I knew this would change everything but as I stood there transfixed, I felt helpless.

It was him!

My story begins about two years ago, when I moved to this city to do my Bachelor’s from  this well-known college. It all seems like a long time ago, a lifetime ago, when I arrived here, fresh out of the twelfth grade.

In the first month here, I learnt that my so-called “wardrobe” was a pathetic affair. I also realized that my hair was “all wrong.” There was so much fun to be had, but I was on a very tight budget. My mother being a single parent, and there being two of us (me and my younger brother who was in the tenth grade), the most she could do was send me to this expensive town and pay tuition and living expenses. Still, she did try to send me some money for the extras, but it was a pathetic amount that would barely suffice to pay my share of food in a slightly upscale restaurant. Suddenly, I had come to realize how poor I was.

There were expensive restaurants to go to, to hang out with the “in” crowd. There were trendy clothes that screamed for me to buy them and grace their existence with my hourglass figure. My hair needed a trendy look too. Right now it was just my natural long straight hair which many would have fancied, but I was quite bored of it. There were many rich girls in the dorm, and the rate at which they could blow money, blew me. I would enviously watch them dress up in their designer clothes, enviously see that they could wear a different dress each day for a year and still have a new one to wear the next day.

Like me, there were a few middle-class girls but many of them were focused of all things on studies. I also noticed that most of these down-to-earth ones were also not exactly head turners. Like me, there was another gal Gargi, and she was a stunner too. We became friends because she and I wanted the same thing. Even with our limited wardrobes, we did turn heads and get our share of attention, but that made us more aware of the one thing we lacked, money.

I don’t even remember the first time that I did it, but it seemed like the only way to get access to all the things I needed to buy. Gargi and I were in this thing together. Word gets around and so there was never a shortage of those willing to pay. It's still a hazy memory of how and when this became a way of life rather than a choice, and how Aruna who ran this service became associated with us. All we had to do was show up then take our cut and leave, and we could make more money, even though Aruna got her cut.

And here I was, in room 599, and I opened the door and saw him. He was as surprised or shocked to see me as I was to see him. I had often asked my mother why she had walked out on my father, on a marriage that would have meant so much more in material terms for my brother and me. She always maintained that we were better off with less money than living with the person whom she referred to as “that man.” That man was now here, my potential client. I had last met him four years ago, and can only say that despite the differences between him and my mother, he dearly loved my brother and me and had unwillingly given up on custody since he was the erring party in the marriage.

Today, as I stand and stare in shock and disbelief, transfixed, I know this will change everything. As I look at him, my eyes hold a look of accusation and that of guilt. I see that his eyes only hold a look of guilt and utter sorrow, there is no recrimination there. Then I see that even for him, this will change everything.
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This is a work of fiction written in response to the Sulekha Challenge.