Naina

It was pure torture—these long stretches of time spent apart. I had three days off due to a scheduling issue, but Zayne was adamant that I did not go to Manipal. He was on a 72-hour long call and insisted on being there with me when I went next.

Technically, he could spend the night at home since he lived close to campus, provided he didn't have a post-procedure or critical patient to attend to. But he didn't want to risk it; the unpredictability made him request that I stay put in Mangalore.

As I mindlessly scrolled through Wattpad, I stumbled upon a review for my story "Stay Mine."

The reviewer had pointed out that Alan was toxic and suggested I include a trigger warning for toxic and manipulative behavior. I was surprised. I hadn't revisited "Stay Mine" since writing it; I was afraid to go back there. I remembered that I had started off wanting to highlight our fights and the emotional rollercoaster we had been on. But toxic? That word struck a nerve.

It wasn't the first time I had heard that word used in the context of our relationship.

I couldn't shake the feeling of unease. Did I truly paint a picture of love that was more about pain than connection because our relationship had really been so? Or did I just understand him better than everyone else? Was I really a victim of his manipulation, as everyone in my family seemed to be saying? Or was Alan being misunderstood by everyone?

I recognized that the assault was irrefutably wrong. Yet, I hesitated to label my experiences with him as manipulation or grooming, despite what my sister and best friend insisted.

It hadn't been just him influencing me; I had influenced him too. I had crafted a timetable for him in our first year of Medical College and he had followed it religiously—even through his postgraduate years. I had mentioned that I preferred his hair longer, and he had grown it out for me. When I expressed that I didn't find excessive muscles attractive, he had cut down on his protein shakes and adjusted his training routine.

He had always wanted to settle in the US. But after doing a two month clinical rotation there, I had hated it though he had loved it. He discarded his dreams for me without any qualms. He had told me that home was where I was and that nothing else mattered.

He had a passion for retro rock, which he affectionately called "ageless music." Yet for the sake of our Instagram account, he played pop for the most part because I loved it, and those were the songs I sang with confidence.

He had given up drinking except with family, put down the cigarettes, and distanced himself from any temptation of substances.

And in return, he had helped me blossom. He empowered me to speak up, encouraged me to embrace my appearance, and guided me in shedding my inhibitions.

He had helped me in dealing with my anxiety and stress, he had helped me cope when things didn't go according to my plans. He had helped relieve me from my obsession with timelines and my need to try and control everything. He had been everything to me, just as I had been everything to him.

Now I wondered how he was doing. Did he miss me? I had Zayne, but Adi was all alone. I had been angry when Zayne told me that he had gotten into the Spine Fellowship. That had been our dream, our plan. Yet he achieved everything he wanted to without me, while I was held back by a year because I had been too messed up to practice medicine for months after we had split up. I had no drive left in me to take a competitive exam for a fellowship in a subspecialty.

I wiped my tears. They were sad, angry, and bitter tears.

Maya and I shared a laptop. Technically, it was Maya's laptop, and she shared it with me because I had thrown mine against the wall about nine months ago and broken it. But we set it up like a desktop with a screen and keyboard. I noticed that she hadn't logged off her email. I feel very embarrassed to write this here, but I used her email to create an Instagram account. I took a random picture from Pinterest for the profile picture and followed a bunch of people.

I decided I would check on Advik's profile. Though he had over eight thousand followers, it was set to private. This had been a constant point of contention between us—he had wanted to keep his personal profile public, while I had preferred it private since he posted so many pictures of us.

Taking a deep breath, I hit follow. I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart racing, and then immediately unfollowed him. I tried to occupy my mind with other things, but the temptation was too strong. I hit follow again.

Nervously, I paced the room, my thoughts spiraling. What if Adi realized it was me? Or worse, what if he didn't recognize me and started flirting with me, thinking I was just some random fangirl on the internet?

"Look at this," he said, showing me something on his phone. "These are bots or spam accounts." The profile displayed zero followers and twenty accounts it was following.

