15:30

Forty Nine

It was June of 2030, more than a year since Tara and Jay had their last but not final encounter. Immediately after Jay's Vice-President-of-UniTech-Announcement party, Tara dropped the UniTech- Vogue CSR Project, so she had nothing to do with UniTech anymore and the possibility of her meeting Jay again was reduced considerably. Mandy understood her reasons and did not protest. He was happy to see her happy.

Tara's license to practice in the state of Massachusetts was re-instated. Due to this, she was allowed to give the New York State Bar Exam, which she cleared in her first attempt. She was now a fully practicing lawyer, once again, and even though she had a few years' lag to cover up, she was better than ever. Both her and Mandy spearheaded Vogue's legal department and were doing exceptionally well in their professional and personal lives.

Jay had his own ways of keeping tabs on Tara. He heard about everything, about Tara's license and her many feats at Vogue, through their common link, Amelia. It was suspicious that an engaged man would keep a track of what another woman was doing. But Amelia had an instinctive feeling that Jay and Tracy would not work out, so she happily obliged. Jay was silently observing every achievement in Tara's life, without her having the slightest hint. He didn't love Tracy any less but he knew he had done Tara wrong and the guilt never left him, even though Tara did. He respected her decision to never meet again, but he cared about her.

George could not muster the courage to ask Amelia to marry him, despite carrying the ring around for over a year. He had shown the ring to Jay on Jay's thirtieth birthday. Between then and now, Jay had broken up with one girl, started a relationship with another girl, gotten engaged to her and would marry her in August of that year.

Jay's summer beach wedding plans were all over the news. Jay wanted to get married in secret, but Tracy wanted the world to know. Despite making half- hearted attempts to keep mum, some mysterious source revealed all the details to the media and everything blew up. Tracy was trending everywhere. Why a wedding was making headlines when there were bigger problems in the world, puzzled a lot of intellectuals.

Though Jay kept a track of Tara, she did want to bother at all, and justifiably so. After spending months at the hospital beside an unconscious Jay, and after putting all of her pride aside and calling her neurosurgeon father after 8 years to operate Jay, he dumped her immediately after gaining consciousness. Just like that. At the snap of a Thanos finger. It took her a lot of time to recover. Then, when they met again at Jay's Vice-President party it was far too hard for her and all of the memories returned. She thought it was best to keep her distance from him. She never heard of him again, except when he was in the news.

Tara was trying to support the dying newspaper industry, so she would still purchase a paper every morning on her way to work. This morning's headline left her a little pit in her stomach. It was about Jay's wedding. The date was said. The dress was bought. The bridesmaids were prepped. In less than two months, Jay would share altar with another woman. And he would also share taxes with her. Tara was happy for him but she felt a deep sense of injustice encompass her. If only he'd give her one chance to be heard, to tell him the truth. Things would be so different right now. Tara was still unaware that Jay knew about her assault on her former boss. And that Tracy was the one who had, anonymously brought all of this to Jay's notice.

Tara got lost in her though when Mandy came from behind and hugged and kissed her.

"Stalking ex- boyfriends, are we?" he asked teasingly.

"It's the worse when your ex-boyfriend's personal life has to make it to the headlines. I don't have the option of remaining blissfully unaware."

"Hey, if you want a beautiful beach wedding overlooking the sunset, we'll get it," Mandy said, looking at Tara as hope glistened in his eyes.