The Spaces Between

She must have just fallen asleep after a long shift at the bar, no longer than five minutes before, when Mrunal felt the earth move a little. She came awake figuring someone was climbing into the upper bunk of her cot. They’d soon settle, whoever they were—she was too tired to wonder who it must be.

When the shuffling in the bed didn’t ease even after several minutes, she pulled up her eye mask to come to a sense of what could be happening, and dropped her journal and pencil to the coarse floor of her makeshift volunteers’ dorm—made of compressed straw having three bunk beds laid out at right angles to one another in a space that could be covered in about three adult steps, diagonally—while rummaging for her phone to confirm the time: it was twenty past one in the night. It was after recovering her stationery from the ground that she saw the low-lit bulb hanging in the corner, just above her cot, betraying two human silhouettes on the fabric of the conical roof across from her bed. It must be the Welsh couple she briefly said hi to earlier, who had arrived the same evening, she reckoned. The upright slender curvaceous cast on the top, threw its head back with a suppressed moan, with the wild mane dropping almost to the rump. The male profile, seemingly fondling the other’s wellendowed curves with one hand, and steadying himself with another arm behind him, surveyed her from a lower angle, trying to remain controlled. Though enticing—the sight of two carefree figures engaging in what offered a promising climax—Mrunal was too dead beat to enjoy the show. She pulled her eye mask down, deciding she would have a proper introduction the next morning, when she would get to put faces to the shadows, and names to the hushed nocturnal sounds.

‘Were you high last night?’ Mrunal examined Layla, recollecting the look in the couple’s eyes during their brief encounter the evening before, and their seeming indifference at someone else’s presence in the tiny space—the same cot, no less—they ravished in later in the night.

‘Stoned,’ laughed Layla; Oscar smiled agreement .

‘Guessed as much!’

Mrunal wasn’t wrong at perceiving the 19- year-olds as hippies what with Layla’s baggy clothes, all the piercings—she registered one on the girl’s lower lip, one on the tongue, and six on each ear—and the apparent tattoos; ‘who knows how many more she got,’ she thought. Her catlike light brown eyes, mildly pale complexion with freckles, and bronze wavy hair parted at the center rightly informed Mrunal of Layla’s mixed descent even if she had said she was Welsh. Oscar, in contrast, was clearly white, and relatively simpler looking with no visible tattoos, or piercings, but struck equally as a hippie with a bandana holding his golden hair back, a shirtless meagre build, and his lower body wrapped in loose harem pants. Plaque plagued his front teeth, giving substance to the old belief that Brits aren’t particularly known for their dental hygiene, Mrunal observed.

‘Alright, so this is the ledger for food and drinks for the guests staying with us, and this one here is for walk-in orders,” the Indian girl informed Layla, who was sharing Mrunal’s shift today on her first day volunteering at the bar-cum-reception of the backpacker’s hostel in Goa.

‘Got it! And who do we inform about the food orders?’

‘There’s a kitchen at the back. If you exit the bar and walk along the corridor behind the counter, there it is at the end of the corridor towards your left. You inform the kitchen staff as and when someone places a food order, they’ll bring it to the bar counter once its ready.’

‘Do you wanna be my first customer?’ Layla consulted with her boyfriend, whose shift wasn’t until later but who sat across the counter, doodling in his book, keeping his girl company at this new place.

Chuckling, he shook his head.

‘It’s Sunday, gonna be pretty relaxed today, hardly anybody dropping in until late afternoon, most guests went partying last night.’ Mrunal perched on the stool, ready to busy herself with her book. Then thinking better of it, and in keeping with the knowledge of her inability to remain quiet for long, casually probed the couple about what brought them to India, wanting to know about their lives and what, if anything, they left behind.

‘Oh, I am on a break for a couple of months before I must decide what project to take on. I’m a theatre artist. And he freelances as a painter and a graffiti artist, so he could afford to take time off too. We knew we wanted to travel, but since we were on a budget, we thought we’d take a work holiday in India, one, because it would cost us cheaper, and, two, mahn, because its India!’

‘So, where all in India have you been to already?’

‘Whou, you only just got here?!’ Mrunal turned to Oscar.

‘Yeah, we stayed at another hostel for two days as guests, waiting for a response to our volunteering application at this one.’ he offered, still busy with his drawing.

