Arhi SS|New Year's Resolutions|LastPart- B&C p130 *complete!* - Page 85

awww, that was an adorable way to lead to her acceptance of her dhak dhak! loved the update

Looking forward for the next update

The chapter turned so massive that I had to split it into two parts again :s I'm awfully scared- this chapter has been written for like two days now, but I've been too afraid to post it. I'm not sure if you guys will like it, or if I did justice to the story and its characters...I will leave that up to you to decide. Baaah I think I screwed it up T.T

Enough of me whining...ok then, off we go...

OH and please note the dates and times in the subheadings!!!! The story skips back and forth through time, so some events actually occur before others despite the sequence they're written in.

There's a note at the bottom- check it out, please! :)

*Part 12 B*

"The distance is nothing when one has a motive." - Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

26^th January, 2012, 5.34 p.m. (evening)

He asked himself if he had pushed his luck.

He asked himself if he had leapt before thinking.

He asked himself if he had rushed in too soon.

If he had let the moment and its meanings render him complacent, and dangerously optimistic.

But he did not have any of the answers, and his doubts and misgivings continued to ricochet about within the chambers of his skull, creating an unholy racket that was beginning to leave his temples sore and his head leaden.

There was something self-destructive about anticipation- especially when it entailed awaiting something without the foggiest clue of the outcome. He did not know what to expect, what might happen, what the ramifications of the steps he had taken, in the heat of a moment that had seemed only too perfect, may be. He could not envisage what might be in store for him next- could not mull over alternatives and agendas.

And in the absence of anything he could cling to for stability, for reassurance, Arnav paced, stomped, his strides long and aggressive, from one end of the poolside to the other, unable to bear the torment of waiting, unable to do anything but wallow in the uncertainty.

He had left his fate in her hands, and now, he awaited her verdict.

25^th January, 2012, 11.39 a.m. (morning)

"Khushi..."

"Jee?"

"If I give you something, will you take it?"

"Give me...something?"

"I'm only asking that you take a look at it. You don't have to keep it. You don't have to give it back either. Throw it away if you want. But just...take a look at it first."

And then he had added, averting eyes from her, a dark flush accentuating his cheekbones and his jaw-line, "Please."

She had been too gobsmacked to resist or refuse, and now, hours after he had asked her aside within minutes of arriving at Shantivan, and the fever of nerves that had broken beneath her skin had given way to bewilderment as she had watched him fumble with the closest she had ever seen Arnav Singh Raizada come to being nervous, Khushi had found sanctuary on a low, rickety wooden bench in the yard outside her home, and sat appraising what he had thrust almost unceremoniously into her hands before stalking off, his gait missing some of its purpose and its poise.

He had been almost...jittery back then, almost abashed and apprehensive, and it had been so bizarre and so incongruous that Khushi's curiosity had done away her caution, and the package- a flat, rectangular affair wrapped in nondescript brown paper- had featured centre-stage in her mind all day, and she had been so distracted and preoccupied that Anjaliji had fretted she was ill, and Nanheji had teased that she was in love.

The latter accusation had made her blush so hard she thought she might have ruptured a vein.

Now though, away from spying eyes and inquisitive queries, Khushi, her dhak dhak reaching an eager crescendo, set her jaw and nimbly began to rip off the edges of the wrapping-paper, not knowing what to expect, but oddly enough, not apprehensive.

24^th January, 2012, 8.32 p.m.

"Khushi?" Payal called out as loudly as she could, unsure if she was even audible over the racket she herself was making. But she had to be swift, and her urgent motions did not falter as she rummaged through drawers and sent pots and pans clattering as her hand felt around shelves, all by the feeble light of her cell-phone. Somehow, in the opaque darkness that had engulfed the entire kitchen, and as far as she could see, the rest of the house and street outside, the metallic clangs and rattles were louder and even more discordant than usual, banging against her eardrums- but Payal dared not stop. "Khushi, tu theekh toh hai na?"

She paused only for a second, and caught the reply.

An eerily quiet, subdued call that still managed to carry with it the shadow of a panic Payal recognised only too well.

"I'm ok, Jiji..."

Payal's movements grew more frenzied, more hectic, knocking utensils around as she searched desperately for the candles she was sure they had tucked away somewhere. This was too much of a coincidence- an unfortunate, ill-timed, thoroughly unexpected coincidence, and Payal wondered, even as she made as much noise as possible, with the sole intention of assuring Khushi that she was still there, that she was not alone, whether she ought to call her Buaji and ask her where she had kept the candlewicks. Her aunt, along with her parents, had gone to the hospital for Bauji's scheduled check-ups, and the last she had heard from them, they had still been in reception, awaiting their turn, and it was obvious they had not returned even though she and Khushi dawdled longer than usual at Shantivan at Anjaliji's insistence.

Her search had gone fruitless for too long when Payal decided she could not afford to wait any longer. She began to thread her way around the vague silhouettes of counters and cabinets in the dark, half her mind trying to focus on dialling the right number without bumping into anything, the other preoccupied with the watertight worry for her sister and the need to get to her side -

-and then she heard it.

The rumbling purr preceded the sudden blast of light pooling in through the windows, and for a moment, it blinded her. Payal blinked to accommodate the luminous beams flooding in through the windows, shifting across the floor as the light-source moved outside, and everything happened so quickly that even as her mind plucked together the facts and assembled their meaning, the front door had flown open.

