[POV: Divya]
"If you really love me.. Don't catch me!"
The words flew out of my mouth, bright and reckless, ringing in the high-ceilinged ballroom of my Aunt Meera's Delhi farmhouse. I was standing on a polished mahogany coffee table, a precarious throne five feet off the ground. My self-made, champagne-colored prom dress—a cascade of silk and stubborn hope—pooled around my ankles. My heels, death traps of glitter and four-inch stilettos, dug into the wood.
Below me, looking like he'd just swallowed a particularly sour lemon, was Rajesh Malhotra.
His expression was a masterpiece of annoyed concern. "I really hate you," he ground out, his voice tight. "But I don't want you to die in that beautiful prom dress and heels. My best friend Amit would hate me for not catching you. So, for his sake, get down. Carefully."
"For his sake?" I scoffed, wobbling slightly for effect. He tensed, arms half-raised. "Amit would be laughing his head off right now. He'd be filming it for Instagram. You're the one who's no fun."
"Fun?" Rajesh shot back, running a hand through his annoyably perfect hair. He was already in his tux, looking like he'd stepped out of a billionaire-youth-CEO catalogue. "Fun is not explaining to your aunt why her gifted niece snapped her ankle before her debutante ball. Fun is not spending the night at AIIMS Emergency. Get. Down."
From the doorway, leaning against the frame with a bowl of murukku, Aunt Meera's voice, dry as summer dust, floated in. "Ten years of friendship and still rookies. I've seen turtles with more evolved relationships."
Rajesh and I turned our glares on her, then back to each other, and spoke in perfect, venomous unison.
"Him? My friend? Never!"
"Her? My friend? In what universe?"
Aunt Meera just crunched on a snack, her eyes sparkling. "See? Even your denial is in sync. The caterers are here. Try not to break the antiques, jaanus."
She disappeared, leaving us in a bubble of thick, familiar animosity.
It was our default setting. Rajesh Malhotra and I had been locked in this cold-war-meets-sibling-rivalry since we were eight, when his family moved next door to my aunt's. Our only point of congruence, the only glue in this whole messy dynamic, was Amit Sharma.
Amit was Rajesh's sun, his brother-from-another-mother, his literal other half. To me, Amit was… everything. The quiet harbor after my parents' storm. The one who saw the sketches in my margins and called them art. My boyfriend. My person. In six hours, he was supposed to walk into this ballroom as my dance partner, wearing the midnight blue tuxedo I'd designed and stitched for him, a mirror to my dress.
"He's late," I said, the words escaping before I could stop them, the bravado leaking out.
Rajesh checked his watch—a sleek, obnoxiously expensive thing that probably had its own satellite. "He's thirty-seven minutes late. Which for Amit, might as well be a geological epoch. He's never late."
A flicker of something that wasn't annoyance passed behind his eyes. Worry. It was so rare on Rajesh's face, usually reserved for stock market dips and Amit's questionable life choices, that it made my stomach clench.
"Maybe he's stuck in traffic. Connaught Place is a nightmare on Saturday," I offered, more to myself than to him.
"He took the Metro. He always does when he's coming here." Rajesh's phone was already in his hand, thumb flying over the screen. No answer. He tried calling. It went straight to voicemail. 'Hey, this is Amit! You know what to do. Do it with flair!'
The cheerful recording felt like a mockery in the suddenly quiet room.
The silly standoff was forgotten. I carefully gathered my dress and sat on the edge of the table, letting my legs dangle. The sparkly heels looked absurd now. "Try his grandma."
"I did. She said he left two hours ago. Looking, and I quote, 'so handsome my old heart did a little dance.'" Rajesh mimicked Mrs. Sharma's gentle cadence perfectly, but the effect was chilling.
"Okay," I said, swinging my legs, the nervous energy needing an outlet. "Okay, so he's… he's just… being Amit. He probably saw a street puppy or got dragged into a protest march for better metro Wi-Fi. You know him."
"I do know him," Rajesh said, his voice low. "Which is why I know this isn't like him."
We sat in silence for a moment, the grand room feeling cavernous. The fairy lights strung for the party twinkled ignorantly. The tension between us had morphed, shifting from our personal battlefield to a shared, anxious vigil.
"This is your fault, you know," I muttered, because falling back into the blame game was easier than sitting with the fear.
"My fault?" He arched a brow. "How do you figure that, Picasso? Did my existence somehow disrupt the space-time continuum between his house and here?"
"You sucked all the joy out of the room with your… your CEO-vibes!" I gestured vaguely at his whole person. "He probably sensed the gloom from a mile away and turned back."
"CEO-vibes," he repeated, deadpan. "Right. Because my apparent aura of responsible adulthood is a known repellent for our best friend. Not your dramatic table-top declarations and death-wish footwear."
"It's called fashion, Raje. Look it up. After you look up 'how to have a personality.'"
"My personality is just fine. It doesn't require standing on furniture to be noticed."
"It would. If you had one."
We were back on script, but the lines felt hollow, performed. Our eyes kept darting to the large antique clock on the wall. Tick. Tock. Forty-two minutes late.
"Should we… go look?" The question was out before I could stop it, voiced in a small tone I never used with him.
Rajesh looked at me, really looked at me. Past the dress, the makeup, the armor of our usual sparring. He saw the girl who was terrified her one good thing had vanished. And I saw, just for a second, the boy who was equally terrified of losing his north star.
