74: The Noble Idiot

At first, Bharath felt noble. Like a general in some ancient myth, making the hard but necessary decision for the greater good.

First he retreated from the house like a Frenchman due to his women’s antics in front of Maria. Then, after he couldn’t see the house anymore, he walked trying to portray a calm dignity, head held high, posture straight.

Behind him, the girls remained inside Maria’s home. His apsaras. His miracles. He told himself this was the right thing.

Sarah, Zara, and Ayesha needed time alone with Maria. They needed to show her they weren’t just seductive distractions orbiting her daughters like lusty satellites. They were real women. Intelligent. Kind. Brave. The kind of women who would hold your hand during your darkest hour and slap you if you tried to apologize for crying.

Marisol and Mia would make sure things didn’t spiral. He trusted them. He trusted all of them.

So why did it suddenly feel like his chest was full of wet cement?

The November air was crisp, tinged with the smell of pine and fried chicken from a neighbor’s open window. It should have been invigorating. Instead, it felt like a slow, suffocating slap in the face.

He pulled his jacket tighter around himself. The one Ayesha had insisted he wear because he looked handsome in it. He’d laughed at the time.

Now he tugged at the sleeves like a kid trying to shrink into himself.

Every step away from the house now hurt in a new way. Not physically, though the dull sting in his arm wasn’t letting him forget Maria’s earlier attempt at homicide, but something else.

He felt their absence already like a yawning emptiness.

He passed by a small bench and paused. He just sat there like a mopey Tamil movie hero in Act II, shoulders slumped, face tragic.

A couple walked by, laughing. The guy had his arm around the girl, and she was doing that thing Sarah did - tapping his chest when she laughed too hard. Bharath’s heart clenched.

He shook his head and groaned. “I’m hopeless.”

He hadn’t even reached the damn MARTA station yet and he was already spiraling. He imagined Sarah seeing him now - she’d kiss him and call him soft. Marisol would cradle his face and call him tonto hermoso. Zara would roll her eyes and mutter something about melodrama but kiss him nonetheless. Ayesha would demand a cuddle as punishment for being so dramatic. Mia would just throw herself at him screaming “Mi amor!”

He smiled thinking about the loves of his life. Then he frowned again because they weren’t there with him.

By the time he actually reached the MARTA station, his noble aura had disintegrated into something pitiful and vaguely damp.

The lights at the station flickered in that way that made him question his life choices. There was a woman muttering to herself by the ticket machine, and a man with a saxophone playing the worst rendition of “My Heart Will Go On” he’d ever heard.

It was perfect. Just the kind of depressing cinematic backdrop his melancholy deserved.

He sat on the cold metal bench and pulled out his wallet, flipping through pictures - not printed ones, but little receipts the girls had doodled on, napkins from their first diner trip, a post-it note from Sarah that just said “I LOVE YOU” in big block letters. A movie stub from that awful horror film Zara dragged them to. A pressed daisy Mia had tucked into his hand after prom night, whispering “Para ti, mi corazon.”

He exhaled shakily.

“Okay, Bharath. You’re not dying. You just have separation anxiety. From five people. Who are all still alive. This is fine.”

A homeless man walked past him, muttering, “Damn, son. You look like your cat died and then called you to break up with you.”

Bharath gave him a weak thumbs up. “Close enough.”

By the time he reached home, the emptiness hit like a sledgehammer to the soul.

He unlocked the apartment and stood there in the doorway.

Silence.

No giggling girls. No dramatic reenactments of Spanish telenovelas. No Ayesha lecturing someone about lipsticks. No Mia bouncing in place, trying to get his attention with her entire body. No Zara yelling, “HE’S HOME!” like a war cry. No gorgeous Sarah leaning against the wall waiting for him to go smooch her.

Just ... quiet.

He stepped inside.

The couch was still indented from the last cuddle pile.

The kitchen had a half-eaten slice of cheesecake - probably Zara’s, judging by the note that read: “Touch this and DIE.”

There were two bras on the floor. One was lacy. The other had a tiny cactus print. God, he missed them.

He collapsed onto the couch like a marionette whose strings had been cut. He buried his face into a pillow that smelled like mango conditioner and fabric softener.

For a while, he just lay there, eyes closed, breathing in the lingering scent of his chaotic, magical harem. Every minute without them stretched like saltwater taffy - sticky, exhausting, and way too long. His heart throbbed with the kind of yearning they wrote ghazals about.

And then he sighed. Loudly. Dramatically. The kind of sigh that echoed off the ceiling and came back down like, “Yes, you are being pathetic.”

“This is stupid,” he muttered, sitting up. “They’re gone for, like, a few hours. I’m not a lost puppy. I’m a grown man. An adult. With goals. With a purpose.”

He stared around the apartment but all he found was silence.

Then he grumbled, “Fine, I’ll act like one.”

He shuffled over to his tiny desk, flopped into the creaky rolling chair, and booted up his laptop - a behemoth Toshiba that whirred to life like a perturbed dragon. The glowing 14-inch screen was his portal. There was only one thing that could blast through the ache in his chest: not just gaming, but planning. A grand, distracting scheme. A surprise vacation.

Yes. This was it.

The holidays were coming. Campus would be a ghost town for almost a month—the dining hall shuttered, the library in a state of hibernation, an eerie, echoing silence left in the wake of students fleeing to family homes and overcrowded airport shuttles.

But not all of them had homes they wanted to go back to. Not all of them had families that would understand the people they’d chosen to become.

He and the girls? They had each other. They were a family. A loud, beautiful, chaotic one.

And he ... he had five thousand dollars.

The thought was a physical jolt, straightening his spine. The money. His father had wired it last week - a rare, liquid moment of affection in their otherwise solid, awkward long-distance dynamic. The call had been brief, satellite-static and all.

“You’re doing well, kanna. Take care of yourself. Maybe get something for your birthday too. You deserve it.”

Bharath had been stunned into silence, the receiver slick in his hand. $5000? From the man who’d lectured him for a month about the fiscal irresponsibility of buying a $30 used bicycle? It was a paradox. His father’s world operated on a different planetary scale, where such a sum was a rounding error, a paternal pat on the head. For Bharath, who’d sworn off the gilded cage of family credit lines and lived on a strict diet of TA stipends and ramen, it felt like a treasure chest had fallen from the sky.

He’d left it sitting in the bank, a digital ghost. Touching it felt like admitting defeat, like weaving a thread back into the tapestry of ultra-wealth he’d deliberately frayed. What was it, anyway? Not enough for a down payment on anything real. Not enough to matter in his father’s circles. But in his world? It was mansion money. Or, more realistically, a used Toyota and a dozen waffle irons. It was possibility itself.

He hadn’t touched it. Hadn’t even allowed himself to fantasize.

But now? The hollow silence of the apartment pressed in. The image of their faces - Sarah’s shrewd smile, Marisol’s warm eyes, Zara’s dramatic pout, Ayesha’s demanding grin, Mia’s boundless glee - if he could fill that with surprise, with joy ... that was a cause worthy of the ghost fund. A use his father might not understand, but couldn’t truly fault. Taking care of himself. By taking care of them.