‘Two years when we get back home in two months,’ Layla speculated, looking at Oscar for confirmation; both nodded in agreement, ‘yeah two years.’

Mrunal, having the curiosity of a wide-eyed child, loved observing people, and she was all ears every time there was a good story to listen to. And here sure was scope, as it was two 19- year-olds, about six years younger than herself, yet who seemed to have it all figured out when it came to romance. It seemed mature love, a concept Mrunal was quite removed from, and so, there wasn’t a chance she was going to miss it. Before long, she had Oscar and Layla hooked to telling her their story.

Layla had moved to Oscar’s neighbourhood when they were both 14, signed up at the same school—for there was only one in the county—but didn’t really get introduced properly until two years later. Even then, it was her girl-gang that had noticed him eyeing someone in their group, something that didn’t personally register for Layla. ‘I always had an eye for her,’ Oscar would later remark, ‘and I had always been into girls before, so I didn’t think anything of him,’ was Layla’s story.

It was during one of those early chats on Instagram after having first connected over social media that she brought it up with him, very innocently of course, for she was very comfortably gay, or so she thought. ‘So, my friends all seem to think you have a thing for one of our girls. Any truth to that?’

‘What?! Noo! But there’s certainly truth in girls being gossip-mongers.’

‘Well, I was simply asking. I mean, I could set you up if you liked someone from our group. And it could come off as organic too, since you now have in.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks. You can let your girl-friends know that they’ve been mistaken. Anyway, wanna grab some ice-cream after school tomorrow?’

That’s how it started with two young adults catching ice-cream after school—one of whom completely oblivious to the other’s feelings and even to the different possibilities for herself, and the other simply relishing the first’s company, despite knowing her orientation—that lead to them spending more time doing things together: going to the library in the evenings, biking across the countryside over the weekends, reading poetry in the late afternoon sun, and even playing hide-n-seek in the undulations of the hills and valleys. Too childish one might think, but it served these two young companions well. This girl was a voracious reader, and Oscar had been made well aware, having been pulled to one bookshelf after another in the library, week after week, seeing Layla light up at the opportunity to justify her sentiment for a certain book, her favourite genre or her preferred author. But up until then, she had only shared with him her thoughts on other people’s works, when one day she decided she wanted to make him privy to her world that few people knew existed.

‘I want you to read something,’ she paused before pulling a vintage-looking notebook out of her bag. ‘I never thought I’d show you this, I didn’t think you were sensitive to life that way, but well, I’d like to find out I was wrong….’ She flipped to a page somewhere halfway through the book and handed it to him, ‘something I wrote recently.’

Oscar looked from the book in his hand up at her, a quizzical look in his eyes.

‘Yea… I write, well… I try,’ she laughed nervously. ‘Attempted what I’d like to believe is poetry a few times, you know… when things got overwhelming, or sometimes when the mundane didn’t feel so inconsequential.’

He gave his sincerest attention to the page she held open to him—this was clearly very personal to her—shaking his head with a most affectionate gaze when he looked up again. He surveyed her with a tender smile as though seeing her in a completely different light. Knowing she must be secretly willing him to, he delved into the notebook again, flipping to the previous pages, regarding one great leaf after another, and just like that, with the look in his eyes and this sudden silence between them that made up for a thousand words, she knew she had been wrong.

It wasn’t long after that day that he came to Layla with his sketchbook, letting her in on his intimate pursuits, and showing her his vision of becoming an artist. In response to his earnest hope and much to his relief, she didn’t see Oscar’s dream too far-fetched; he found immense comfort in her finding the odds of him realizing it more than hundred-to-one. It was to take about a year of platonic association—that saw much progress: her contours became fuller, their level of eye-contact rose an inch or two from his end, they both talked about their personal lives and confided their secret passions and aspirations—for them to finally act on their sustained, besides being steadily advancing, fondness for one another and for Layla to see that Oscar kindled a certain warmth that swelled a desire in her chest that she had known to feel only for women. When he took his girl to be equally involved in the relationship that had long before surpassed mere friendship, he wasted no further time—he had been patient enough.