And though she could just make out the outline of a person that was definitely tall, and definitely male, standing against the blinding-white glare of headlights he had not switched off, her inquiring gasp identified him anyway.

"Jethji?"

Round-eyed, she watched him stalk toward her, his pace agitated, and the nearer he got, the more defined the expression of urgency stamped across his face grew, etched in deep by shadows that had seeped into the grooves of his features- no longer the passive, and yet somehow receptive look with which he had dropped them home just minutes ago.

"Khushi," he rasped, and Payal felt her mouth fall open, even as comprehension began to dawn upon her like the first touch of sunrise over a sleeping horizon- she could recognise her own anxiety, her own trepidation, mirrored and even magnified in him, "Where's Khushi?"

Wordlessly, Payal pointed at the bedroom door- the door through which Khushi had gone, announcing her intention to change first before she came to help her in the kitchen just moments before all the lights had died.

And without wasting another second, Arnav Singh Raizada was marching in the direction she had indicated, and Payal remained standing where she was, letting her hand fall slowly back to her side- and the clamours of tension, urging her to go to her sister, to placate her, comfort her, quieted and fell into a silence infused with relief.

It was then that Payal confirmed what she had begun to surmise for a while now.

That if she had to trust anyone to look after her sister, her future brother-in-law would be the perfect choice.

***

He had waited, as he always did, memorising her movements as she quickly sidled out of the car with a quick "Thank you" and "Goodbye", before retreating as swiftly as she could without breaking into a run, overtaking her sister in her haste to get indoors.

And as always, he pacified himself, chided himself for being too greedy, reminded himself that he ought to be grateful that she was speaking to him voluntarily again, though it consisted of only a handful of words, such as the tendency she had developed, quite recently, of tentatively thanking him every time he held a door open for her, or dropped her off home.

It was still something, Arnav told himself- something that she had given him of her own free will, and he could take along with himself until the next time they would meet, and it was infinitely better than staring after her with wistful longing after she had disappeared through her front-doors.

Well settled into the routine by now, Arnav wrenched at his car-keys as he watched those same doors close yet again, and he was in the middle of the rather cumbersome process of backing the gigantic mass of metal out of the narrow lane of Laxmi-Nagar when, without warning, everything had gone black, as though he was suddenly driving with his eyes closed.

His foot had found the brake, his hand had found the gear-shift, and with the white-gold spilling out of his headlights the only source of illumination in the pitch blackness, Arnav's four-wheeler wasted no time in retracing its progress.

Because as soon as the darkness had swept up and swallowed the street, it had also blanketed anything else he might have been thinking about-

-except one thing.

Khushi.

And it was that same drive, that gnawing, throttling fear- the fear not for oneself but for someone else, the fear that distorted imagination with dread in its rush to know how they were, if they were alright, if they were in trouble or distress, that had led him to her bedroom door, where he stood now, swearing at himself for forgetting his cell-phone in the car and raking the room apart as he hunted through vague shapes and figures for her-

And then his ears, standing to attention and sifting through silence, detected a quivering breath being released, and his feet were moving, heedless of the dark.

***

She had heard her sister, repeatedly calling her name, shouting reassurances and promising to be there in no time, but in the blind world where she found herself, every word she uttered sounded farther and farther away.

Khushi had curled herself up on the edge of the bed- sought refuge in drawing her knees up to her chin, belting her arms round her legs, and hiding her face, trying to bottle in the hysteria that had started to bloat inside her as soon as she had watched her bedroom, her mainstay, vanish from before her eyes. There were frightened tears spilling out of her tightly clenched eyes, but she could not move enough to wipe them away, and felt them soak through the fabric of her clothes to warm against her skin as she fought to suppress her trembling.

She was no longer a child, and it had been years, but it still had not changed, her fear of the dark. She could barely remember where her phobia even originated from- it was something she tried to dismiss from her thoughts, something she never liked to think about too much. But memories, especially unpleasant ones, are tenacious things, like stubborn stains that cannot be removed no matter how hard one scrubs, and as Khushi sat surrounded by her childhood fears, the suffocating sensations that would haunt her before, when the lights would disappear and blot out everything she used to familiarise herself with her new circumstances, her new home, her new surroundings, at the still-tender age of eight- it all returned full-force. And Khushi could do nothing but cower under the cold terror that would flash-freeze her from the inside out, poisoned by that terrible panic of being lost that returned to haunt her in the nothingness provided by the dark...

Lost...without her parents...without her home...everything, gone...

That childhood trauma was embedded too deep into her psyche, too deep to wrench out and remove- and so she sat and hid as best as she could, trying to distance herself from reality itself-

-and perhaps that was why she did not notice someone striding hurriedly into the room, until they had clutched her tightly clasped arms and unlocked them with surprising ease.

And the next thing she knew, she had been pulled to her feet, and had been swept into a fierce embrace.

It did not take her long to figure out that this someone was not her sister.

She did not stop to consider how she had recognised who it was.

"Ar-nav-ji?" It was hard to talk- her voice had been jammed deep in her throat, and now it came out cracked and hoarse. Around her, firm, sinewy arms secured their hold even tighter, until she found herself moulded into the contours of a wall of heat- hard and yet...oddly comforting.

Dazed by the change of sensation, and deprived of her sight to help place what was happening around and to her, Khushi remained stationary, holding her breath and then-

"Are you OK?"