"We need to block those; otherwise, Insta may flag our account too," he continued, his brow furrowed.

He wouldn't accept my request. He would just think it was a bot, right?

I checked my phone every five minutes for about an hour, my heart racing with anticipation.

Finally, I saw it—he had accepted my follow request, and there was a follow-back request waiting for me.

I was breathing hard, panic and excitement swirling within me. What had I done? I had blocked all communication with him, and he had done the same. I had even blocked his mother, ensuring there were no ties left. I shouldn't be doing this now, not when everything was starting to feel okay again.

Setting my phone aside, I resolved to focus on something else. I picked up my reading materials and decided to go through the malaria treatment protocol again since we were technically still in the season. I immersed myself in the text, moving from malaria to dengue and then onto other arboviruses, trying to drown out the chaos in my mind.

After a couple of hours, I finally stopped reading. It was nearly lunchtime, and the pressure of my curiosity was too much to bear. I opened his profile.

I clicked on his most recent post, and my breath caught in my throat. He had shared a clip of him singing "Aadat," the Atif Aslam version. The version I liked.

सांस लेना भर ही यहाँ जीना नहीं है
अब तो आदत सी है मुझको ऐसे जीने में
जुदा होके भी तू मुझमें कहीं बाकी है
पलकों में बनके आंसू तू चली आती है

In the caption, he wrote, "I miss you with every breath that I take."

Two fat tears rolled down my face as I played the reel again, feeling his words settle deep within me.

I scrolled down through his profile. I had deleted every single picture we had together, deactivated our shared social media account, and had even deleted mine. My sister had gone so far as to delete the pictures from my icloud.

But I wondered if he had kept any of our memories. As I continued to scroll, I saw pictures of him hiking, training at the gym, and singing. Scattered among them were subtle references to me.

There was a video of his friends taking shots, but he was there, sipping coconut water from a shell. He had captioned it, "So that I can keep at least some of my promises to her."

And then I came across a haunting picture of him standing at the edge of a cliff. The caption read, "If I should have ended my life, I should have done it before I ruined her. My biggest punishment is to live. To be alive without her."

I felt myself spiraling, the gravity of his words pulling me down into a dark abyss. I couldn't do this. I was sobbing relentlessly and gasping as though each breath was a struggle.

As I scrolled down further, my heart dropped into my stomach. There it was—our wedding invite. He had posted it on the day our wedding was supposed to take place—October 1st, 2023.

His caption struck my heart like a lightning bolt: "She wouldn't have wanted me to be drowning. She would have said, 'Adi, there's a reason for everything. God has a plan.' I may not believe in God, but I believe in her. I will always believe in her."

I knew I should stop. I really knew I should stop scrolling, but I couldn't help myself.

Compulsively, I kept moving my finger down the screen, my heart racing with each new image that flickered by. It was more of the same—pictures of him intertwined occasionally with memories of us, that threatened to drown me. There was a noticeable hiatus after our breakup, pictures and posts with me in them had disappeare. And about a month after I had married Zayne, he had started posting again.

His first reel after our breakup was a montage of us—picture after picture, each one a haunting reminder of what we once shared. My face was blurred in every frame, but the emotions were unmistakable. There we were, winning our first duet together, him carrying me on his shoulders after a basketball match victory, studying side by side in the library, and him swirling me around on the beach.

There was the moment he proposed, our lips meeting in a kiss, my face pixelated, and our graduation from medical school. Even our engagement pictures made an appearance, followed by snapshots from a trip to a nearby hill station shortly after COVID restrictions had eased.

Then came a picture of just him, head in his hands, and my heart sank.

The caption read: "Nia told me this: 'If you get drunk and you do something wrong and you can't remember doing it, that doesn't absolve you of the crime. Because you chose to drink.' I wasn't drinking. I don't remember what I did, but I know I could have taken steps to prevent it. I take responsibility for my actions. I have let my angel fly."

