I turn around in Taraana’s embrace and face him. Looking at him hurts me, somehow. My heart feels too full, too full of thorns. His eyes contain no censure, even though I know he can feel everything that is in my heart. I run a finger down his face and his eyes flutter closed. He is too good for me, and me, I am bad for him. I will corrode his goodness.

Knowing this makes no difference. I continue lying in bed with him when I should be outside, making decisions, pretending to have answers. I let him hold me when not a few days ago the idea would have made me run in the opposite direction.

“Why do you insist on getting closer to me?” I ask him.

He opens his eyes and the stars in them peek at me. I look at him and am surprised anew not just by his beauty but by how familiar, how dear, he has become to me.

His presence is slowly becoming a necessity to me. How did I survive all these years without him? How did he live without me?

These feelings scare me.

Is this love? How am I supposed to know? Or do these feelings exist because of his tear that I wear on my palm? Will my attachment to him disappear once I take it off?

“What are you thinking?” he asks, pulling away. A frown upsets the symmetry of his face.

“Can’t you tell?” I sit up and run my fingers through my hair. Or I try to. My hair is too tangled for me to succeed.

“No. I can’t read your mind, Paheli.” The way he says my name always startles me. There is a history in the way he says it, a wealth of meaning I don’t get. Am I supposed to?

“It’s nothing. I am thinking about nothing. No, that’s not true. I’m thinking about how I’m hungry but how I don’t want to go out of the room because, well, because. I don’t have a reason, but you don’t always have to have one, you know? It’s okay to not be strong all the time. I’m giving myself permission to be sad. I’m going to stop talking now.” I get off the bed and move to the small vanity on the side. I locate a hairbrush and, without thinking too deeply, throw it to Taraana. He catches it and raises an eyebrow.

“Brush my hair.”

My mother used to comb my hair. It was the one thing, apart from my blue eyes, that seemed to give her pleasure. She would spend a long time brushing it.