"In that?" he asked, nodding at my dress.
"I can change. Five minutes."
He shook his head, a decision solidifying in his gaze. "No. He'll show up. He has to." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. "It's your night. He wouldn't miss it. He talked about it for weeks."
"He did?" I couldn't help the tiny smile.
"Drove me insane. 'Raj, do you think the lapel is too much?' 'Raj, should I practice the waltz again?' 'Raj, what if I step on her shoes?'" Rajesh's imitation was back, but this time fond, aching. "He was a nervous wreck. A happy wreck."
The shared memory hung between us, a fragile peace treaty. I slid off the table, landing with a soft thud. The fight had drained out of me, replaced by a cold, creeping dread.
"One more hour," Rajesh declared, his CEO-voice back in full force. It was a command, to the universe, to Amit, to me. "If he's not here by eight, we… we make a plan."
"'We'?" I asked, crossing my arms.
He sighed, the sound full of long-suffering. "Unfortunately, yes. 'We.' Like it or not, you're the expert on his… his artistic, chaotic brain. I'm the expert on his logical, idiot best friend brain. Between us, we might be able to find him."
It was the closest thing to a compliment and a collaboration he'd ever offered.
"Fine," I said. "But I'm driving."
"Over my dead body. You drive like you're in a Mad Max movie."
"And you drive like you're conducting a funeral procession."
"It's called obeying traffic laws, a concept your license is clearly unfamiliar with."
We were bickering again, but it was different now. The edge was gone, replaced by a frantic, coiling energy. We weren't fighting each other. We were fighting the same terrifying, unspoken thought:
Where is he?
Aunt Meera popped her head back in. "You two still alive? Good. Divya, the photographer wants to do some shots in the garden before the guests arrive. Rajesh, your parents called. They're stuck in Milan, something about a merger. They send their regrets and a very large cheque."
Rajesh's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. The "very large cheque" was his parents' default setting—present but absent. He just gave a curt nod.
"Come on, disaster child," he said, turning to me. "Let's get your photos done. It'll kill time."
"You're not coming," I stated.
"I have to. Someone needs to make sure you don't climb a tree in that dress for a 'better angle.'"
I rolled my eyes but didn't argue. As we walked out of the ballroom—me carefully navigating the stairs, him hovering just close enough to catch me if I tripped but far enough to deny it—the opening line of the night echoed in my head.
I had been talking to an imaginary Amit, to the idea of a perfect, storybook evening. Now, walking beside Rajesh in a silence that was almost comfortable, the plea felt different. It felt like a prayer aimed at the universe.
Don't let anything be wrong. Don't let this be the catch. Just let him be here.
Outside, the Delhi twilight was bleeding into a velvet blue. The garden was lit up with strings of golden bulbs. I posed, the flawless debutante, smiling on command for the camera. Rajesh stood off to the side, a dark, watchful silhouette against the fairy lights, his phone glowing in his hand as he sent another text.
Another one that wouldn't be delivered.
[POV: Rajesh]
She looked like a fallen star sitting on that grass, pretending everything was fine. It was a good act. But I'd known Divya for ten years. I saw the way her smile didn't reach her eyes, the slight tremble in her hand as she adjusted her dress.
Amit was late.
Amit is never late.
The thought was a drumbeat in my skull, syncing with my pulse. I'd run through every possible scenario. Flat tire? He took the Metro. Lost? He's been coming to this farmhouse since we were kids. Girl trouble? Impossible. He was stupidly, incurably in love with the girl currently forcing a smile for a camera.
My phone was a brick of uselessness. No replies. Location sharing showed him stationary… at the Metro station he'd left from. That could mean a dead phone. Or it could mean something else.
I watched Divya laugh at something the photographer said, a hollow, tinkling sound. She was all fierce, fragile light. And she was Amit's. His center of gravity. The thought of having to tell her, of having to be the one to…
No.
I shoved the thought down, deep. CEO-vibes, she called them. Fine. CEO's solved problems. They didn't panic. They assessed, they acted.
"Rajesh! Get in the shot, beta!" Aunt Meera called. "One with both of you. For old time's sake."
Divya's fake smile froze. "Auntie, no. He'll ruin the aesthetic. He's wearing… brooding."
"And you're wearing 'impending tantrum,'" I shot back, but I walked over anyway. Because stalling was better than standing alone with my thoughts.
We stood side by side, a foot of charged air between us. We didn't touch.
"Closer!" the photographer chirped.
I took a half-step. She didn't move.
"Divya, pretend you don't despise him for three seconds," Aunt Meera sighed.
"That's a big ask," Divya muttered.
"Likewise," I murmured back.
But for Amit, for the sake of this night he was supposed to be having, we both shifted. My arm brushed against the cool silk of her dress. She stiffened, then forced herself to relax. We looked at the camera. We didn't smile.
The flash went off, capturing us: the heir and the artist, bound together not by friendship, but by the terrifying, widening absence of the boy who was the heart of both our worlds.
The clock was ticking. The party was starting in an hour. And our best friend, my brother, her love, was nowhere to be found.
The game had changed. This wasn't about catching her from a silly jump anymore.
It was about the terrifying fear that something, somewhere, had already fallen. And we might be too late to catch it at all.