It was behind the library one sundown, not outside the fenced perimeter of the building overlooking the valley—the place they spent most of their days off, reading, after the early closing of the library on weekends—when, reclining against the wall, she noticed his gaze focused on her lips as he stood too close. Ignoring her reflexes, she didn’t look away. Did he inch a bit closer still, now locking his eyes on hers, or was it just in her head? His gaze returned to her lips once again as he pitched one arm beside her, leaning on the brick wall. She felt something quiver between her legs. He did not back down, if anything, he looked more intent. By now he could see her bosom rise and fall despite her effort to stifle her heaves. He wanted to equally take her mouth as he wanted to see her struggle. He was too close, breathing into her, when she realized her mouth had gone dry. Heat rose to her face, and she attempted to moisten her parched lips with a discrete sweep of her tongue when his mouth caught hers. A force more powerful than herself engulfed her entire body. Grabbing the back of her head, he swung her in, pressing hard against her, feasting on her mouth with his skillful tongue, making her wet. Her heart pounded ferociously as her breasts pushed into him. He made no attempt either to hide his swelling manhood as it went hard between her thighs. This was new to her, and yet it felt only natural. He cocked his head from her left to her right, continuing to bruise her lips, letting go only when they could no longer go on— they gasped for breath, refusing to open their eyes still, fearing the moment would pass. After devouring each other, she didn’t like this sudden distance between them when they drew apart; she pulled him closer tugging at his shirt as he rested his forehead upon hers. She opened her eyes warily to see him open his; both entranced by their reflection in the other’s eyes.

‘This felt… different,’ she wasn’t lying.

‘God, I was afraid you’d never give in!’ he wasn’t, either.

‘I wouldn’t make the first move obviously…I couldn’t,’ she was still breathing hard. ‘I didn’t know how it worked with guys, but… I’d been wondering…’ she had her hands on his chest, her fingers fiddling with his shirt, barely looking at him now, ‘you made me wonder… and of late it had become clear that… I wanted it too, I wanted you….’

Even after that day, Layla struggled to really believe she liked a guy. It necessitated a couple of months of dating—and for her and Oscar to assault more than just each other’s lips, understand their amour’s drives and temperaments, a few fights, and an entire summer together after graduating high school—for Layla to realize that something that had never happened before could happen now. But exploring and coming to terms with this new possibility wasn’t even the couple’s greatest challenge: it was to come when, after finishing school, Layla had to leave for London to attend theatre academy. Oscar, who now freelanced as an artist and could find work anywhere, had murals and graffiti projects lined up at burgeoning cafes and other youth haunts emerging in and around their hometown for the year she was supposed to be gone. As fate would have it, these young flames were to be tested with time and geography: a year away wasn’t going to be easy, least of all for Oscar, who would be confined to his simple life in their countryside while his girlfriend of six months was to indulge untethered in the spirit and madness of the metropole.

‘What happens when we are unable to catch up due to work commitments?’ Layla was particularly on edge one evening, about two weeks before she was supposed to leave for the big city. ‘You know, there won’t always be time to share all about our day….’

‘There’s never time, there never was… we always made time to spend together.’

‘We were in school, and then we had all summer to ourselves. We could afford to devote all our attention to one another. It’s gonna be different now, life’s about to get busy.’

‘I know. We always knew that babe,’ Oscar tried being the calm in the chaos, ‘we knew you would fly off to London in due time to pursue theatre, that was always the plan. It never worried us before, why this sudden anxiety?’

‘That was always the plan, but it hits you only when it looms close. I never bothered before because we had all the time in the world to figure out the distance, we could bear to postpone the worry… not any longer… I leave in TWO WEEKS.’

‘It’ll be fine, we’ll be fine. We will make time. It never gets so busy that one may not find the window to catch up with their people.’

‘I’m saying what if we don’t? What if we don’t find that window? Having to be in a relationship with your phone is bad enough, and then the fact that we might not even have the basic comfort of catching up some nights…. When I have a show that runs late in the night and you have an early morning… what then?! Let’s say I have a day off that I want to spend talking to you over the phone, but you have a luring last-minute exploit that pays big? What if you call in the midst of a packed schedule and I’m out with friends?!’ Layla was relentless. ‘We are humans, we all need to come back home to someone, someone to cuddle with after a crappy day… and let alone being able to do all that in person, if we don’t find each other to do it with at the end of each day, it’s only natural to eventually start seeking that comfort in other people.’

