The tears got worse and the rage in her chest swelled so fast she gasped for breath. Once she’d left home, she’d abandoned her mother completely. Left her to fend for herself. Made choices that were the opposite of taking care of her.

Naina fell back on her bed, unable to stay upright anymore.

With a pat to Naina’s knee, Mummy got up and went to her closet. The first thing her eyes caught were the cushion covers she had pulled from Naina’s couch, and she froze. Then she shut the door and went into the bathroom and opened and closed some cabinets, then walked out to the corridor and started opening and shutting doors there.

She’d never been in Naina’s apartment for more than a few moments. She’d never visited her in college or in any of her homes around the world. Ever. No one ever had.

Yash and she had been best friends since they were in diapers and he’d never been in a single home she’d lived in as an adult either.

“Did you know that Yash never visited any of my homes as an adult?” She hadn’t meant to say it, but the words slipped out. “Ten years we were supposed to be together and no one ever asked me if he’d ever been to my home.”

Mummy poked her head back into her room, a towel clutched in her hand. “Did you say something?”

Naina shook her head. Vansh had been here every night. He’d wrapped her ankle in ice when she twisted it. He’d pressed a heating pad to her back when her period gave her killer cramps. He’d held her all night when she got angry and sad for no apparent reason. He’d fed her. He’d let her help him and correct him and scold him and call him names, and he’d listened. He’d fucked her in every room in the house and made her laugh and laugh as she shuddered and came. Again and again and again.

He thought she wanted to fuck him like he was an inflatable doll.

She wanted to fuck him. Period. At least one more time in her life so she would know to memorize everything and save it up.

As if she hadn’t already done that.

“Can you continue mutterings in shower?” Her mother smiled a most un-Mummy-like smile, shoved the towel at Naina, pushed her into the bathroom, then shut the door behind her.

When had she come in here and started the shower? The entire tiny space was saturated with steam.

I’ve always thought washing someone’s hair was the most erotic thing, Vansh had whispered behind her as he’d massaged her scalp, legs twisted around her as she sat in front of him in the tiny tub. I’ve never washed anyone’s hair, Knightlina.