Arhi SS|New Year's Resolutions|LastPart- B&C p130 *complete!* - Page 64

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

Apologies for the later-than-promised update! I was knocked out by jet-lag, then a cold, and then got very busy with my parents' anniversary- and also with just spending time with them. Haven't been with my family in ages so yeah :D

On a different note- I don't know if this chapter worked, honestly. It took several false starts to get it going and I'm not sure where it went. Hope it isn't too confusing- please let me know if it is, and I'll definitely work to improve it :)

Also PLEASE NOTE!!! This story skips back and forth through time- in this chapter, for instance, ALL the scenes with Arnav happen BEFORE the scenes with Khushi. Just a heads-up!

*Part 9*

"We are all fools in love"- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

6^th January, 2012, 9.26 a.m. (morning)

"Khushi? I didn't wake you up did I?"

"Oh! No, no, Anjaliji, I've been awake for ages now-"

"Oh...oh, ok. I really did not want to call too early...Nani even said I should wait until lunch or until you come over in person, but I...I couldn't wait-"

"Anjaliji is everything alright? Has something happened?"

"Um...well...no, not really...nothing has happened, I suppose..."

Khushi frowned, perturbed. She quickly set the knife she'd been using to chop up the vegetables for lunch later, wiping her hands with a kitchen towel before plucking her cell-phone out from where it had been cushioned between her shoulder and her ear.

"Anjaliji," she said slowly, calmingly, all the while valiantly trying to ignore the panic battling to be let loose within her, "What happened? Is something wrong?"

There was an uneasy silence on the other line, and from the sudden absence of the erratic breathy noises that had first alerted her to something amiss, Khushi was fairly certain that Anjaliji was currently holding her breath.

Lifting herself on the tips of her toes, she snuck a cautious peek at the direction of the door, just to reassure herself that no one was headed her way. Though she had no idea what it was that had happened, she was certain something had- and from the sounds of it, that something had Anjaliji worked up to the point that she had ceased being coherent.

A litany of possibilities, each blacker, darker and more horrible than the preceding one, piled into an unforgiving heap and burdened her psyche.

"Is it...is it Mamiji?" she hedged cautiously, unprepared for the answer and feeling the dread flush down her body, "Is she still-"

"Oh! Oh, no, no! Actually I- actually I called because- Khushiji, I'm so sorry!"

6^th January, 2012, 12.12 a.m. (midnight)

Arnav knew the symptoms of a distracted mind too well not to realise that he had just intruded upon one.

He had learnt, after all, that caffeine and company of the dark, though not remedies, were at least feeble drugs to sedate a troubled mind.

For a split second, neither of them said anything- the interlude was punctuated by the familiar gurgle of the percolator as they eyed one another warily.

It was only after he had set a second foot through the doorframe of the kitchen, his fingers still hooked round the coffee-mug he'd come with the intention of refilling, that Akash seemed to relax. The tension that had been stiffening his spine and setting his shoulders loosened and uncoiled, like invisible binds snapped apart, and Akash's lanky frame almost hunched over in respite.

"You seem relieved," Arnav was astounded he managed to sound so wry, so like his usual self. In fact, it was so similar to what he might have said before, what he might have said that night when he had walked out into the neighbourhood of Laxmi Nagar, head teeming with thoughts he did not want to consider, possibilities he did not want to examine, that for a delusional moment he might have believed nothing had even changed.

Akash appeared to struggle for a while, his internal debate on how to respond splashed candidly across his face. Arnav had now neared him enough to see the bloodshot-red in the whites of his eyes- the grey lines that a long day or too much to think about signed upon a person's appearance as testimony of their visit.

"I thought," Akash finally began, his voice hoarse, as though roughened from being used too little, or too much, "That it might be Di. Or-"

He paused, and then stopped altogether, slicing down the sentence with no evident intention of ever repairing it.

Arnav deliberately let his eyes drop to the tangled mass of keys he had noticed on the counter-top earlier- Akash's car keys were easily distinguishable, as was the set identical to the one he kept to let himself through the front doors when he returned too late. He shifted his pointed stare to the hastily, shoddily knotted tie Akash had probably only managed to loop together before rushing out- to the glasses sitting lopsidedly almost on the tip of his nose.

"Another midnight tete-a-tete, I take it?"

His tone was light, but there was no misunderstanding the context tonight.

This Akash was not the same Akash that had been waiting in front of his pearl-wheeler in the first minutes of the new year, eclectically clothed in his future father-in-law's pajamas and his own dress-shirt, fumbling with both the embarrassment of having to be seen that way and with his need to thank Arnav for going through the trouble of coming to his rescue.

In many ways though, that tentative phone-call pleading for his help might have rescued him- and not the other way around.