I scrolled through the comments, my heart pounding. There was no mention of what had truly happened between us, just speculation and conjecture. Several people were asking if he had cheated on me, while others suggested that maybe whatever he thought had happened didn't actually occur. Maybe I was lying. But then my eyes landed on Tara's comment: "You couldn't have prevented the ho from cheating on you. Even if you saw the signs and did nothing about it. It's on that skank, not on you."

The comment had garnered 178 likes.

I set my phone aside, determined to channel my anger instead of succumbing to sadness or pity. But even as I pushed it away, the images from his last reel and the memories attached to it flooded back into my mind.

My best college memories revolved around music and basketball, and he had been the only reason I had participated in both. I couldn't do this. I wouldn't do this. I needed to talk to him. Did he really not remember what he had done to me that night?

With a sense of urgency, I started packing my bags, but then I stopped, realizing how foolish I was being. I took a deep breath and decided to DM him.

Me: Adi?

I waited, my heart pounding in my chest. No response.

Frustrated, I unblocked his number, and to my surprise, it rang!

"Hello?" I called into the phone.

"Hello?" came a female voice on the other end.

I took a deep breath, steadying myself. "Can I speak to Adi, please?"

"Kannadadalli helu," she replied, asking me to speak in Kannada. Confused, I repeated my question, my heart racing, fear tightening my throat.

"Nanu Adiyondige maathanaadaba?"

"Wrong number," she said curtly in English, before hanging up.

I closed my eyes, feeling desperate.

Tara.

I unblocked Tara and called her.

"Hello?" she answered, her tone casual.

"Tara?" I said, my voice breaking with the weight of emotion.

"What would you do without me?" she quipped. "Here, you can borrow this. Always wear shapewear tights inside when you wear dresses like these."

A few moments of silence passed.

"You fucking bitch!" she shouted and then hung up on me.

I called her again, my hands shaking.

"What the fuck do you want?" she snapped, annoyed.

"Tara, did Adi change his number?" I asked between sobs, the tears spilling down my cheeks.

"Plan to tear him up some more?" she shot back, her voice dripping with disdain.

I was crying so hard that I couldn't respond.

"Don't you dare try to contact him, you cheating whore!" she warned, her words cutting deep.

I should have hung up, but I couldn't. I just kept crying, my heart feeling like it was shattering all over again. Tara and I had been so close. How had I lost it all?

"He's moved on... He's dating someone... so please don't hurt him again." Her voice softened, almost pitying, but then she hung up again, leaving me alone in my anguish.

I pulled myself together somehow and texted Maya before heading to Manipal.

Maya called back immediately, but I declined her call. I did not want to speak to her, not in this state. But then she texted me.

Maya: TALK TO ZAYNE. Don't mess this up.

I shook my head, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my T-shirt. I knew I should talk to Zayne; I owed him that much. With a deep breath, I texted him.

Me: Coming to Manipal.

Zayne: Please don't.

I wiped my eyes.

Me: I need to see you. Something happened.

Almost instantly, Zayne called. I could hear beeping and the murmur of voices in the background.

"Zayne..." I whispered between sobs, the words barely escaping my lips.

"One second," he said. He called out to someone else, "Don't start sedation; I have to take this. Give me five minutes."

It registered vaguely that he was scrubbed in for a procedure, and a pang of guilt shot through me. I couldn't do this to him—not when he was at work.

"Naina, are you okay? Sweetheart, what happened?" His voice was muffled, as though he was on speaker, but the concern in his tone made me momentarily feel better. I forced myself to stop crying, to gather my thoughts.

"Zayne, I need to come there. I have to talk to Adi..."

If you plan to comment, please be kind. This was not easy to write and it is going to get harder from here.

Again, if you can't be kind, please refrain from commenting.

Lyric translation

Just Breathing isn't the same as living
But now I've become habituated to living like this
Even after being separated from you, you still live inside me
In my eyes in the form of tears, you come to me again

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Thank you for reading.

Remember that you are amazing, and there is a reason for everything. You are going to be okay.

❤️Faiza