My So-Called Bollywood Life(2)

“And you’re probably pissed—”

Winnie froze. “?‘Probably pissed’? Are you freakin’ kidding me?” She tossed the shovel to the ground and faced her friend. “No, I’d probably be pissed if I got a B in film class this year. I’d probably be pissed if I gained ten pounds and couldn’t fit into my prom dress. I’m murderous right now because my boyfriend broke up with me online while basically announcing that he cheated! Did you know that he even wrote a Facebook post? My parents and their friends are the only ones who check Facebook. It’s humiliating when your mother tells you that she saw the news on her feed. There are more people throwing me a pity party than extras in the movie Gandhi.”

Bridget put up her hands in surrender. “I totally didn’t know he was going to do that, but to be fair, I did warn you that he was hanging out with Jenny Dickens.”

The second she heard Jenny’s name, Winnie hocked a loogie. Well, she tried, but she ended up choking and coughing on her own spit.

“What the hell was that?”

    “I can’t hear that man-stealing backstabber’s name without spitting,” Winnie said, pressing a fist to her chest. “It’s a demonstration of how I feel about her.”

Bridget snorted. “What movie did you see that one in?”

“It’s not funny, Bridget! Damn it, it wasn’t supposed to end like this.” To her horror, tears started to fill her eyes.

“Oh crap,” Bridget said, and scrambled forward. The second Winnie felt her friend’s tight hug, a sob broke through her throat. Then another followed, and another, until she couldn’t stop.

Bridget held her while she cried for the first time since she’d realized her love story was finally over. Memories circled in her mind like vultures. First kiss, themed dates, Bollywood marathons, film festivals, passionate arguments over movies. She knew that Raj believed in her prophecy because of all the effort that he’d invested in their relationship. Just when she’d started thinking that maybe Raj really was the answer to her family astrologer’s prediction for a happily-ever-after, he changed. Now their relationship was a short caption in a yearbook. They were the cliché high school romance.

What a joke.

Winnie pulled away and wiped her face with the hem of her tank top. “I should’ve known that Pandit Ohmi was wrong,” she said, sniffling. “What was I thinking? I was brainwashed. This proves it.”

“Just because Raj isn’t the soul mate doesn’t mean that your soul mate doesn’t exist,” Bridget said. “There are tons of guys out there whose names start with R and who’ll give you a silver bracelet.”

    Winnie stepped to the edge of the hole and sat down in the fresh dirt. “You and I both know I’m not going to find someone else who fits Pandit Ohmi’s prediction—not before I’m eighteen, at any rate. The way my parents have crammed it down my throat all these years, it’s as if Raj’s name is practically written in with the prophecy.”

“Obviously that’s not true,” Bridget said as she sat down next to Winnie.

Whoever coined the phrase “truth hurts” was probably a smug jackass, Winnie thought.

“If he was really the guy for me,” she said between sniffles, “then we should’ve been able to work past this, right? Like a growing pain. We were great for the first two years, but junior year was so hard, and I needed some space, some time to breathe and think about what he wanted from me. So, like an idiot, I spent the summer thinking, and he spent the summer forgetting. It sucks, but we’re too different now to work things out. Cheating puts the last nail in our relationship’s coffin…which is why I’m digging a grave.” She motioned to the shallow hole at her feet. “To bury my coffin.”

“If you know you two aren’t going to work anymore, then why are you so mad at him for hooking up with Jenny? You should be happy that it’s over.”

    “Because I stayed faithful,” Winnie said as she dug her sneakered toe into the dirt. Her heart ached a little as she said the words. “He moved on to someone else without a second thought. Plus, he wasn’t honest. We were friends before we dated, Bridge. I thought maybe we could go back to that if things didn’t work out. But now? I’ve lost a friend, too.”

“Well, screw him,” Bridget said. “He sucks.”

Winnie wiped her nose. “I can confidently say that soul mates are for the movies.”

“I don’t know why you trusted the whole prophecy thing,” she said. “We’re talking about a prediction a psychic made.”

“He’s not a psychic. He’s an astrologer. A priest. A pandit.”

Bridget stood up and walked over to one of the boxes piled high with DVDs. She kicked the side of it, and the contents rattled. “Sounds like a psychic to the blonde here.”

“He’s pretty accurate, Bridge. He reads charts based on star alignments that were in the sky when someone was born. It’s a religious thing. Or is it a cultural thing? Either way, it’s something important.”

“That you don’t believe in anymore,” she said.

Winnie winced. “Yeah, I guess not.” But a part of her wished that it was still true. Maybe a part of her still wanted it to happen. But to what end? She was going to be disappointed if she kept hoping that Raj would change back into the guy she remembered.