Chapter 02:
Ankur was the first one awake the next morning. His head sat heavy on his neck, that particular kind of dull pressure that isn't quite a headache but isn't far off either, the kind that comes from too little sleep layered on top of alcohol. The vodka hadn't been enough to knock him out. His mind had been running all night and hadn't stopped. He lay still for a minute, looking at the ceiling, listening to the room breathe. He thought about waking the others but let it go. Priya had drunk for the first time last night. She'd need the sleep more than he did.
He looked across the bed. Som and Ritika were still out, curled close together, faces slack and peaceful. Completely ordinary, from the outside. Like nothing had happened.
For Ankur, the night before was anything but ordinary.
It was still there, every detail, sharp and immediate, like something burned in. Ritika was lying back in the dim light. Her bra pushed up, Som's mouth on her nipples. The way her back had curved off the mattress. The sounds she made, those soft, broken moans, she couldn't quite swallow. He had seen all of it.
She had always been Ritika Didi to him. Both he and Som had called her that since they'd first joined the club, this warm, slightly exasperated affection behind the word, like she was the older sister who kept them both from making complete idiots of themselves. And yet, the version of her he had watched last night, fingers gripping Som's back, pulling him in, voice going high and breathless, that was not a sister. That was a woman completely lost in wanting something and getting it.
It had been shocking. It had also, and he couldn't lie to himself about this now, been deeply arousing. He remembered the heat that had moved through him while he watched, the way his body had responded before his brain could catch up. He had wanted to reach out. Had imagined what it would feel like to be where Som was.
Now it was morning and the vodka was long gone and his head was clearer, but the wanting hadn't gone anywhere. Ritika's body still lived in his thoughts. The softness of her. The sounds she'd made.
He thought about Priya, too. Something had been shifting there for weeks, something quieter and more complicated, closer to actual feeling than to wanting. But what was sitting in him about Ritika right now was different. It was physical and immediate and persistent, and he couldn't shake it.
He got up carefully and went to the bathroom. Splashed cold water on his face. Stepped into the shower and turned it cool. It helped with the sluggishness but not with the rest of it. He masturbated again. He tried not to, thought about thinking about something else, and then gave up and let it happen. It didn't take long. Ritika's face behind his eyes, the arch of her back, the way she'd whispered ouch but held Som closer anyway.
Ankur had never had a girlfriend. He was a virgin. Last night was the first time in his life he had ever seen a real woman naked, not on a screen, not in his imagination, but three feet away in actual dim light. And it had broken something open in him that had no interest in closing again.
He stepped out of the bathroom to find Ritika sitting up in bed, sheet pulled around her, phone in her lap, scrolling with the particular laziness of someone who is technically awake but not yet ready to commit to the day.
"Good morning," she said, looking up.
"Morning," he said. His voice came out low and he let it.
"I'm absolutely still hungover," she groaned. "How are you even vertical? It's barely 10."
He made a small sound of agreement. "Almost didn't make it. Thought I was going to be sick so I got up for water. Figured a shower might help."
Both of those things were technically true. Neither was the actual reason.
"Did it?" she asked.
"A bit," he said.
She stretched and smiled. "I cannot wait for Priya to wake up and describe what last night felt like from the inside. First drink ever. She was hilarious."
They both laughed softly, keeping it low.
Then Priya's phone buzzed from under her pillow. Once. Then again.
"She put it on vibrate last night," Ritika said, "so her boyfriend couldn't ruin the mood."
Ankur leaned over and checked the screen. "It's him. He's calling again." He turned the phone toward Ritika. "Should we wake her? You know how he gets. If he's already at it this early and she misses the call she'll spend the whole day managing fallout."
Ritika sighed. "Yeah. Wake her gently."
Ankur put a hand on Priya's shoulder and shook it softly. "Priya di. Wake up. He's calling."
She stirred slowly, then blinked. Then her eyes shot fully open. She grabbed the phone, sat up, and waved her hand at Ankur in a sharp get back gesture, already whispering, "Don't say a word." The all-girls-trip lie needed to stay intact. She looked across at Ritika with urgency. "Watch, Som, please."
Ritika nodded, pressing her lips together to keep from laughing, and adjusted the sheet around herself.
