Cursed_and_Convenient_Hex_and_Hardbacks_Preview

Hex & Hardbacks: Curses, Coffee, and Other Catastrophes

🐾 There were worse ways to ruin your day than being publicly dumped on Park Street in front of three overenthusiastic street musicians, a rogue balloon vendor with suspiciously bright teeth, and an aggressively curious stray dog who clearly sensed emotional carnage brewing, but Zoya Qureshi couldn’t think of a single one at the moment.

The day had begun with such obnoxious optimism. The air was heavy with Valentine's Day shenanigans — red streamers tangled between lamp posts, couples clogging café windows with heart-shaped coffee foam and googly-eyed declarations, and every store window threatening death by glitter. Zoya had been unbothered by it all because today was supposed to be hers. Her moment. Her perfectly executed cinematic proposal.

Five years with Rishabh Arora — five years of surviving awkward family dinners, clunky office parties, last minute vacations to overpriced Airbnbs, and the kind of slow-burn, tolerable love people wrote essays about on Instagram. They weren’t dramatic, or messy, or the type to carve initials

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into trees — they were sensible, compatible, two ambitious adults figuring life out together.

Until Zoya lost her entire grip on the sensible and orchestrated this.

Three street musicians — all paid, briefed — poised with acoustic guitars and a cajon, waiting for her signal. A balloon vendor, roped in with the promise of an absurd tip, clutching a red heart-shaped balloon filled with exactly one velvet ring box, the helium carefully adjusted so it wouldn’t float off into Kolkata traffic mid-proposal. The plan? Stroll casually with Rishabh down Park Street, cue the musicians, hand over the balloon, pretend to fumble with the knot, let the ring pop out, drop the question, bask in applause, maybe trend on Instagram for all the right reasons.

Except, the universe — petty, vindictive little gremlin that it was — had other plans.

Rishabh had arrived late, which wasn’t unusual, dressed in his usual semi-casual uniform of faded jeans, a button-down shirt rolled at the sleeves, hair artfully mussed like he’d run his fingers through it exactly once. He looked unfairly handsome, like the poster boy for reliable IT boyfriends everywhere, the kind mothers approved of, the kind your friends teased you about because he didn’t believe in drama, didn’t believe in grand gestures, didn’t believe — apparently — in sticking around.

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They’d barely made it ten steps down the bustling footpath when he stopped abruptly, just shy of the musicians tuning their guitars. His jaw was tight, eyes distant, voice dropping into that unnervingly calm register that usually preceded arguments about bank statements or future plans.

“Zoya,” he began, and her stomach lurched with pre-emptive nerves, she fumbled in her tote bag for the balloon voucher, trying to time the handover perfectly, but his next words sliced through the February air like broken glass.

“This isn’t working.”

She blinked, freezing mid-motion. The voucher crumpled in her fist.

“What?”

Rishabh exhaled, already rehearsed, already untangling himself from her life in neat, efficient sentences. “We’re not aligned. You’re … intense. You want big things, chaotic things, and I can’t keep up with that anymore.”

The street musicians paused, half-strumming, sensing drama. The balloon man edged closer with unsettling optimism, oblivious to the implosion happening in real time. The dog — ribs visible beneath patchy fur — tilted its head, clearly invested.

Zoya’s mouth went dry. “You’re breaking up with me?”’

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“I’m trying to,” Rishabh muttered, glancing at his watch as if scheduling his emotional cowardice between meetings. “You don’t listen. You make plans of your own. You steamroll everything. It’s exhausting, Zoya.”

Her chest constricted, the edges of her vision, prickling with disbelief. The balloon man shuffled beside her, thrusting the gleaming red heart into her hands, completely misreading the situation. She clutched it reflexively, feeling the taut skin of the balloon tremble under her grip, the tiny weight of the hidden ring nestled inside.

The musicians, still hopeful, strummed the opening notes of the love song she’d requested — the one they shared from their first trip to Goa, now warped and garish under the fluorescent streetlights.

Zoya opened her mouth, desperate to salvage the wreckage, to explain the proposal, to stop this car crash of humiliation — but Rishab was already walking away, shaking his head, slipping into the crowd with all the theatrical indifference of someone who’d watched too many indie films where breakups looked profound and moody.

The ring — the stupid, shimmering, hopeful ring — still floated inside the balloon, trapped, a mocking little symbol of how catastrophically wrong the universe could go.

Zoya’s fingers tightened around the balloon, her heart a splintered mess of shock and rage and something dangerously close to hysterical laughter.

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This was not how today was supposed to go.

The balloon bobbed accusingly at her side as she stumbled away from the scene, the faint echo of an unfinished love song still strangling the air behind her. The musicians awkwardly packed up. The balloon man vanished into the crowd, sensing a tipless interaction. The dog trailed after her for two blocks before losing interest entirely.

Zoya’s heels clicked unevenly along the uneven pavement as she half-ran, half-tripped down the narrow lanes that branched off Park Street like forgotten arteries. The glitter of shop windows dulled, replaced by shuttered storefronts and faded paint peeling off old buildings. Her chest burned, her throat tightening with humiliation that clung like humidity in the crook of her elbows.

Of course, Rishabh left. Of course she ruined her own proposal. Of course, Kolkata witnessed the collapse of her dignity alongside the municipal Valentine’s Day decorations.

She paused near an alley, pressing her back against the cool wall of a rundown café, the red balloon swaying limply beside her. She wanted to pop that damn thing, but the pathetic, hopeful little secret nestled inside didn’t let her. Her breath came in short bursts. Her palms itched with the weight of five wasted years.

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