Eram and he had an awkward few moments (‘I’m sorry, bro.’ ‘No, dude, I’m sorry.’) but in the end Varun insisted that they use Eram’s chess set. Eram snatched up two of the pawns, one black and one white, and put both hands behind his back.

‘Choose,’ he said.

Varun considered the option carefully, scanning his opponent’s face for clues. Eram smiled at him. ‘You think I know which one it is? I don’t. Just pick.’

‘Left,’ said Varun immediately, as if he’d figured it all out in that very instant.

From where Gehna was sitting, she could see Eram switch the pieces from one hand to the other behind his back. She sat up very straight, intending to call him out on it. She was a big believer in fairness of all kinds, especially when it came to board games. But before she could say a word—‘Cheating!’ she might have said—Eram opened his left hand and let the white pawn roll on to the board. Varun whooped.

Reverse cheating?

Gehna was highly confused by then, no less when Eram turned to wink at her. She sank deep into the chair, propping the book up between herself and the source of her confusion.

If she had a type, Eram fell far outside of it. All of her boyfriends (and there had been more than a couple—Gehna had dated more or less without pause since puberty) had been tall, with dark skin and big arms. They’d been well-informed of current affairs and articulate in their lust for her. Not a single one had ever been handsome or too good-looking or, god forbid, cute. In short, she preferred the men to the boys. Eram was of middling height and fair-skinned. Pale, really, like those vampires who were forever seducing young virgins in the movies. Dark hair that tumbled artlessly down on his forehead as if he couldn’t be arsed to comb it. His face escaped being too pretty only because of a scar on his right temple and a smile that rarely reached his eyes.

Sneaking a look around her book, Gehna could see through the rumpled white linen shirt he had on that he was slightly built—are those ribs I can count?—and that he had pink nipples. Gehna wasn’t sure she liked the idea of that. Guys don’t have pink anything, do they? The next moment she was taken by a vision of running a hand across his chest, so strong and sudden that it made her dizzy. When the world stopped being bendy again, she saw Eram reach with two slender fingers and float his bishop four diagonals into the centre of the board. What appeared to be a harmless enough move to Gehna agitated the hell out of Varun.

‘No. No no no!’

He jumped up and paced a few steps on the carpet, all the while glaring at the board.

He looks like an angry young goshawk. That beak is unmistakably Rai.

Gehna ran a finger along the curvature of her own nose and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Back when she was twelve and just beginning to hate bits of herself, she had tried to fix the thing alternately with sticky plaster, the hard heel of her hand and a pair of pliers. That was also the summer she had her first blood. A summer of shame.