Priya smoothed her hair back, arranged her face into something that approximated casual, and answered the call. Her boyfriend pushed immediately for video. She deflected, said Ritika was right there and it wasn't a good time. Ankur and Ritika watched her without watching her, picking up everything from her expression. The tight smile and the careful nods. The particular way her eyes went slightly distant when she was being scolded and had decided to wait it out rather than fight back. When she finally hung up she let out a breath and then immediately did an impression of his tone and facial expressions that was so accurate and so unflattering that both of them burst out laughing.
An hour later everyone was up. Som, characteristically, looked the most functional of all of them, which was offensive given how much he'd drunk.
"My head is genuinely dying," Priya said, pressing her fingers to her temples. "But I swear that was the most fun night of my entire college life."
They took an auto down to the beach. The warm coastal air hit them as soon as the rickshaw got moving and it was like a physical reset. Everyone's shoulders came down. By the time they reached a café near the water and sat down with eggs, toast, coffee, and fresh fruit, Priya was completely herself again. Bright-eyed, animated, turning to the group with a grin before they had even finished eating.
"So what are we drinking tonight?"
Som pointed at her. "I said it. One night. Pro."
After breakfast they moved to the beach. And as naturally as breathing, without anyone deciding it, they split into their pairs. Ankur with Priya, Som with Ritika.
"Let's go in," Priya said, and grabbed Ankur's hand and pulled him toward the water.
They ran straight into the waves, both of them laughing, the cold hitting their legs and making them scream and keep going anyway. The sunlight was doing something brilliant on the surface of the sea and for a while Ankur forgot everything that was sitting in his chest and just ran through the water with Priya and felt completely light.
Som and Ritika stayed back on the sand in their sunglasses, stretched out, watching.
"We'll come in once we're sure the water won't finish us," Ritika called.
"Take your time," Priya shouted back, already waist-deep.
In the water, with Priya still laughing beside him, Ankur made a decision. He had been carrying it since he woke up and it was getting heavier.
"Priya di," he said, wading close. "I need to tell you something."
She turned, still grinning, water up to her hips. "What happened? Are you okay? Still feeling the hangover? Want to go back?"
"No, it's not that." He paused. "Something happened last night. After you fell asleep."
Her expression settled into something more attentive. "Okay. Tell me."
"I woke up in the middle of the night," he said. "And when I looked over... I saw Som and Ritika."
Priya raised an eyebrow. "Like, sleeping close? That happens. You throw your arm over me half the time on night-outs."
"No," he said. "Not like that. They were kissing."
She stared at him. Then laughed. "Ankur, how drunk were you actually?"
"I'm serious." His voice didn't waver. "It wasn't just kissing, Priya di. Ritika was topless. Som was kissing her boobs. And she wasn't just letting it happen; she was pulling him in. She was enjoying it."
The laughter left Priya's face. She looked at him carefully, reading him, deciding if he was telling her a story. His expression told her he wasn't.
"They didn't know you were awake?" she said quietly.
"I faked snoring," he said, slightly embarrassed. "I didn't know what else to do."
Priya blinked once. Then the corner of her mouth lifted. "So you got a free show while I was peacefully unconscious next to you."
Ankur laughed despite himself. "It was strange. I'm glad I told you. It's been messing with my head all morning."
They both looked back at the shore. Som and Ritika were lying in the sun, completely unhurried, saying something to each other.
"Do you think they're actually together now?" Ankur asked.
Priya tilted her head, thinking. "Who knows. Som still calls her Didi. But it's the final semester. People do things they wouldn't normally do." She paused. "Tonight," she said, voice shifting to something playful, "I'm not passing out after drinking. We're both keeping an eye on them."
Ankur grinned. "Deal."
Then Priya gave him a sideways look with the hint of a smile she was trying to control. "You don't think we'll do anything stupid after drinking, do you?"
Ankur's heart did something abrupt and inconvenient. "No, no, absolutely not," he said immediately.
She laughed at how fast he said it and he went slightly red, which made her laugh more.
Som and Ritika came into the water a while later and for the first time all trip the four of them were just playing, splashing, completely in it together. Whatever was unspoken between them, it was easier in the water, in the noise, with the sun doing what it was doing.