Bits and pieces registered to her slowly, and one by one; first came the feel of cotton flush against one cheek, overlaying planes firm and warm, and Khushi's brain, scrambling to make sense of what was happening, remembered the plain T-shirt she had seen him wearing earlier today, the type of attire she had taken to calling his "time-off clothes". Then came that searing heat that permeated through the thin layer of her kameez, sponged in by her flesh from where his hands had enfolded about her sides, both his arms completely encircling her. Andthen came that scent, musky and minty at the same time, and before she knew it she was inhaling deeply, drinking it all in, as her mind built on the familiarity of it to piece together all these details and made up...him.

It took her a while before she realised, unfocused as she'd suddenly become, that she was not scared anymore.

He was murmuring to her, his mouth somewhere above her ear, his voice, low and silken and as soothing as warm honey, "It's ok...it's alright...it's fine now..."

And Khushi felt the remnants of her terror dissipate as wisps of smoke in the wind, and without even questioning it, she let herself melt into his hold.

It was ok.

It was alright.

It was fine now.

And she was no longer daunted by the nothingness everywhere else, because-

He was here.

***

He had half a mind to snatch her up, tow her over to his car, and whisk her away, take her with him to his home, and surround her with lights- she was not meant to be here, she was not made to be here, cloaked and cornered by shadows...

She was a creature of light, of iridescence...she was supposed to be tangled up in fairy-lights, like clusters of fireflies flocking toward her radiance...or circled by an oasis of dancing, goldendia, making her even more gorgeous and breathtaking than she already was in her red saree...

It was like a fit of madness, a gander into insanity, and it warped everything- nothing made sense and nothing mattered except the obsessive need to get to her and get her out and make sure she never had to experience another moment in the dark, ever again...images, made ghostly and sinister in his paranoia, swam within his head, of her huddled up in a dank corner of a collapsing guesthouse, pale, ashen, with the tracks of tears daubed over her cheeks and her eyes bereft and filled with a hopelessness that had made his heart stutter and heave even then...a hopelessness, he had understood much, much later, that was linked to the death of her parents, a loss that he had been conceited enough to believe she would never understand...

It had all been his fault then, what had happened at the guesthouse- but now, even when this was not his fault, even though he was not responsible for this in anyway- the need to protect her, to shield her, to make sure that not even the idea of unhappiness could step anywhere near her, had driven his steps forward until he had found her, touched her, and held her against himself.

And as he did, as he heard himself mumble incoherent questions and garbled consolations, the little shivers of the small, almost breakable body he held tight to himself making his overworked heart quake began to calm, and it was only when they faded out completely that Arnav could breathe again with ease, and clarity began to pierce through the haze of madness.

And he discovered that, somewhere between new year's day and today, somewhere between learning the difference between apologies and amendments, somewhere between apologising and making amends, the distinction between keeping himself from hurting her, and keeping everything else from hurting her had blurred and become irrelevant.

They were one and the same thing now- the one and the same wish to protect her, from everything, and at all costs.

And as he absorbed that knowledge and accepted it, Khushi, her head bowed and hidden against his chest, whispered to him,

"You came back."

***

Against her ear, she could feel the bumps of a heartbeat that seemed a little louder, a little more forceful, than a heartbeat was supposed to be.

It attuned her to her own dhak dhaks- noisy and undisciplined, clattering around in her ribs.

Her words, intended to be a question but phrased an observation, hovered in the air around him.

"Yes," he admitted, finally, quietly- with her eyes still closed, every little tremor from that one word rumbled through his frame to hers, and her nerves tingled.

She wanted to ask him if he had come back for her. She wanted to ask him if he had remembered what she had told him once about being afraid of the dark. She wanted to ask if he was the one buying jalebis for her every day, and making Mamiji more polite, and letting her watch movies she had been looking forward to...

And in the distracting, disarming safety of his hug, inexplicably freed from the thousand and one reasons she had listed to keep away from him, the words flowed as naturally out of her mouth as water flows into the sea.

"Did you...did you...did you do it for me?"

For a second, he stiffened against her-

-and the lull of peace and security she had been adrift in shattered in a moment, and everything that had so effortlessly been kept at bay- her insecurities, her confusion, and most of all, that niggling revelation that had been lurking in the sidelines, awaiting its moment in the limelight, came leaping to the forefront-

The revelation that the only reason she had not been able to muster the bravado to ask him outright if he had been behind everything she thought he'd been behind...was because she was afraid of finding out that he really was not.

Afraid of finding out that she had been imagining everything.

Afraid of facing the disappointment ready to detonate within her yet again.

Afraid of realising that nothing had changed at all, even though a part of her had been hoping, against her will, without her consent, that it would.

She had done it again. She had done it again despite all of the precautions she had taken, all the ways she had tried to cure herself of hopeless hopes and pointless wishes, and now she was falling and there was nothing to break her fall.

And in a last, sloppy attempt to save herself, Khushi began to ramble.

"I'm sorry," there were hot tears in her eyes again, burning at the backs of her lids, still shuttered tightly but this time against a different reality, and they ached from trying not to let the moisture fall, "I didn't mean to trouble you...It's stupid of me, really, to still be afraid of the dark...did we leave something in the car? Is that why- or could you not drive because it was too dark?- I'm sorry, I'm being silly right now, aren't I? All grown up and still scared because the lights are-"

"Khushi."

