The Six Types of Love

SILAS

"One of the best things I have ever eaten in my life," I gush, surprised that a restaurant that seemed so unassuming from the outside could have such flavorful food. We eat in silence after praising the dishes we ordered. I figure Ayush's brain has turned to mush from the last six hours. While I savor my food, I analyze the glass vase of yellow tulips that Ayush pushed to the side of the table as soon as we sat down.

At first, Ayush asked me and Biago to weigh in on his questions. However, he soon realized I was useless in the culinary and real estate fields. His questions made me want to call my mom because she worked in the restaurant industry before I realize how angry she would be at me if she knew I was with Ayush.

My mom never disliked any of my friends, but she hated Ayush because she saw how much he put me through during and after high school. Furthermore, while dragging my name through the mud in the book, he also dragged her and my dad's names through it too. He wrote about how my dad and ex-wife hadn't said a word to each other since their divorce and that my parents' ten-year age gap was weird. When my mom found out everything about her in The Six Types of Love, she had been irate. We had considered pressing charges and even spoke to a lawyer. However, the book, according to the cover, was completely fictional. If we sued, more people would know it was about me and my family than already did and it would only damage our reputation more. Ayush knew the game he was playing and, unfortunately, also knew he would win.

Over the years, it had been brought to my attention that there were interviews where Ayush said that Abhi was a self-insert in a lot of ways. That drew some speculation about whether Sebastian was also based on a real person, but Ayush had shut those rumors down every time. There were obviously many things tying Sebastian back to me, but if no one was looking, nothing would be found. Only people who knew Ayush or me personally, or a few degrees beyond that, knew the book was almost 100% real. I still remember the feelings of absolute betrayal I felt, which only increased with every additional part Ayush wrote, whenever I read something Ayush swore to keep between us.

My feelings, my thoughts, and my beliefs from high school are all things someone can buy for fifteen dollars. My most personal secrets, which I had only ever shared with one person, had been shared with the world without my consent or knowledge. Everything from my struggle to coming out to my sister and her ex-boyfriend's relationship status was public knowledge. How Ayush could so easily do that to me used to shock me before I read the book and realized the extent to which I hurt him. If someone damaged me as much as I hurt him, I can't say I wouldn't have done the exact same things he did.

I used to abhor Ayush for how he used my secrets to achieve fame and success, but time heals everything, except love. A love, that for some bizarre reason, increased when I saw Ayush looking at real estate.

Every property brought concerns I had never even thought about. Biago probably needed a break more than Ayush did. However, I noticed something that morning. In high school, when someone didn't know something that Ayush did, he assumed an air of superiority; one that he didn't anymore. Whenever he asked a question that Biago didn't understand or didn't have an answer to, Ayush would calmly explain what information he was asking for or say that he could wait for an answer to make a final decision.

I remember Ayush's condescension being so annoying back then, reflective of an immaturity that I couldn't find myself attracted to that's completely gone now. He grew up and changed a lot. There is so much to learn about this new person. I find myself questioning whether I made the right decision all those years ago, whether immaturity was such a fatal flaw that it made Ayush unlovable. Maybe I should have stayed? Ayush had changed so much for me during high school and clearly even more after. Maybe if I had just told him everything that used to bother me, we could have worked out.

Maybe if Joel had done the same, he and I could have worked out too. As Ayush and I were looking at the properties, it reminded me of looking for houses right before I got engaged to Joel. We had been searching for months when one day our realtor took us to this place in the mountains just outside San Francisco. It looked like a massive log cabin and there were trails all around it with a fire pit in the back. We placed an offer on the spot.

After the two of us moved in, we invited a few of our closest friends over for a housewarming. Joel had looked so nervous the entire day of the get-together and wouldn't tell me why, so I decided to give him his space. That night at dinner, Joel asked everyone to stop eating and then he got up in his dark blue suit, came over to my side of the table, looked at me with his piercing blue eyes, knelt on one knee, and proposed. Everyone had been in on his plan. Of course, I said yes, even if I wished it wasn't him, even if I was seeing brown eyes instead of blue, because, at the end of the day, it was what everyone wanted, and who I am I to disappoint them?