deep feelings for him like I was afraid of.  I don’t want to have a complicated relationship. Things would have turned very ugly if she had any feelings for him. I wouldn’t know how to approach her then. “Says the woman who kissed him on the stage,” Gabe comments with a smirk.“We didn’t kiss,” I reply automatically.“Oh! Come on, Sru, I was there at the wedding. I saw Madhav lean down to kiss you,” she replies with a wave of her hand.“Did you see his lips touch mine?” I ask raising my eyebrow.“Yeah..no..wait…I didn’t see that but you both looked pretty cozy up on the stage. He was whispering things in your ear right before the kiss happened and you looked all nervous and cute.”“We didn’t kiss. Madhav put his thumb between our lips and made it look like we were kissing.”Gabe’s jaw hangs open in shock, “Woah! Okay, so you are telling me that you both didn’t perform the scared kiss ritual.”I nod my head at her, “No, we didn’t.”“But why? Is he afraid of commitment like Vinod said?” “I don’t know,” I answer sipping my grape juice. The sweet taste of the purple liquid soothes my nerves. I am on edge looking around me for any threats or suspicious persons.  Gabe sips her coffee and lets out a sigh.“I wish I could drink this coffee every day for the rest of my life,” she says throwing a longing look at the cup.“You could if you stay in the capital,” I say. She is leaving the capital after a month or two to resume her services to the poor.“Nah! I don’t want the stable and secure life you have. I want fun, adventure and thrill. Not the boring safety. I can never be tied to one place or thing. I want to explore new things and meet new people.”“Then better enjoy the coffee while you are here,” I reply. We are silent for a few seconds before an idea occurs to me. Gabe was present at the wedding and she loves taking photos. “Hmmm, Gabe,” I say thinking how to phrase the question in a way that wouldn’t raise her suspicion. I don’t want her to know about the prep trying to kill me. For now, that is a classified intel. “Did you take any pictures of the wedding?”“Of course I did. But it is not as many as I usually take. I was so pissed off at your trash ex that  I could not bring myself to click the photos but I did take a few. Do you want to see it?”“Yep,” I replied pulling the chair closer to hers.She takes out her phone and hands it over to me after unlocking it. See, even she gave me her phone only after unlocking it but why the hell did Madhav give it to me without unlocking it? I still remember his phone passcode. I swipe through the photos and pause at the one taken just before Praveen’s mother came bursting into my bridal room. It is a selfie of me and Gabe. In the photo, I look beautiful and my face is filled with so much happiness and joy that makes my heart ache. To Praveen, it may been fake but for me, every moment we spent together was as real as anything. I want to erase those memories with him. I wish I could forget about the time we spent together. Maybe then my heart wouldn’t ache like this.Sruthi focus! This isn’t the time to mope over that trash. You have got a killer on your trail. Focus on finding him.I swipe through the other photos zooming in and out of the background looking at things that might give me a clue but none of them are useful. “That is all?” I ask Gabe returning her phone to her. “Huh? Yes. Why are you suddenly interested in the photos?” “It is just that I was so focused on maintaining my happy face that I don’t remember who attended the wedding. I want to know who was present and who wasn’t,” the lie rolls off me easily. “If that is the case then I did delete a few photos in which I looked ugly. Wait a minute, I will restore it from the trash bin,” she says and clicks away on the phone. “Promise me that you will not laugh at the face in the photos.”“I won’t,” I say getting the phone from her. I scroll through the deleted photos and then there it is. The one photo in which her expression is very funny and bad. But in the background, I can see a person holding the same gift parcel that contained the newspaper. The same yellow colour gift wrapper and the same indefinite shape. I zoom in to get a clear view of the person. My heart skips a beat and cold sweat breaks out on my body. The person holding the gift was none other than the man whom I thought was my well-wisher. My brother’s former best friend and the country’s next prime minister Vinod.❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