He might never have stumbled across that diary otherwise. He might never have discovered the pained secrets that had bled ink into those pages, never meant for another's eyes.

He might never have seen her at midnight.

It was ironic how, the very belief he had taken such pains to ridicule had turned into the single defining moment he clung to with the desperation of one hanging by the last thread over hellfire.

If Akash had not called him that night, if Akash had not gone there to begin with, he might have remained in his room or by the poolside, engrossed in his laptop or a book, comfortable in the convenience of his ignorance.

And in the throes of that ignorance, he might have hurt her again.

Hurt her without ever knowing that she was already anticipating that hurt. Was already building barricades between them to keep him away.

Would he have noticed? Would it have changed anything? The questions ate away at him like restless flies in the summer, colliding blindly into window-panes, annoying and persistent.

The thought that, if Akash had not reached out to him for help that night...the thought that he might still be doling out pain to her simply to compensate for the confusion and chaos she caused him sat uncomfortable, sickening, a lead weight in the pit of his stomach, and it was a weight he knew he was going to carry for a long time.

Akash's tired, mirthless bark of laughter dissipated his unsettling thoughts.

"Yes...," he admitted, his right hand brushing up his face, pushing his glasses up almost until his forehead as his fingers rubbed tired circles over his eyes, "But not quite."

It was somewhat disconcerting to see Akash like this- like cracked glass standing upright, but which might crumble and come crashing down at any moment. Akash was always the calm one of the two- the quiet one, the reserved one. A still, placid body of water that gentled its eddies before they could form. Now though, as he watched his brother grimly reach for the percolator to flick its switch off and pour a liberal amount of the liquid into first his mug and then the one he had had ready and waiting before Arnav had even reached there, he was conscious of the undertow- the turbulent currents rippling just beyond sight; just short of breaking the surface.

It was unnerving.

"How is she?" he blurted out.

Akash's hand, his shirt's sleeve carelessly rolled and pushed back up to his elbow, faltered a little in the process of drowning a heaped spoonful of sugar in his coffee, and Arnav wondered a split second too late if it was presumptuous, meddlesome, of him to ask. In many ways, this was a personal thing for Akash- as personal as the thoughts he had carried faithfully in the confines of his memories for almost a week now, and just as sensitive, just as precarious. A naked flame waiting to go out- one he had to protect with his life.

And yet, though it was phenomenally hypocritical of him (as his recently overactive conscience spent no time in letting him know), he wanted to find out. He genuinely wanted to know.

Because in a way, this too was linked back to her.

To how she was. How she felt.

And it was so selfish and so self-centred of him, but he could not help this debilitating, scorching desire, this need, to know.

I know he'll forever protect his family and make them his priority- for that, I respect him, and I can only hope that he accepts Jiji as part of his herd and takes care of her too...

It was all she had given him- the only legitimate relationship with him that she had acknowledged; the one that existed by virtue of the relationship forged between their siblings, and he would be damned if he disappointed her after she had placed her faith in him.

Akash was staring unseeingly into his mug, the coffee-scented steam misting over his glasses until Arnav could only gauge what he was thinking, what he was feeling, by the tight set of his jaw, the forlorn, distraught turn of his mouth.

"She...tells me she is fine," he managed finally, and he could hear Akash choosing his words with fastidious attention, and it was so obvious that whatever it was that Payal had said to him, he was not in the least bit convinced, "In fact, left to herself she might never have told me either."

As though sensing his question before he had a chance to ask it, Akash briefly glimpsed in his direction before taking a hearty swig of the clearly scalding drink without flinching, and then whisking his glasses off to wipe the lenses clean. "NK Bhai called me up earlier to tell me about it..." He trailed off, and Arnav wondered if he had imagined the hitch in his voice, as though he'd just choked on what he was about to say.

And then suddenly, startling him and possibly even himself, Akash muttered, boiling ire rippling beneath his words, "I wish I had been there. I wish- I could have stopped her."

Guilt was the kind of emotion that was good at misconstruing everything- the kind of emotion that could heard insinuations where there were none, accusations where none existed.

And even whilst his brother visibly, mentally berated himself for something that could not have been more out of his hands, his expression contorted to one of chagrin and anguish the likes of which Arnav supposed might be mirrored on his, if he were a little more adept at displaying his emotions, Arnav heard insinuations and accusations, and saw fingers pointing at him in blame.

Because he had not done anything either.

He had not spoken up against Mamiji. He was certain that one well-timed, snide remark from him would have stemmed the flow of Mamiji's acidic jibes long before they had gathered momentum- but he hadn't.

Because at the end of the day, had she not been parroting what he had been saying all along?

Was she not only mimicking him?

Was it not his actions that had given her the license and the liberty to say what she'd said in the first place?

So how was he supposed to have stopped her, when he had so little credibility in his own eyes?