He took her voice with the call of her name, and in its absence a dull ache pooled that was sure to grow into something much more painful.

But it never got the chance.

"I did."

***

She had started to fidget in his grip, and her back had started to push against the restraint of his arms, and Arnav's response was completely instinctive, unplanned; he gripped her harder, yanked her closer.

Because, it turned out, that while he had held her with every intention of expressing solace and support and assurance, he needed the solace and support and assurance that having her close to him like this, safe and whole, within reach and nearer than she had been in so long, blessed him with.

He remembered, vividly, how she had dashed straight toward him in the hospital, within mere hours of him leaving her by the roadside yet again after their tryst in Nainital- and yet, she had been running to him, seeking comfort in him- showed so much trust in him by simply falling into his frame as though certain he would hold her up.

He had been a fool then- he had dithered and wasted a precious chance to live up to that trust, and he would be a fool twice over if he repeated his mistakes again, and missed any more chances to gain back what he had come so close to losing.

"I did," he whispered again, needing her to know that this was no coincidence- needing her to believe in him as she had believed in him then.

She stopped wriggling in his hold, and he kept his eyes shut, focusing intently on the healing sweetness of jasmine clinging to her hair, satiny soft against his chin.

"You...di- what?"

"I did do it for you," he answered, solemnly, pouring every ounce of his honesty into the statement and hoping she could hear it, feel it; wanted her to dispel those absurd notions that she had troubled him somehow, that she had somehow been an inconvenience, that she was not the reason he was here, when in fact she was the reason for everything.

She seemed to absorb his statement for a while, and Arnav wished he could see her face- she was always transparent, and whatever she was feeling, whether it was doubt or confusion or mistrust, would have shone through clearly for him to see. Without those clues, Arnav had to concentrate instead on other signs- the way she held herself, still but not quite rigid, the pace of her breathing, fast but not quite strenuous...and then the rhythm altered, and she took in a deep breath, and he felt her square her shoulders as though bracing herself for something, and air snagged in his own windpipe as she whispered-

"Why?"

And Arnav answered truthfully, because even without the benefit of seeing Khushi with his own eyes, he could still tell that this question, and the answer she anticipated, were crucial to her, vital- she was waiting for it with bated breath, and he knew, then and there, that what he said now might change everything.

And so, he gave her the truth.

"Because I- care for you. I don't like it when you're upset."

24th January, 2012, 9.46 p.m.

Her parents and aunt had managed to get back home in spite of the blackout, and by then Jiji had managed to salvage out the candles from their hiding-place- the living and dining rooms, and of course the kitchen, where illuminated by coppery yellow flames, shifting and swaying and casting an almost ethereal glow over the place.

According to Happy-ji, one of the transformers nearby had gone bust- it would take a while to fix, at least until morning.

Undeterred by this hindrance, Buaji had adamantly insisted that he stay for dinner.

He had acquiesced.

And now, in the light, in front of him and able to see his face and his eyes as she had longed to do in the dense gloom, Khushi came face to face with what had seemed too surreal, too fantastic, to believe when she had heard him speak.

Because I- care for you. I don't like it when you're upset.

She had heard him say sorry before. He had apologised to her before. And while his most recent "I am sorry" had caused her more strife and conflict than any other time...while she had had to stop and remind herself not to get too complacent and forget how easily he could negate his own words...

This was the first time, the only time, he had admitted to anything like...this.

Because I care for you.

And now, in the light, she sat before him at their candle-lit dining-table, appetite a myth and nourishment unnecessary, half-expecting this day-dream to dissolve and disperse, half-expecting him to fracture what he had confessed under the blows of harsher, conflicting gibes...but nothing happened.

Even in the light, nothing changed, and those words of his remained as they were, and he did nothing to try and take them back.

So Khushi just sat there, a spectator to this improbable dream, watching as his Buaji dolloped large helpings of every dish on to his plate, and watching as he tucked in dutifully, without complaint or protest, without the slightest show of distaste or aversion, without for one moment looking as though he were missing the opulence and luxury he was accustomed to, or that he found the lack of it here bothersome.

And somewhere in the course of the evening, as she felt rather than saw his watchful eyes follow her as she trooped to and fro from candle-lit kitchen to candle-lit dining-room, helping to set the table and then helping to clear it- even as he courteously conversed with her mother and asked after her father's health, even as she struggled to grasp how...protected, safe, she felt under his scrutiny, Khushi relinquished her doubts like a handful of helium balloons and let them float away.

She let herself believe that he had come back for her.

She let herself believe that he had come back because he had remembered her fear of the dark.

She let herself believe that he had come back even though he had no obligations to, even though the power-out had not been neither his doing nor his problem...

Because he cared.

And, much, much later, as she lay cuddled up in bed long before anyone else had turned in for the night, wide awake and too busy listening, for once without resisting, to the lecturing of the sage little voice and all of its scandal-worthy claims, she also accepted that whether or not he ever admitted it, all thosethings- those minute little changes, those concealed gestures- he was responsible for them all.

I'm not here because of a show of apology- I'm here because...because I...I wanted to.

He was right...he was right. There was no pretence there, anywhere- no attempts to flaunt his atonement in her face. But it was there all the same and...

...now he had told her why.

Because I care for you.