By evening they were sun-warm and tired and loose in the way a full beach day makes you. Back at the hotel, Priya had a particular look in her eyes. Ankur recognized it. She hadn't forgotten their pact.
"So," she said, settling onto the bed, "what are we drinking tonight?"
"Tequila," Som said. "Time to graduate from vodka."
They picked up a bottle from a shop nearby, had dinner at a little roadside place, came back to the room. The night started the same way the last one had. Shots in a circle, music low, laughter finding its way in between everything. Easy. Familiar.
Ankur watched Priya get tipsy again, maybe even more than the night before, the tequila hitting differently than the vodka had. He wasn't sure she was going to stay awake long enough to follow through on the plan. But she was clearly having a good time and he wasn't going to pull her out of it.
Eventually, the energy wound down and they all agreed to sleep. Same arrangement as before. Priya on the far left, Ankur beside her, then Som, then Ritika on the right edge.
About twenty minutes in, Ankur felt a light pinch on his hand.
He lay still. Then opened one eye just enough.
Priya was looking right at him.
She was pretending too.
They held in their laughter by pure will. Their faces were very close in the dark, and without needing to say anything they understood each other completely. Priya had the better view of the other side of the bed. Ankur had his back to Som and Ritika and he kept it that way, not wanting to seem too eager, not wanting Priya to catch the hunger he'd been sitting with all day.
Fifteen minutes went by. Then came the whispers.
"I think they're both out," Ritika murmured.
"Yeah," Som said quietly.
A brief silence. Then Ritika's voice, low and playful: "So. What do you want to do tonight?"
"Should I tell you," Som replied, "or just show you?"
Ankur and Priya both went completely still.
Then came the sounds. Kissing, the soft wet warmth of it. The rustle of the sheet. And then Ritika's voice, quick and slightly breathless: "Ouch, easy. My nipples are sensitive. Don't bite so hard."
Ankur clenched his jaw and kept his breathing even.
Beside him, Priya's eyes had gone wide. She turned back to him and mouthed, what the hell is happening right now?
Ankur mouthed back, I told you. I was not drunk yesterday.
Priya shook her head slowly, mouthing, are we dreaming this together?
She was tipsy enough that her expressions kept threatening to tip into open-mouthed disbelief. But she was sober enough to understand what was happening three feet away from them. And it had clearly hit her like a wall.
The sounds from the other side of the bed grew. More confident. Less careful. Som and Ritika had decided that two passed-out people and alcohol were sufficient cover for whatever they wanted.
Then Som said something that made Ankur stop breathing entirely.
"I can't wait anymore. Please. Let me."
There was movement. Someone's clothes are being pulled down.
Ritika's voice came back, practical and quiet: "Just don't take them all the way off. Leave them around my knees. In case we need to pull them back fast."
The thin wall of disbelief Priya had been holding up quietly collapsed. She looked at Ankur with an expression that lived somewhere between stunned and overwhelmed and slightly drunk. He looked back at her and neither of them moved.
Their fingers found each other in the dark between them, intertwined, gripping harder than either of them probably meant to.
Then the sounds changed.
A wet, slow, deliberate sound. Not kissing, not the same rhythm as before. Softer. More intimate. And then a muffled gasp from Ritika, and another.
Priya's brow furrowed, genuinely confused for a moment, working out what she was hearing.
Ankur knew immediately. He had heard it in his head a hundred times since the night before, imagined what it would sound like. The sound of Som's mouth between Ritika's thighs, his tongue moving over her pussy in slow careful strokes, tasting her. And now it was real and it was right there.
Ritika had stopped trying to be completely quiet. Her moans came in small waves, each one a little more undone than the last. She clenched the sheet, pulled at it, and Ankur and Priya felt the fabric shift and tug under their own bodies.
"Ahh... yes... right there," Ritika breathed. Just a whisper. But the room was quiet enough that it was everything.
Som worked her with his fingers too, curling them inside her while his tongue circled her clit, alternating pressure, finding the rhythm that made her hips rise. Every time he sucked, her back came off the mattress a little. Every time he moaned against her pussy, she whimpered back.
Priya's grip on Ankur's hand tightened until it was almost painful. Her chest was moving unevenly. She mouthed at him, barely any sound at all, are we really hearing this?