But he looked at his brother now, wrestling with hurt that he could possibly not fathom, and he could see the consequences of his silence, the consequences of his actions- and it was daunting. Daunting to see that that those pebbles he had heedlessly chucked, unwary of the direction or the target, with only the intention of scaring her away, had ruptured things he'd hit without ever intending to- had caused ripples that had reached farther than he had ever imagined.

The enormity of the task that lay in front of him was terrifying- it shrouded him almost entirely in its shadow.

"I wish there was more I could do than just apologise," Akash confessed bitterly, his face crumpling as though he had just swallowed a mouthful of acid and survived the experience, "I wish I could stop Maa from doing this to her every time- she does not deserve it! I did not fall in love with her for her financial status or her social status in mind! I don't care about it- why doesn't she understand that?!"

Guilt was an emotion that was good at misconstruing everything.

Arnav could have sworn that those words, pitched with pain, laced with resentment, were being targeted at him and not his aunt.

"And Payal's made me promise not to say anything to her-" Akash set his mug back on the marble counter with a sharp chink; Arnav could see that his hand was shaking, "I don't think I can keep that promise. I know that I...I don't want to."

It was funny- funny in the kind of way that lacks all humour, and is tempered with the blackest and the bitterest of irony- how the roles had reversed here. How anyone privy to even a modicum of the challenges the two of them were facing, and the way each sought to tackle or even perceive these obstacles, would always inevitably, predictably, place Akash on a higher tier than himself.

Perhaps it had always been that way, and he, in the glory of his arrogance, had just failed to see it.

"Is there anything I can do?"

Akash looked up at him, the tight wrinkles of stress smoothing out for a moment in surprise, then what looked remotely similar to gratitude- but it only served to fuel and stoke higher the guilt that was slowly charring him to a crisp from within.

Because his question had not been an offer, in the end. It had been a small, silent, subtle cry for help.

For a chance.

A chance to redeem himself.

Because Akash's happiness was linked to Payal's now...and Payal's happiness was linked to hers.

But what Arnav had thought to be gratitude was quickly stifled and replaced by something resembling determination. It was there, in the low set of Akash's eyebrows, and in the stern line of his mouth.

"Thank you, Bhai," he told him solemnly, for once holding his stare to let him know he sincerely meant it, "But this is something I have to do myself. If I can't protect her now, if I can't defend her..." he grimaced, as though his next words caused him physical pain, "Then she deserves better than to marry me."

Deserves better...

A lump of something blunt-edged and biting had knotted in his throat, and every attempt at gulping sent painful quivers down his frame that reached all the way to his toes. In his hand, the china of his coffee-mug had cooled, all traces of the steam unfurling above it gone.

Black and bitter and tepid.

"But your moral support will be appreciated though," Akash smiled a brief, tired smile that seemed to contort his facial muscles in ways it was not supposed to, "I'm going to do something tomorrow that I hope I won't regret."

There was a quiet resolve in the way he said that- not the fickle flicker of fire but the steady, unwavering iridescence of a light-bulb.

Arnav at once admired and envied him for it.

"What are you going to do?"

Akash's mouth turned down again, and even though he seemed in much better control of himself than he had been moments before, Arnav fancied he could sense his purpose, and the potency of it, radiating off of him.

"Payal asked me," he began, after heaving out a huge breath, "to tell Maa...and everyone else for that matter...that she...that her first marriage was called off."

6^th January, 2012, 9.31 a.m. (morning)

Khushi blinked, and it was only the sound of a poorly subdued sniffle that reminded her to voice her befuddlement out loud.

"Sorry?" she repeated, her confusion resonating in her tone.

"Yes," Anjaliji sounded downright miserable, and anxiety burgeoned until Khushi's teeth had nearly split skin on the lip she had been biting in an attempt to cope, "I- I had no idea! None of us did! We never knew that- I am so sorry! I never knew that he had done all that-"

"Wait," the word definitely felt sharp as it burst out of her mouth, but it sounded no more than a whimper beneath the sudden clamour her heart had decided to kick up, her brain tripping into unruly havoc in an attempt to make sense of what it was trying to say, "He?"

"Chote! He...I never knew that...never knew about...about Sheesh Mahal! And what he- what he did...I had no idea...We...none of us had any idea, Khushi...I don't know if we can ever make it up to you...to Payal and to your parents...and I made it worse didn't I? I made it worse by forcing you to come work for us when things were already so difficult...Khushi, I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry..."

She was talking, and Khushi could hear her, but it sounded so far away. So foreign. As though there were words she recognised, but they made no sense. As though they were not meant to be said, and her brain could not make sense of hearing them.

