The Six Types of Love

SILAS

As we walk along the avenue, the streetlights come on. Everyone comes out of their homes and restaurants fill up with people ready to relax. We find a cute little cafe that when we go inside realize serves Indian food. The tables here are black with green settings and the waitstaff is dressed in matching colors. It's calming. When we sit down, the table is so tiny that are legs are practically intertwined with one another's. I don't mind. Once our waiter comes, Ayush orders a vodka Diet Coke and I order a rum and Coke.

Returning to our conversation, I tell Ayush how the rest of the summer before college crawled by and how I almost came to see him before he moved in.

"Why didn't you?"

"What if you didn't want to see me?"

"I always wanted to see you."

The waiter brings our drinks, and we take our first sips simultaneously. Ayush offers me the sparkling brown-gold liquid in his glass, and I take it, realizing it actually tastes pretty good. As the night goes on, we, and the crowd around us, get drunker and louder and Ayush starts to tell me about everyone in Cincinnati.

Everett became a college professor at OSU, but Ayush and him visit each other almost every weekend. Casper, Everett's younger brother, moved to Chicago after he attended NYU to work for some large law firm; Shreya started a rehabilitation center; Thalia just became a full-fledged doctor; and Armaan has been working with Ayush's parents since he graduated from OSU.

I wish I had people like this I could go back to. Ayush had once told me in a fight that I didn't know how to maintain relationships because I was American. He related it back to the individualistic culture of the United States. It had hurt because he had essentially invalidated all my relationships, but he had been right. I always took for granted that I could not talk to my friends like Alex, Miya, Bryce, Jack, Carina, and Vicky and everything would still be fine. However, I had been wrong. I had grown apart from all of them and now it was a miracle if they even left me on read.

Ayush asks me about my friends in Cincinnati and I sheepishly confess that I haven't been back since graduating college. I tell him how I interned every year and would never visit home, so I rarely saw them.

At my college grad party, the only person who came was Alex and even that was only for a bit. Eventually, not being back even affected my relationships with my family too. Not visiting and being horrible at keeping in touch made us grow further and further apart. We weren't close at all anymore. I had no idea how I was going to call Grace and my parents and tell them all these life-changing things. I tell Ayush this.

"When do you plan on going home?"

"I don't know."

"You're coming back with me tomorrow," he informs me.

"Sounds good," I agree because I know that it's been far too long.

I always felt like I was the one in charge of this relationship in high school. Ayush would always leave everything to me. Now that he takes everything on himself it's new, it's hot. His confidence, real confidence, not the shallow arrogance he had in high school, is intoxicating. We order a saag paneer, chicken tikka masala, and two garlic naans. Ayush tries the food and tells me the kitchen needs to increase the heat of their tandoor to make their naans perfect. We finish dinner and I pay for the bill. It's almost ten now, so Ayush and I decide to go back to the hotel and call Joel, Grace, and my parents.

We get to our room, change into more comfortable clothes, then get under the covers. Ayush pulls out his laptop and I ask him what he's doing.