Vani’s Alzheimer’s was getting worse. Some days, she remembered me, remembered our love, remembered our history. On other days, all she remembered was her husband. She forgot that Hari would be dead ten years this coming July, and that it would be nine years since I had moved in and stayed. Sometimes, she still looked at me with the soft fondness that I carried in my heart through our years together before her marriage. Sometimes, she called me by the names of her older lovers. A lifetime of memories was supposed to connect us, but I was left holding only one end of the rope. “Aashi?” Vani called from the living room. I took a sharp breath. Today was a good day. She remembered my name.  “Yeah?” I asked, wiping my hands on a towel tucked into the waist of my saree as I poked my head out of the kitchen. She was sitting on a couch by the floor lamp, a well-worn photo album balanced on her knees. Even wrapped in her Kashmiri wool shawl, her hair hidden under the woolen cap her daughter had made for her, she looked beautiful to me. She had aged so gracefully. “Is this me?” she asked, her finger gently stroking a frayed photograph. I peeped over her shoulder to look at what she was pointing at. It was us at twenty-two surrounded by all our friends, laughing and hugging, rainbows painted on our faces. I still remembered the feeling of Vani’s fingers cupping my chin as she painted my face.  I hummed. “Yeah, that’s you, Vani. That’s us.” Her face split into a larger smile. “That’s Sara!” she exclaimed. “She was my first kiss. I remember.” She patted the photo gently.  I tried to control my expressions. It wouldn’t do for my sadness to hurt her, not when she was so happy with remembering. But it hurt. Vani had been out and proud for years before I met her in college. She had dated men and women, finding physical and emotional intimacy alike. For me, it had only ever been Vani. “What about you?” Vani asked me, looking up with those wide eyes I had once fallen for. “Who do you know in this photo?” “Well, I know you,” I smiled, running a thumb over the picture, “and I know Sara, and I know Hari. You were so happy at the party at Sara’s house that day.” I wasn’t. “How – how did you know them?” I let myself sink into the cushions with a sigh, lifting my feet onto the little footstool. Sometimes, Vani remembered people, not places. Or she forgot when she met someone. Whenever she asked for the story behind her memories, I could never deny her my time. That’s something I carried over from twenty, thirty years ago, and something I would always carry forward. “Well, let’s see.” She obligingly pushed the album half onto my lap. “Well, I met you in our third year in college. You were studying Maths, something I never understood, and I was studying English. We both had Statistics together. Sara was your bench mate, and Hari, he was the class troublemaker.” I laughed softly, remembering all those old figures. “I still can’t believe you married him, Vani.” Vani looked at the picture with startled awe on her face. “I married him?” she whispered. I felt another pang in my heart. She had loved Hari so much. She was one of the few people to stand by his side when he messed up in college, and the only person he would listen to. They loved each other so much, it made me and Sara feel like we were always third wheeling them, especially at their wedding. “But that was the year I met you,” I told her, reaching out to touch the back of her hand. “That was the year we dated.” “I remember,” Vani breathed, still looking at the book. “You sing so beautifully, Aashi.” I felt a little lump in my throat. She remembers. I had sung for the first time at a college function, and Vani had come up to me to tell me she loved the way I sang. Her hair was up in a high ponytail with a rainbow scrunchie, and she wore a crop top over baggy jeans. Beside her, in my comfortable cotton salwar and neatly braided hair, I felt like someone from a different world. But now, I realized, that was the moment I fell for her. That was the moment I realized who I was. “You used to be so scared,” Vani said, reaching over to pat my hand. I could scarcely breathe. It was so rare that so much of the old Vani surfaced, the one who remembered everything, the one who remembered the littlest details of who I was. It felt like a single wrong word could make it all come tumbling down.  “I was,” I nodded. “I didn’t know what to call it, I didn’t know what to tell people, but I just knew it was love for you.” Vani smiled. “Just like Abi.” Abi was Vani’s daughter. From the moment she was born, she stuck to me. There was a sense of pride in being the safe space for a little girl, especially when she crawled into my lap and told me that she liked a girl in school. She was sixteen, then, too old for cuddling, but never too big to me. “I think I like her,” she had whispered into my ear, and I had tightened my grip around her. “But it feels like I like her the wrong way.” “There isn’t a wrong way to like someone, sweetheart,” I told her, rocking her slightly. “If you like them and respect them, then that’s it.” “Everyone says they want to kiss the person they like,” she said, frowning slightly. “But I don’t. I just – Can’t I just want to like her and have her in my life?” I felt a sudden kinship with the girl on my lap. “Shall I let you in on a little secret?” I asked her. “One I think only your mother knows.” “Is it about you dating in college?” she asked, and I had to laugh. Of course Vani would tell her daughter all about her dating life. Of course she would. “Yeah. But did she tell you why we fought and broke up?” Abi cocked her head to the side, looking at me with eyes that looked so much like Vani’s. “I told her the same thing you told me.” Her eyes widened slightly. “What?” “I told her that I didn’t want to kiss her or do anything like that. Just having her in my life was enough for me, but -” “But Ma wanted more?” I shrugged. “I didn’t know what to call it then, Abi. But it felt like I was loving her the wrong way then.” “What changed?” Vani asked me, and I blinked, coming back to the present. “Hm?” “What changed and brought you back to me? I was horrible to you about not wanting to get physical.” I was tired of feeling like I wasn’t enough. That I couldn’t give you enough. “I think,” I began slowly, “that I didn’t want to lose touch with a part of me. A part of me that you gave me.” It was easier to say this out loud than I remembered. “A part that you gave to Sara, a part that you gave to Hari, a part that you gave to everyone who saw you.” “Abi learned from you, didn’t she?” she asked, her forehead wrinkling slightly. “I can’t remember how I found out. Did I find out?” I shook my head slightly. “She came and told me about asexuality first. It was a word that felt huge then, Vani. I didn’t have it, so I tried to avoid even thinking about it. But when she told me, it felt like I was breathing again. I had already struggled so much with coming to terms with the fact that I liked girls. This was… bigger, stranger.” Her hand found mine and pressed gently. “I don’t know if I’ll remember to thank you at the end,” she laughed slightly, “so I’ll do it now. Thank you for being there for my daughter, Aashi.” I smiled back at her and adjusted the shawl around her shoulders. “You don’t have to thank me for that,” I said. “I was being the person I never had. And besides, I learnt from Abi just like she learnt from me.” Vani looked up from the book and stared at me, her mouth slightly open. “Why – why did I leave, Aashi? When I sit and listen to you talk, I think I’m falling in love again.” I thought once, that those words would make my heart leap with happiness. That they would make me feel like a younger woman in love once again. But I think they settled into a little niche I had carved into my heart, resting comfortably in a treasured spot. A spot that I had nurtured for years. “You wanted kids, Vani. And – and one person was never going to be able to give you what you needed. You have so much love in you that you were never going to settle. I watched you go to parties and surround yourself with so much. I was -” I swallowed. “I don’t think I was ever going to be enough.” She was quiet for a moment, and I didn’t want to look her in the eyes and see the devastation in there. Every time we had this conversation, she pulled those words out of me. She made me want to be honest with her. I avoided her gaze, gently turning the pages to look at the next picture. It was of Vani and Hari on their wedding day. She was wearing the bright red saree Hari had bought her, and he was standing beside her in his dhoti, but with the sunglasses our classmates had jammed on his face for a joke. I smiled slightly, because this was so them. So bright and loud and happy.  “You aren’t here.” Vani sounded upset as she peered at the picture. “Aashi, you’re not here.” “No, look closely, Vani,” I told her, leaning closer. “I’m still there.” “I can’t see you,” she said, sounding close to tears.  I pointed at a small face towards the back of the chaotic group. “I’m always there, Vani. A little silent, a little in the back.” She traced the face with a shaking finger. “Why?” Why indeed? I shrugged. “I’m… that’s just how I am, Vani. I’m not like you, or Hari, or Sara, or any of our friends.” Sometimes, I wonder at how we even met. “But maybe it’s the differences between us that drew us closer.” “Did you – did you ever hate it?” she asked softly. “That you weren’t in the front of it all?” “Sometimes,” I told her honestly. “Sometimes, I wished I was like you, outspoken and active. Sometimes, I felt like I could never be good enough for you.” “I’m sorry,” Vani said, grabbing my arm. “Aashi, I’m so sorry.” I shook my head. “It’s not your fault, Vani, and it was years ago. I’m okay now. I know what I can do, what I can give, and that’s enough for me.” Vani’s wedding had been a