And with her dhak dhak pumping like loudspeakers in her chest, Khushi pried her eyes away from the single candle-flame Jiji had left beside her to help her sleep, and buried her suddenly crimson face into the pillow even though no one could see it, letting herself relish a thrill she had never felt before, and yet felt so familiar.

He had told her he cared for her...

...and that changed everything.

Scroll down for Part (C) !!

*Part 12 C*

"The distance is nothing when one has a motive." - Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

26^th January, 2012, 6.03 p.m. (evening)

She had trusted him.

She had actually trusted him.

At first, he had almost convinced himself into believing that it had been a trick of the light- an illusion conjured by the whimsical halos thrown by candle-flames across her features.

But even he, so chary of being too greedy, of getting ahead of himself, could not mistake the way she had looked at him last night, as he had sat at her dining-table with her family, and been pampered with open arms, as though he had not once been culpable for all their troubles- as though he had not intruded upon their home several times before to wreak havoc and retreat.

It was as though the miniature sea of fire had melted away the frostiness behind which her usual vivacity had withdrawn, and for the first time since new year's eve, Khushi had been looking at him without any of the scepticism and the wariness that had repeatedly broken his heart.

She had looked awed, she had looked intrigued even, she had looked as though she were pondering over an epiphany-

But there had been no doubt in her gaze. None of the distrust that he had anticipated, predicted even, and the improbable, wishful notion that she might actually have believed him- that everything he had strived to do, every little effort toward atonement, had not been fruitless, had not gone unheeded-

It had hit him like an avalanche where there was no snow.

And while a part of him had floundered to come to terms with the idea that he might actually have made progress- that she might actually have started to trust him again, that his attempts to redeem himself had not been in vain...there was another part of him that had grown swiftly uneasy, because in the spell of relief that settled over his constant need to make penance, he had remembered just what had brought all of this about.

The diary- Khushi's diary.

The diary that had held her most personal, private thoughts- thoughts that he had violated, secrets that he had plundered like a petty thief.

And now, with a possibility he had not dared to believe in just days ago dangling above him, so close he might have reached out and touched it, and claimed her faith in himself, for himself...he cringed under the conviction that he was not deserving of it.

Because the reason of that faith, the reason for the gradual build-up of belief, glued together by his endeavours to show her that her resolutions were wrong, that she was wrong, that he did not want her to leave him behind...

The reason behind it all had been a journal he had had no right of reading- an act of dishonesty on which all his resulting honesty was balanced.

And he saw now what a precarious structure he had built- saw now that that one liability, that one dent in the foundation, might cause it all to collapse.

It had frightened him- frightened him as severely as the idea of Khushi, alone and helpless in the dark, and it had possessed him with the desperate desire to get rid of that liability; to plaster over that one fissure that might undo everything else

And he had been able to think of only one way to do that.

In the dead of the night, he had sat in his dimly-lit bedroom, and his frenetic hand had poured out the truth, with the aid of a pen held against paper- because only honesty could counter dishonesty, and after Khushi had shown enough faith in him to let him shield her from her fears in the dark, he would be damned if he demeaned its worth by cheating her of the whole truth.

And somehow it seemed apt that if he had uncovered Khushi's innermost thoughts through her diary, she ought to uncover his through his own.

"Khushi.

This feels...unusual. I am not very good with words, and certainly not good at speaking them. But I have so much to say. So much that I need you to believe. And therefore I thought that it might be better if I tried penning my thoughts down instead. As we both know, I tend to say things I don't really mean...and especially when I am talking to you.

I won't beat about the bush. There is something I need to confess to you. I did something wrong, and though it pains me, a part of me is also grateful for my mistake. The fact that you are reading this, and that you did not dismiss me when I tried to give it to you, is proof that it pointed me in the right direction. Without the help of this mistake, I might still have been wandering round in the dark, and making more mistakes, and even if I cried out you would not be able to hear. I can only hope that you believe in me enough to read this through to the end- that you believe in me enough to not dismiss everything I am about to say without giving me a chance to explain myself.

During New Year's eve, when I was inside your room, I accidentally knocked over your diary. I know what you are thinking- I know that you must be shocked, panicked, distressed, betrayed. But please, Khushi- let me explain. I beseech you to listen- I worked so hard to regain enough of your trust that you might accept this diary from me, and I do not want to gamble that away.

I did not mean to read the diary. I honestly did not. I was putting it back but then- I read my name there.

You had written MY name in that diary, Khushi, and I could not have explained it to you then, but I could not put it down after that.

I had to know. I had to know what you were saying about me...what you were thinking about me.

Whether I knew it then or not, it mattered to me, what you thought of me.

And what I read...

But before I go into that, you must know this, and you must believe it- I am sorry, so very sorry, for invading your privacy like that, and I am sorry for not asking your permission, and for taking liberties with your most personal thoughts. If I wasn't, you would not be reading this right now. It was wrong of me- totally, utterly wrong.

And I have wondered many, many times since then whether, had I not stumbled into your diary that night, would I have understood, anytime soon, or more dauntingly still, ever, what I had done to you? The lies I had made you believe?

A few weeks ago, I might have considered the possibility that it would never have occurred to me- that I might have let life go on as it usually did, and I might have hurt you, time and time again, because I did not understand what I felt about you- for you.