"Anjaliji," she quavered out, her hand reaching blindly for the edge of the counter; something heavy and forceful was somersaulting in her stomach and the sensation was making her nauseous, making her dizzy, "What are you saying? Why are you-?"

"Chote just told us! He just said that...he just that it was all his fault and that he should have told us a long time ago and- even Payal! Even her first- Khushi, I-"

But Khushi did not hear the rest.

The only too familiar rumble of a car, trundling laboriously over the ruts and dips speckled over the narrow lane outside, had monopolised all her attention.

6^th January, 12.21 a.m. (midnight)

"Mamiji..."

"I know."

"But you're still going to do it?"

"I have to. She trusted me with it. And if I can't keep her trust then...I don't know how this relationship can survive."

Arnav had abandoned his mug of coffee ages ago. A tiny, meek part of his head offered him the irrelevant advice to pour it out into the sink later.

It was useless.

It was a distraction.

A delay.

"Trust, huh?" he mumbled, to himself- for himself.

Devi Maiyya, how am I supposed to apologise to him? Nine chances out of ten, he will just throw insults back at me, and I will retaliate, and we'll be back to square one and-

She was wrong, but he could not tell her she was wrong because she wouldn't believe him. And he could not blame her, when he had not been able to believe it himself for so long.

"But I'm not going to let this get in the way," Akash vowed, and Arnav looked ahead to see him staring into dead space. He could tell that that declaration had not been for his benefit, or because he'd felt the need to voice out his purpose to give it more substance. He knew that Akash was making a promise to himself, and to Payal, and even though it was too early to say how, he knew he was going to keep it, "I'll convince Maa somehow, and I'll make her see what a great person Payal is and...I'm going to keep her happy. I will keep her happy."

"Then let me help you."

This time, the plaintive edge in his voice might just have been audible, because Akash turned to him with something akin to shock flashing in his eyes.

But Arnav was gone past caring.

"Bhai...I really appreciate it but I have-"

"No," the interruption was brusque, harsher than it was meant to be but it did not occur to Arnav to explain himself or apologise. "This was my mistake. Whatever happened was not Kh- it was not Payal's fault. I won't let anyone blame her for it...not when it was my mistake. Not when...all of it...was my fault."

***

According to the vigilant hands of his wristwatch, it was just approaching one thirty in the morning when he made it back to his bedroom.

He had not imbibed any caffeine- just one tall glass of cool water.

It had tasted better than anything he had had in a long time.

Now he strode toward the sliding-doors feeling more energised, revitalised, than he had for longer than he cared to remember. His movements were brisk and purposeful as he jerked the curtains open, before pushing the glass-doors open and greeting the teasing breeze that invaded the room the moment he let it. He gulped in the fresh air, absorbing it, soaking it in, letting it assuage the barren thirst he had not even realised he had let build up.

With a final touch of the breeze titillating over his skin, he crossed over his closet, his hand already deep into his pocket to withdraw that velvet box that had been an uneasy weight upon his person this whole time. Just before he buried it beneath a pile of the clothes Di doggedly insisted on buying him every Diwali though, he paused, took a moment to make his decision, and with deft fingers flicked it open.

Even now, even after the veritable roller-coaster his emotions and his perceptions and his motivations had gone through in the span of the last twelve hours, he still thought that the delicate silver chain, with a single, diamond-dotted star encrusted midway down its length, could not be more perfect for her.

He could practically visualise it- picture it wound round her slim, dainty wrist, watch it catch the light and wink at him with each of her lively movements.

Somehow, its beauty was in its simplicity- in its modesty.

But he realised that as much as his opinion of the present had not changed, this would not be the right time to give it to her.

Not the right gesture.

He could not buy her forgiveness. He understood that now.

He would have to work for it. Earn it. Deserve it.

She would have to trust him, before anything he gave her, material or immaterial, and have her accept it with the intent with which it was meant.

For now though, he already knew what he would have to do. What he needed to do. Trite and cliche it may well be, but whoever had said that the first step was always the hardest, Arnav hoped he was right. But that was irrelevant, because this time, Arnav was ready.

And he hoped, even though his very drive for doing what he was about to do was selfish and self-centred in almost every way, that his actions in a few hours time would repay Akash at least a little bit for teaching him that apologies should never be bought. Trust could never be purchased.

Not when you care about that person.

Not when they matter.

*bites nails nervously*

Yeah...I hope that made sense :s

Thank you to everyone who commented and liked the previous chapter! I'm really grateful to you for sticking to this story despite my lamentable delay in updating it...I'm trying my best to do better!

Thanks for reading! Please leave your thoughts :)

(Just in case I messed things up and it wasn't clear: the scene with Khushi and Anjali happens after all the scenes with Arnav)

I reserve all rights over this work of fiction and request readers do not reproduce/copy/modify it elsewhere and/or claim credit.