With Or Without You

7.

Karan's POV:

'Let's get this show on the road!' comes a voice from behind us.

Hiya barges past and opens the door to the back seats. 'You might want to start up the engine. Advik's coming at quite a pace.'

I turn just as Aahana appears, sliding her phone into her pocket. She climbs in after Hiya as I move to the driving seat.

I panic: does that mean Teja is going to sit up front with me?

'What's Advik doing?' Aahana says. I look over my shoulder, back towards the green. He is running towards us in a great flail of long arms and legs, hair flying. Behind him is the Alsatian dog, giving him chase.

'Oh, brilliant,' I mutter, clambering into the car and fumbling to turn the key in the ignition. Hiya whoops as Advik scrambles into the back, breathing hard.

'Sorry!' he calls. 'Sorry! Sorry!'

Aahana makes a squished sort of oof sound. 'Watch those hands, please,' she says. 'That one strayed very close to my private area.'

'Oh my God, I'm so sorry,' says a mortified, breathless Advik.

Teja climbs into the front seat. I'm trying to catch her gaze but to no avail.

'No harm done,' Aahana says. 'This thing is sturdy if you know what I mean.'

To my utmost pleasure, Advik gets even more red. 'Oh, no,' he says. 'Oh, I didn't – I'm so sorry.'

'I forgot how much I like you, Aahana,' Hiya declares.

'Really?' she says, sounding interested. 'Because I don't like you at all.'

I pull out of the service station. I can't resist – for a second my gaze flickers towards Teja in the passenger seat.

'Only three hundred and fifty-eight miles to go,' she says, quietly enough that only I can hear her.

Advik is explaining to Aahana that he is 'often misunderstood', and is 'actually in the process of reforming, much like a rake from a poorly written nineteenth-century novel'.

'Three hundred and fifty-eight miles,' I say. 'I'm sure it'll fly by.'

*****

We speed along the A34. Already the heat is as thick as honey, viscous and sweet. It's turning into a glorious summer morning: the sky is a deep lapis lazuli blue, and the fields are sun-kissed and yellow-bright on either side of the road. It's the sort of day that tastes of crushed ice and suntan lotion, ripe strawberries, the sweet head rush of too many gin and tonics.

'Chocolate's going to melt at this rate,' says Teja, turning the air conditioning as cold as it'll go.

I perk up. 'Chocolate?'

'Not for you,' she says, without looking away from the road.

I sag back in my seat. I thought we'd made a little progress – earlier she turned to me and offered half a smile, like the smallest bite of something delicious, and my heart soared. A real smile from Teja is a true prize: hard to win and utterly heart-stopping when it comes. Disturbingly, this seems to be no less true now than it was two years ago. But she's gone cold again; it's been thirty minutes since we left the services and she's not spoken to me directly until now. I have no right to object, and it shouldn't make me angry, but it does – it feels like pettiness, and I like to think we're better than that.

I shift in my seat and she glances across at me, then reaches to turn the radio up. It's rattling out some pop song, something bouncy and repetitive, a compromise between her tastes and Hiya's; at this volume I can't quite catch the inane chatter in the back seat. Last I heard, Advik was explaining the rules of real-life quidditch to Aahana, with the occasional amused interlude from Hiya and eye rolling from Naina.

'Go on,' Teja says. 'Whatever you want to say, just say it.'

'Am I that transparent?' I say, as lightly as I can manage.

'Yes.' Her voice is frank. 'You are.'

'I just . . .' I swallow. 'You're still punishing me.'

The moment I've said it, I instantly wish I hadn't.

'I'm punishing you?'

The air con is a slow, warm breath frittering away on my face; I'd rather crack the windows, but earlier Hiya complained about what it did to her hair, and I don't have the patience to go through that conversation again. I shift so the lukewarm stream of air hits my cheek side-on. The tips of Teja's ears have gone red, just visible through the ends of her hair. She's wearing sunglasses now.

'You still won't speak to me.'

'Not speaking was never about punishing you, Karan. It actually wasn't about you at all. I needed the space.'

I look down at my hands. 'I just thought you'd stop needing space eventually, I suppose.'

She glances at me; her eyes are unreadable through the sunglasses' filter. 'You were waiting?' she asks.

'Not . . . not waiting, per se, but . . .'

I trail off, and the silence rolls ahead of us, ribbon-like, too long. I catch sight of the expression of the passenger in the car across from us on the motorway – a middle-aged woman in a cap, staring wide-eyed at our car.

I glance back at the others and imagine what she's seeing. A collection of twenty-somethings cheerfully crammed into a bright red bus at seven in the morning on a bank holiday Sunday.

She has no idea. If one could harness secrets for energy, we wouldn't need petrol – we'd have enough grudges in this car to take us all the way to Scotland.

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A/N: Please don't be a silent reader and do vote and comment if you found this chapter to your liking. Your feedback means the world to me!

Until next time.

Lots of love,

D