But now I do. Now I know that perhaps, even though not immediately, but sooner or later I would have understood- because even then, even when I did not understand what that diary meant, or rather, I did not want to accept what it meant and how it would change what I'd come to consider a normal relationship between us- even then, I had been so frightened by the idea that you were pushing me away that I pulled you closer.

Let me make a second confession: the moment I looked into your eyes, and kept looking until the clock struck midnight, was completely intentional. Completely deliberate.

I wanted to tie you to me, I understand that now- I couldn't let you leave me, and I did the only thing I could. And then I pretended that things would be the same, things would continue as they always did, and pretend that I had not seen what I had seen, read what I had read...

Because in your diary, the diary that you had never meant for anyone to see, in which you had poured feelings that you hid so well that when I finally saw them they shattered my composure and my control to smithereens...in that diary was proof that I did not deserve to ask for your presence in my life.

My third confession: you were wrong, Khushi. You were wrong when you said I want nothing to do with you. You were wrong when you thought you did not matter to me- that you could just get up and leave and I would let you.

I am convinced now, and not because of any idealism or arrogance or mistaken claims of infallibility, because I have learnt only too well how heinously wrong I can be- I am convinced that sooner or later I would have been forced to think about why you are distancing yourself, and would have started to wonder why that bothered me, and then at some point I'd have been compelled to conclude that...I'm getting ahead of myself. It is not time for that yet.

What I am trying to say, in a longwinded and inarticulate way, is that I am so sorry for reading your diary Khushi- for prying into your private thoughts like this. The guilt has made it difficult for me to have any peace of mind- as you became more accepting of my being around you, I found myself even more guilty of keeping yet another secret from you- yet another mistake that could jeopardise everything I had managed to fix so far.

But is it selfish of me to say, is it horribly wrong of me to say, that a part of me is glad that I made that mistake?

I say that sooner or later I would have come to the juncture I am at now, but your diary might possibly have saved me from being too late. From calling out when you were so far away I could not reach you anymore. The idea, I will admit, is terrifying to me.

Nonetheless...nonetheless, I could not rest until I told you about this. Even trying to imagine keeping this from you, from being dishonest- even giving you the impression that I had suddenly turned over a new leaf out of the blue, where the credit lies entirely with you, made me feel uneasy; unhappy.

I have told you before that I do not want to make any grand shows of apology- I do not want to deprecate the importance of what your forgiveness would mean to me by turning to empty gestures. And that is why I resolved to write this diary to you. Maybe it is too much to hope for, maybe I'm being juvenile in hoping this might work- but I thought that I would let you see for yourself what I am thinking and what I am feeling, in its most unrefined, whole, open form, in exchange for my peek into what you have been thinking and feeling- all the pain that I have caused you, all the pain that you have been hiding.

This feels...unusual. This is the first time I have been so open, without bothering to keep anything back...I am not allowing myself to revisit my own words, and I will not let any leftovers from what I confess were my prejudices, my arrogance, to slant the sincerity with which I am writing everything here. I want you to see that I am not lying- that I have never been more candid with anyone, so open with anyone, in my life.

And after this...if you can still trust me, if you can believe in what I am saying...then please come to the poolside tomorrow, at seven o clock. I will be waiting for you.

I have been a coward all this time, but I don't want to be a coward any longer.

I am using these pages to let you know of my wrong, but I won't use these pages to apologise, or to tell you what you mean to me Khushi- I won't hide behind my writing to prove to you how wrong you were in assuming I don't want anything to do with you.

I want to tell you how much you matter to me Khushi Kumari Gupta...and I want to tell you this in person."

He wondered now whether she had read it- read every last line of his confessions. He wondered if she understood that he had handed over his fate into her hands in the form of a leather-bound journal filled with confessions no one else would ever see.

Would she come?

Would she want to hear what he had to say?

Would she believe him at all?

And as Arnav waited and wondered and wallowed in the harrowing torture of not knowing what was in store for him, his wristwatch struck seven, and the scrape of sliding-doors against their metal panes almost gave him a heart-attack.

^26th January, 2012, 7.00 p.m. (evening)

He started so violently she almost lost her tenuous grip on her fickle courage, and skedaddled.

But then the very next moment he had come to a complete halt- stopped so abruptly in the middle of his restless pacing that he seemed to sway a little on the spot from the remainder of his momentum, before going stock still.

And Khushi, one hand grasping the cool, metallic edge of the sliding-door, the other folded carefully around a leather-bound journal- a flat, rectangular object that had, the previous day, been covered in plain brown paper- felt any doubts that may have remained to nag at her evaporate and depart without further ado.

Because the minute she had set one foot on the tiled floor of the poolside, his wide-eyed, almost transfixed stare had flicked between the book she held and her face- and then it had been like watching a child being told that he could have anything he wanted for dessert, or like a teenager stumbling into the first pangs of that emotion called love, or like a man stooped and bent by age waking to discover his whole family had come to visit him.

Innocent and honest and unpretentious- joy in its simplest, purest form.

Heart melting into a warm, syrupy mess in her chest, her pulse rupturing her ear-drums until she could barely hear herself, and so giddy it was surprising her feet weren't hovering in the air, Khushi made herself move with difficulty, and stopped only a few feet away from him.

And then that first instance of relief and happiness upon his countenance had been wafted away by a more compelling emotion- one that stirred her dhak dhak into a softer, more melodious rhythm, and Khushi was drawn in by the vulnerability suddenly unveiled for her to see, in his caramel-ringed eyes, in his laborious breathing, in his slightly opened mouth.