Ankur gave the smallest nod. He had heard all of this before in his imagination. But Priya was hearing it for the first time, this raw, unhidden thing, someone she knew completely losing herself to pleasure three feet away.
Then Ritika's breathing changed entirely. The measured control dropped out of it.
"Ahh... I can't... I'm going to, ahh, ahh--"
She didn't finish the sentence. Her voice broke apart into something breathless and shaking, her body trembling, a long shuddering exhale as the orgasm moved through her. She muffled it as best she could. The sheet went still under them. Her breathing came fast and shallow in the aftermath.
A quiet moment passed. Then another.
The sound of clothes moving.
"I need air," Ritika whispered, still catching her breath. "Walk?"
"Yeah," Som said. "They're definitely out."
Soft footsteps across the floor. The door opens and closes with a quiet click. The lock is turning from the outside.
Silence.
Ankur and Priya lay there for a moment without moving, fingers still locked together, hearts going at similar speeds.
Then Priya spoke.
"I envy her," she said quietly. Her voice was low and serious and nothing like the teasing tone she'd had all day.
"Ritika di?" Ankur said.
Priya nodded slowly, looking at the ceiling. "What she just felt. What Som did to her. She sounded like... she mattered to someone. Like someone actually cared about what she was feeling."
A pause. Then she said it plainly: "My boyfriend has never done anything even close to that. He doesn't think about what I feel. He just wants what he wants."
Ankur's chest tightened. He turned to face her properly. "You deserve more than that," he said. "You deserve someone who actually sees you."
Priya turned her head and looked at him. Really looked. "Someone like you?"
He didn't hesitate the way he would have a week ago. "Yeah. Like me."
She was quiet for a moment. Then she smiled, not the bright open smile she wore for the group but something smaller and more real, trembling on the edge of something it hadn't named yet.
"You've always called me Didi," she said. "Even when you didn't need to."
"I don't want to anymore," he said. And then, deliberately, without the suffix, without the distance it carried: "Priya."
Something moved through her eyes at the sound of it. The way he'd said it. Not junior to senior, not friend to older friend. Just her name, from him, in the dark.
She didn't move away. She didn't say stop.
She kissed him.
It started carefully, a brief press of lips, testing whether this was real. And then it deepened, her mouth opening to his, warm and wanting, and Ankur's heart went loud and immediate in his chest. This was actually happening. She was here, she was kissing him, she was choosing to.
Underneath the want, though, his nerves were right there with it.
He had never done this before. Not any of it. He had spent his whole life watching other people in relationships, listening to conversations in locker rooms, filling in blanks from films and fantasies, and none of it had prepared him for the reality of this, for the weight and warmth of an actual woman, someone he had actual feelings for, lying in front of him wanting to be touched.
His hands weren't quite steady. The fear was specific and sharp. What if he did something wrong? What if he moved too fast or too slow? What if she enjoyed none of it and regretted it by morning?
Priya felt the hesitation in him. She didn't push. She let him set the pace, lie still and let him come to it on his own terms.
She had her own quiet conflict running. Her boyfriend still existed. Four years of history still existed. A small, sensible voice somewhere in her was saying this is a mistake. She heard it and chose not to listen. She wanted to feel something that was actually about her, someone who cared about what she felt. Just once. Just tonight.
Ankur sat up slowly. His hands moved to the hem of her t-shirt, tentative, and he looked at her face.
She nodded.
"You sure?" he asked. His voice came out rough.
"Don't stop," she said simply.
He lifted her shirt up and over her head. In the soft, thin light, she was right there, real and warm, her skin glowing. He reached around, unclasped her bra, and slid the straps off her shoulders. She lay back. Her chest rose and fell with her breathing.
He looked at her for a moment. Not performing desire, just actually arrested by it, by her. "You're beautiful, Priya," he said, and meant it completely.
He lowered himself and kissed her collarbone. Then the top of her breast. Then, he lowered the soft curve of it until his tongue found her nipple and circled it slowly. She gasped, and her back came up toward his mouth. He took her in fully, sucking with gentle pressure, tongue moving in a slow rhythm. Her fingers dug into the sheet. He moved to the other breast, giving it the same attention, cupping her waist in both hands, alternating between soft suction and flicking his tongue over each nipple until she was making small sounds she couldn't quite stop.