defining moment for me. I had come to terms with the fact that I was never going to have a traditional marriage with my family around me and a groom at my side. I knew that I loved Vani, and in order to keep loving her, I had to let her go. Our fights had been getting bad before we broke up, both of us being as mean as we could, seeking to hurt the other simply because we felt hurt. Me, feeling like I could never measure up to Vani’s past loves. Her, feeling like I was holding back too much from her. We knew it was not sustainable, the way we were going on, so when we chose to break up, it hurt a little less. We wanted to salvage a friendship that had existed before the love. But when you love with every inch of your being, it’s hard to pull out the splinters. Vani could move on quite easily. Maybe it’s wrong to call it moving on. Maybe she managed to hide how much she was hurting too. But to me, then, it looked like she had moved on and picked up the pieces quite easily, while I still sat, holding my cracked heart together. I had wanted to hate her for being so fine with it, but I never could. I never told her, in all those years of meeting up and spending time and living together, that I never truly got over the breakup. I never told her that every moment she spent with Hari used to hurt me. I never told her that at her wedding, I spent the evening purposefully hiding in a corner, waiting for the inevitable questions about my own future. I never told her that I had given up my future for her. “Do you ever miss having a family?” Vani asked me suddenly, leaning on my shoulder. “Like I did?” “I never expected to have one,” I replied, running a finger over Abi’s face in the faded baby photograph. “I gave it up before I even considered it. I preferred my research and my books. My students were always enough for me.” Vani smiled, and her eyes travelled to the other side of the room, to the old table covered in my reference books and loose sheets of paper. “You always were the academic one,” she sighed. “But Vani?” “Hm?” “You gave me a family either way.” When you really love someone, you let them go, if that’s what makes them happy. I let Vani go, so we could find a happiness that satisfied us both. I held on to everything she gave me, and the day she placed little Abi in my arms and told me, “Please be her godmother, Aashi, I can think of no one better,” I cried. Loving Vani when I was younger had been a passionate revelation. Loving Vani when we were older had been a simmering ember. Loving Vani gave me a family I thought I would never have. It introduced me to her world, to her people, and they welcomed me wholeheartedly. Loving Vani gave me a daughter of my heart. Every memory I have is coloured with her. Her laugh, her support, her comfort. For someone who expected to be lonely, it was a welcome balm.  “Miss? I’m tired. Can I sleep now?” Vani asked sleepily, her hand slipping off the album. I paused for a moment. I didn’t want to believe what I had heard. “Of course, Vani.” I helped her to her feet and led her to her room, my hand tight around her upper arm so I could support her. “Miss?” “Yes, Vani?” She smiled sleepily at me from under her blankets. “You look just like my old school friend.” I smiled back at her. She wouldn’t remember the stories we talked about. She wouldn’t remember me. But I found that I hurt a lot less than I expected.  “That’s nice to hear, Vani.” She nodded. “She was my best friend, Miss. I really loved her.” Her voice trailed off as she fell asleep, and I carefully closed the door behind me. *** Now, when I sit here in the balcony on the old but sturdy bamboo chairs that Hari had bought for Vani, I look at the clouds scuttling across the sky so happily. We are old, now, and we could not hope to match their energy. Vani is sleeping in her room, tired out from a day of stories. When she wakes, I wonder if she will remember them again, or if she will ask me to tell her everything. I used to think I would hurt, when I had to talk about her life to her. Her life, which always used to feel so much brighter than mine. Her stories, which were more crowded than mine. But now, I realise that I am happy. My love for her has never faded. I never stopped loving her, even when I wanted to hate her. Even if it took me forty years to get used to it, at least I did. At least I can look at her and see the love she felt for me and I felt for her, without it being tainted by my sense of inadequacy. She did that. She taught me that I was enough. She taught me that it was okay to be who I was. She was a mother, a wife, a friend, a lover. I may not have been the same, but I was a woman who loved another woman so deeply that it has left its marks on me even so many decades later. I will hold us in my memories, and that is enough for me.   Penmancy gets a small share of every purchase you make through these links, and every little helps us continue bringing you the reads you love!