Throat thick and heavy, Khushi spoke.

"Aapne humse jhooth bola?"

Her words seemed to snatch down blinds over his features- they darkened instantly, and that glow that had begun to burn beneath his skin almost guttered out when she quietly added,

"Aap ko toh Hindi acchi tara se aati hai."

Her words were light, though the beats of her heart were now heavy, loaded with the poignancy of the moment, and with everything that had been fused into paper, everything that went beyond ink and words, in the diary she was holding up for him to see.

There is something I need to confess to you. I did something wrong, and though it pains me, a part of me is also grateful for my mistake.

She had tried and tried- tried and tried. But even with the evidence, in black and white, clasped in her hands, Khushi could not muster the strength to feel furious. Or hurt. Or betrayed. Or exposed, or susceptible. She had been shaken, yes- she had experienced that burst of arctic-chill when she realised what had happened, what this journal was trying to tell her, yes- but at that moment, she had been too engrossed by the book, and what it promised to say, to dwell too long on those feelings.

He had been so desperate for her to look at it.

He was blinking at her now, seemingly struggling to comprehend what she had just said, and she wanted to laugh- felt a laugh, a hearty, heartfelt, relieved laugh bubbling just beneath the surface, tickling her lungs and leaving her short of air.

Feeling elated, feeling silly, Khushi mock-speculated, "In fact, Nanheji is more of a dire need of lessons than you, Arnavji."

That snapped him out of it.

"Trying to teach that idiot Hindi would be like trying to teach Laxmi how to dance," he scoffed, but there was no bite to his tone- no vitriol, no ire, no bitterness at all, and Khushi imbued it all without pausing to check and double-check for hidden meanings or hurtful undertones.

Let me make a second confession: the moment I looked into your eyes, and kept looking until the clock struck midnight, was completely intentional. Completely deliberate.

It was there, printed between the leaves she clutched possessively in her hands- engraved in time and into permanency, not whispers of a meaning lost in the cacophony of words saying the opposite of what she wanted to hear...she held proof in her hands now, that she could verify with her own eyes, and nothing he could say or do would change it.

"Toh kya huwa," she argued back airily, for once feeling as buoyant as her voice suggested, for once free of pretence and of the obligation to put a smile on her face; today the smile was fighting to get out on its own, "I can try, at least."

And then he was frowning at her, but it was not at all one of those ferocious frowns that had chilled her to the marrow before, and made her bones tremble from fear,

"I asked first."

Khushi shrugged; her efforts to stamp out her dizzy grin was making it increasingly impossible to talk with a straight face, "You evidently don't need my help."

He had read her diary- he must have read all her little stipulations, and he had not done what she might have expected ASR to do.

He had not tried to shove his money in to her hands.

He had not tried to grant her any favours.

He had not tried to lift away her problems and solve them with a phone-call and a scrawl of his signature in a cheque-book.

He had not, even once, made her feel indebted to him- inferior to him.

Instead, he had given her movies and jalebis and respect and light in the darkness, and the only resolution of hers he had sought to contradict were the ones to do with him.

My third confession: you were wrong, Khushi. You were wrong when you said I want nothing to do with you. You were wrong when you thought you did not matter to me- that you could just get up and leave and I would let you.

From feeling helpless, he had made her feel empowered- from feeling vulnerable, he had made her feel invincible.

And all by doing things as ridiculous as asking her for Hindi lessons.

"I still can't read that book you gave me though," he insisted, crossing his arms, his features a mix between casual and serious; but Khushi, without the tether of her trepidation and dread, could also see the joy tucked into the nooks, and her own joy was swelling in her chest until she almost gave up on the game they were playing, "Doesn't that mean you gave me a useless gift?"

"Hmm," Khushi made a show of considering what he had said, tapping a finger against her chin, and then, brightening, "Tell you what- I will teach you Hindi, but on one condition."

He arched an eyebrow at her, but the effect was ruined by the near-giddy twitches to his lips, the delight dancing in his honey-gold eyes.

"What condition?"

And with as straight a face as she could manage, Khushi declared, "You have to dance at the sangeet."

***

He had not known what he was expecting, but he had certainly not been expecting that- and he certainly did not care.

But just for the sake of it, because this was what they did, this was how they ticked, he curtly retorted, "Absolutely not."

Predictably, Khushi frowned with an adorable moue at him, and he almost had another seizure; this was too much, this was too unreal, and he might as well have lost his senses and rationality as he had waited and waited for her judgement, and now he was in the blissful throes of insanity where even the most unlikely things could become likely.

"Why not?" Khushi whined, and it was so similar to the way she would gripe to him before, in all her child-like glory and her juvenile attempts to persuade him to do something or the other that Arnav almost missed his cue, "It's your brother's wedding too!"

She was still holding his journal, so this must be reality right? Or had he really lost his mind, and its fractured remains were confusing what belonged in the real world, and what were figments of his imagination?

"I am not going to dance," he heard himself say, but his words lacked all conviction- he was too happy, and it took the blunt edge off his tone, but he did not care, "I'm not going to make a fool of myself out there."

Khushi bounced up on her feet- the journal was still in her hand, and she appeared to be rather attached to it.

"You won't make a fool of yourself," she insisted, her eyes aglow with mirth and mischief and an entire universe of emotions he had not seen there for a long, long time, "I promise! I'll teach you!"