‘So, what exactly are you suggesting here, you wanna break up… so you don’t have to worry about me while seeking local entertainment?!’

‘Will you take it easy there! I am just saying distance is hard.’

‘So is everything else in life, including your drama school, I don’t see you giving up on that.’

‘I’m not giving up on it, on us… I just don’t want to fuss over what’s here, missing out on my life there… I want this relationship as much as you do, but…’ she sighed, bidding for the right words, ‘not at the expense of my dreams….’

No one was too pivotal to anchor Layla, nothing so important to deter her unbridled spirit. She had told her boyfriend that she didn’t want to cut ties with him, but she didn’t want this affair to become an entanglement and interfere with her journey on new avenues. She had told him that she wasn’t confident whether she could sustain their relationship with the given geography, but that she’d at least try. And she did too, they both did. People—attractions, seduction, incentives—and pressure proved more than mere distractions. They dodged the bullet even when the casting director of a major theatrical assured her a promising role in return for a “friendly compensation”, and his friend’s ex-girlfriend tried to “rid them both of their loneliness”. They tried, and each time just about pulled through while balancing their respective lives beside what they had with each other until that one day that led matters to never be the same.

It was ten in the night, and Oscar had just finished his first proper meal of the day after a hectic twelve hours at work, when he got the chance to check his phone. It had buzzed thrice —deserted in his out-of-reach bag—earlier in the evening as he struggled atop a platform ladder, striving to finish the last wall painting to deliver on his long-due stint at an upcoming coffeehouse. His phone conveyed missed calls: hers, all three of them. He winced; having missed his girl’s calls fourth day in a row wasn’t a good sign, least of all when their last conversation, discussing priorities, had helplessly avalanched into a fight. He called back, hoping against hope for things to be normal, for Layla to be normal, only too aware of her temperament. To his surprise, she answered on the second ring—his phone screamed with blaring music. He strained to pick up her voice, but could barely hear anything over Rihanna crying, “…but chains and whips excite me”.

‘Hello… babe? Are you alright?’

‘I MAY BE BAD BUT I’M PERFECTLY GOOD AT IT… SEX IN THE AIR—’

‘LAYLA!! Can you HEAR ME? Are you ALRIGHT?’

‘HEYY, can you TURN DOWN THE MUSIC,’ he finally caught her, ‘it’s my BOYFRIEND ON THE LINE!!’ she laughed, and he knew by her only-too-happy voice that she was wasted.

‘BOYFRIEND?! We thought you were OURS tonight!!’ Oscar heard a man shout. His heart pounded as he realized she wasn’t alone—she was hammered and with men, men: plural. Layla laughed again, ‘I AM… don’t worry, he must be calling just to say how LIFE’S SO BUSY…’ another tipsy chuckle.

‘WHAT’S UP, Oscar? I hope you hear me now…’

‘Layla! I’M SORRY I missed your CALLS. It was a—’ he stopped before he could say “busy day”. ‘What’s HAPPENING… where ARE you? Is SOPHIE WITH YOU?’ he prayed at least her roommate was with her.

‘WHO?! Oh SOPHIE… yeah, she’s WITH US TOO… We found some REALLY NICE dudes at the club. It was actually HER IDEA to accept THEIR INVITATION.’

‘WHAT invitation?!’ he went numb.

‘WE’RE GOING TO… sorry what’s your name, yeah… we are on OUR WAY to NICK’S and HIS FRIENDS’ place to look around their ANTIQUES’ COLLECTION.’

‘C’mon babe,’ came another man’s voice, ‘enough with the—’ the line went dead.

Oscar called again, frantically, and despite the machine telling him that the phone had gone off, he tried again, and then one more time: he didn’t know what else to do sitting there, three hundred miles away. Anything could happen by the time he managed getting to London—the thought made him giddy. Layla, meanwhile, continued to ramble incoherently into the phone before she realized she’d been talking to herself for the last few seconds… or minutes; she couldn’t tell. It wasn’t until the next morning that she was going to remember anything about this phone call whatsoever.

