Free THE ONE YOU CANNOT HAVE by Preeti Shenoy

made my throat go dry. My hands have gone cold. I am acting as though he has caught me having sex with Aman. I am nervous and I do not know why I feel so.
    ‘Look, I can explain,’ I say, my brain furiously searching for explanations. How do I tell him about the four years that I have spent with Aman? How can I tell him that I never thought about a future without him? That every waking moment during those four years were spent in thoughts of each other. That he loved me more than life itself and I loved him back. And that I never expected my parents to take such a hard stand and, worse, I never expected to not have the strength to oppose them. My mother was in such a state. Things were so different then. There was also that scene between Aman’s mother and my parents too. There is just too much history for me to tell Rishabh.
    Besides, I also wanted to start life over on a clean slate. I wanted to leave all that behind. And I have indeed not contacted Aman, even though I have thought often about him, worried about him and even secretly said prayers for him, almost every day.
    How in the world can I confess all of this to Rishabh?
    ‘Aman is history. I haven’t been in touch with him for the past two years,’ I finally manage to say.
    ‘What I meant is, why didn’t you speak about him till now? Haven’t I told you about all my past relationships, all my ex-girlfriends? Have I ever hidden anything from you?’ he accuses.
    Have you ever considered that it might be because I am open enough to listen to you and not judge you, but you might not do the same?
    ‘You have. You haven’t hidden anything.’
    ‘Then? Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?’
    ‘Why do you want to know, Rishabh? I told you, it is history. And how did you find out about Aman? Who told you?’
    ‘If there is nothing, why are you hesitating so much?’
    ‘Why are you insisting so much? And you still haven’t told me how you came to know.’
    He looks at me with an expression that is hard to comprehend.Then he looks at the dining table which has my laptop on it. My email account is open. That is when it sinks in.
    Rishabh has gone through my emails.
    Which means he has read all those private messages between Aman and me . Shit. There must have been hundreds. I feel like sinking into the earth. There is such a lot Aman and I have shared. I quickly try and remember if there were any mails that were explicit. I do not recall. There probably were. We were so madly in love.
    It is horrifying to know that Rishabh has had access to all of this. Nobody, no one other than Aman and I were meant to read any of that. It was highly personal, very private and so darn intimate. And now here is Rishabh questioning something that I shared with a guy before he even came into my life.
    I am hurt now. He has no business going through my personal stuff. How dare he. And how can he question me like this now. Like I am some criminal. I feel wrecked. I feel angry. I am a vortex of emotions.
    ‘Why did you go through my mails? And how the fuck did you log into my account?’ I ask.
    ‘Because you fucking left it open. I did not even know it was open. I logged in to find your office board numbers to contact Asha. Then I saw you hadn’t logged out of your account. So I thought, I would find Asha’s email id as that would be faster as she might be on Blackberry and would see the mail instantly, which she did by the way. I was bloody worried about you. Is that a crime?’ he asks and his voice has lost that controlled calm.
    I don’t know what to say.
    ‘So after you contacted her, you decided to go through my mails, is it? You pervert. You... you creep.’ I am upset now and so angry that I am unable to speak.
    ‘Watch your words, Shruti. I was not thinking as I was worried. I was desperately trying to reach Asha, and while searching for Asha, Aman popped up. It caught my attention because you said you liked the name. And I wondered who this Aman was whom