Her head spun as she struggled to make sense of her whereabouts. Feeling the rug beneath her, she registered the ground. She rose herself to sit and noticed a man she didn’t recognize, fast asleep in a queen-size bed, about three feet to her left. She looked on, and worked out two figures snogging on the sofa far to the front—was that… Sophie? Her head hurt. Yes, that was her. Seeing her up and shuffling, Sophie broke off from her seeming lover—snuggling, they looked as though they had been lovers for years—and called out to Layla.

‘Feeling better?’

She nodded uncertainly.

‘And oh, this is Mark,’ seeing Layla look vague, she offered, ‘from last night.’

‘Of course… I remember,’ an uneasy laugh.

‘Do you, though?!’ she paused before introducing the man on the bed, ‘and that over there is Nick.’ Layla looked in the direction, suddenly catching on to faint traces from the night before. ‘The poor guy entertained you, brought you home, clung on to you the whole night, hoping to score, but you didn’t give. Mind you, he was a real gentleman—it wouldn’t have been difficult to take advantage of the situation, given how hammered you were!’ Layla surveyed her person, and let out a sigh, finding herself uncompromised.

‘What do you mean how hammered I was… you were equally drunk.’

‘I had equal, but I know how to hold my drinks. You babe, passed out even before the fun began.’ She paused thoughtfully for a moment, studying Layla’s face, then teasing her, added, ‘Someone doesn’t seem to care for anything other than Oscar, lucky guy!’

‘Bollocks!’ she tried to dismiss the insinuation off hand.

‘Seriously, you might wanna call him. He must be worried sick. Coffee?’ She went over to the kitchen counter to grab the coffee pot.

‘Yes please, I could do with some caffeine.’

Sophie walked across the hall to hand her the cup. ‘You passed out last night mumbling his name, do you know that?’ Layla looked up from the cup in her hands; her quiet pleading: what?! I don’t remember any such thing. Tell me what happened. ‘We hooked up with Nick and Mark at the club last night and came home with them in their car to check out their “antiques’ collection”,’ Sophie laughed, rolling her eyes. ‘You played along, or so we thought. But then… when Nick tried to get it on with you after coming here, despite him being such a delight all evening, you shoved him saying, “But Oscar’s not here!”’ she paused, letting it all sink in.

‘You didn’t stop talking about him all night, Layla. Nick was being extremely patient. I seriously feel sorry for the guy. Even tipsy I prayed for you to just shut up, but you wouldn’t. You went on and on about how Oscar did this, how he didn’t do that, how he’s a crappy boyfriend, how he cares so much…’ Layla had stopped sipping her coffee, and was focused on the stream of revelations, incredulous. ‘Honestly babe, you say that you want to explore, but you’re not even willing to kiss another person without Oscar having a fit and dragging you home. It’s always about him. Just look at how many opportunities to “explore” you have passed up, stating one excuse or the other. Last night… the state you were in, anything that you might have done could be overlooked as an innocent drunken mistake, and yet, Oscar was all you wanted.’ Sophie resumed her position on the sofa, wrapping Mark’s arm around her. ‘You’re too into him. It wouldn’t hurt to be honest with yourself for once.’

‘Layla?’ Sophie snapped her out of her imagination before he went wild on her while she stared into empty space.

‘Yeah… sorry… I must get home.’

She rummaged around for her phone—still dead—scrambled to her feet, hugged Sophie tight, and rushed out the door, onto the street. She’d charge the phone as soon as she got to her flat and call Oscar immediately, she thought. As her steps picked up pace, the previous night’s truncated phone call with him came back to her. He really must be worried sick. Rushing home—her head abuzz with various fleeting thoughts—she hit upon the realization that despite his recent lack of attention, she couldn’t deny that he cared, and a lot too. Presently, she just wanted to get to this man, even if it meant catching him over the phone. Gwynedd was five hours away: she could barely contain herself till she got to her place in London. Now literally running, she considered the possibility—whether….

Panting, she rounded the corner to her street and froze—he was doubled up on the threshold outside her building, looking pale. She saw him at her doorstep and she knew… beyond doubt.

Hearing her racing footsteps suddenly come to a halt, he turned. Their eyes met—hers welling up, his looking helpless. He rose as she ran to cover the stretch parting them.

Still out of breath, ‘Oscar—’ she was enveloped in his generous arms before she could say she was sorry, that she had been a fool.

I love you…’ she was now in sobs

The words didn’t surprise either of them, or at least she wasn’t greeted with disbelief—him jolting her away, trying to study her—as one might expect. There was immense comfort in the acceptance of their much-resisted thought; it was liberating.

They remained wrapped in each other’s persons, basking in the warmth of the hitherto restrained emotion for a bit longer before she took him inside and made him the most flavoursome breakfast, well, it was only scrambled eggs, but these were two individuals who had just known catharsis—everything was flavoursome.

‘Well, I’d gone out with those guys that night only because I was mad. He had stopped trying, hadn’t even been calling that often,’ she complained to Mrunal.

‘I had stopped calling, burying myself in work, so I wouldn’t think of her. She was hardly ever available, always busy with “important things”.’

‘Well, we both missed each other terribly and were sissies to admit it. So, what we did, instead, was find ways to distract ourselves—with work… people…. It was our coping mechanism. If only we had the maturity to address the issue, and man up to our emotions sooner…’ ‘If only you had the maturity to man up to your emotions sooner. I couldn’t have been clearer with my intentions.’ He now looked at Mrunal, protesting, ‘she’s always been the one to evade, fleeting all the time. She’s a cat, I am a dog—steadfast, dependable. Not her: every once in a while, she’d be like, “would you please let me be?!”’

‘And he’d be like, “could you take me for a walk, twice every day, please!”’ she quipped.

‘Oh enough, you two!’ Mrunal was now emerging from the spell of having rendered herself to their account. She had lost the sense of time listening to their story.

‘But surviving the remainder of the time away became so much easier after that—’

‘For both of us: I slept peacefully from that day on, knowing she wasn’t running riot… that she would come back….’

‘And nothing distracted me thereafter; focusing on the programme was a cakewalk without all the distractions. I’d seen the big-city life—the ups and downs of it, had my adventures, now I was content in the knowledge that I would return home to someone who was waiting for me… nothing’s more comforting than—’

‘Hi, do you have anything for a late afternoon snack?’ People were finally coming around, and one of the guests dropped in at the bar, wanting a fill-up. Mrunal had briefed Layla about food orders and the menu, so Layla wanted to take this one. As she got busy with the guests —taking and conveying their orders to the kitchen—Mrunal and Oscar continued to talk about the couple.

‘So, how did India happen then?’

‘She just returned from London last month. I took a break from projects; we wanted to be together, doing nothing, to make up for the time lost while she was away. She also wanted to travel someplace far before life got busy again. So…’ he breathed, ‘here we are.’ Oscar finally looked up from his sketchbook, turning it towards Mrunal. “It’s a Journey”—she registered the graffiti, packed between travel and life-inspired illustrations. ‘Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought of it; I couldn’t have. India wouldn’t have happened had it not been for her spirit of adventure. I’m a boring person that way.’

‘But you are just what she seems to need.’

‘We are both what the other needs. I’m the rock, she’s the breeze. I’m her stability, she’s my breath of fresh air.’

“Isn’t it why they say “opposites attract”? It is the opposites that are mutually endowed to complement one another, filling each other’s voids while avoiding the scramble for space and power known to overlapping personalities. Lasting airtight partnerships—of any kind—can only materialise where one wells forth, easing into the gap that the other circumvents, while standing back, allowing the other to fit perfectly into the space they consider rightfully theirs: between people that fit together like the juxtaposing pieces of the same puzzle. Isn’t it why every leader needs a follower, every talker a listener, every rock a gush of wind, every Oscar a Layla?

Isn’t love beyond gender, orientation, and one’s years too? When it frees people from the beliefs they box themselves in, crumbling the identities they might have worn, when it catapults their fundamentals ahead of their age, fostering a finer judgement, has biology got ANYTHING to do with the emotion? When you grow to care beyond yourself, if not for love, how do you explain that expansion of the sense of “self”? Isn’t surrendering to the emotion… liberating?”

Mrunal closed her journal, tucking it away as she slipped into bed, content with the unfoldings of the day. “It’s a Journey”—she remembered Oscar’s graffiti as she turned to the side, pulling the sheet over her. Tomorrow would be a new day, bringing in new people and their stories: new adventures awaited her.

The Spaces Between

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