***

Her promise did something to him- that frail cover of levity slipped and fell off his face, and Khushi could glimpse the impact of her words on him.

"You'll...teach me?" he repeated, slowly.

I am using these pages to let you know of my wrong, but I won't use these pages to apologise, or to tell you what you mean to me Khushi- I won't hide behind my writing to prove to you how wrong you were in assuming I don't want anything to do with you.

"Yes," she told him, nodding to emphasise her point, and revelling in the absurdity of the moment, relishing how uninhibited she felt, how liberated, a dove set free to fly wherever its heart desired- a dove with its heart set on home. She took in a deep breath, steeled herself, and for the first time since she had sworn to her resolutions, she took a chance. "In fact, we can dance together, if you like."

His composure shattered there and then, and fell through the cracks in the tiles, and Khushi knew that the charade they had been playing was over.

And she saw without once denying what she was seeing the combustive combination of diffidence, of vulnerability, of heartrending remorse, and spiked into it all the tender hesitation to believe what she was telling him, but more importantly what it meant.

"I even asked the choreographer lady about it," Khushi continued, but softly now, gently, and above all, earnestly, begging him to listen to her as she had learnt to listen to him, "I told her that we could dance to that song from the movie you brought for me."

His sharp intake of breath confirmed what she already knew, and she could barely hear herself beginning to hum and then sing over the pandemonium of her pulse,

"Teri meri, meri teri, prem kahani hai mushkil...doh lafzon mein yeh bayaa na ho paaye..."

"Khushi..." he sounded pained almost, and he was still rooted to where he had been when she had arrived, still outside her personal space-

"Ek ladka aur ek ladki ki, yeh kahaani hai nayi...doh lafzon mein yeh bayaa na ho paaye..." her voice wavered as she trailed off, and she was sure that her face must be aglow in bright crimson, could fancy she could feel her hair curl because of the steam she imagined rising from her ears, but she did not let her shyness stop her. Brazenly, belying the twisting and thrashing of her mortification making her outstretched arm somewhat uncoordinated, Khushi tentatively offered her palm to the man she had been so sure loathed her very existence- the man who had taken it upon himself to prove her wrong. "Will you dance with me, Arnavji?"

He snapped out of it then, and in a whirlwind of movement he was right in front of her, clasping her hand with both of his, and even though they were large and firm, they were trembling, and Khushi thought it was an apt analogy for the man she had learnt Arnav Singh Raizada to be.

As strong as he was susceptible, as ruthless as he was reverent...

The diary fell out of her grip, and she placed her now free hand on his shaking ones, steadying them.

***

"I'm sorry..." he gurgled, conscious that he was coming apart, and not caring- Khushi's tiny hands were warm and they were tightly wound around his fingers, and it fractured the last bit of his control to tatters. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

And she was whispering back to him, tender and kind, "I know...it's ok...it's alright...it's fine now, Arnavji...I know. It's ok."

It was what he had wanted to hear, it was what he yearned for with all his being, but he still thought she had to be demented to grant him those words so easily.

"No it's not," his voice was hoarse and chipped, and he could not look her in the eye, the uncomfortable burning against his lids shooting into his chest and echoing its pain there, "It's not OK...I hurt you so many times..."

"But you wouldn't hurt me now, would you Arnavji?"

"No!" his answer was almost vicious- the force of it surprised even him, but when he looked up, Khushi looked unfazed; she gripped his hands in both of hers still, and there was a smile on her lips- an understanding smile, a soothing smile that only made him more contrite; made it clearer to him than ever before that he was not worthy of this- that he had not done enough, he had not been punished enough.

"Khushi..." his voice quivered but he did not let that stop him; it had all been leading up to this moment, this moment when they would finally stop dodging and weaving around each other and face the issues, the obstacles, that had been lying in between them from the very beginning. And it was this fact- the fact that she was no longer backing away, the fact that she was no longer letting those obstacles stand and collect dust and remain a perpetual blight in their lives- that broke down his restraint at last, because now she was listening to him- now he could unburden himself of some of the guilt nearly crushing him under its weight. "Khushi...I...I'm sorry...I've done so many awful, awful things to you- I'm sorry..."

"I know," she repeated again, a bit more firmly this time; her hands squeezed his, "Arnavji, I know you are...and it's OK..."

And just as he was about to disagree with her, just as he was about to restart the cycle of apologies again, Khushi had cut him off.

"I know you're sorry...I know...I know you care...I know, because you apologised to my whole family, even though you did not have to-"

"I did-" he started; he was burning all over with his remorse, but in his selfishness he could not let go of Khushi's hands.

"No," Khushi sternly interjected again, and she shook her head at him, frowning in rebuke, "You didn't have to...but you did anyway...and then day before yesterday, during the blackout...you didn't have to come back-"

"I did!" he disagreed with more force this time, almost offended that she could think he would sit by while she cowered under shadows, but she had foreseen his denial and spoke over him,

"No, you didn't," she insisted, and she was holding his stare severely, and then almost immediately, she softened, and Arnav was drowning in pool of dark coffee liquor, "But you came back anyway...and...and...isn't that what matters?"

She said it as though it were that simple- she said it as though it was that easy to let go of everything and start anew, with a smile that made her radiant and beautiful, and he thought she was so brave and perfect, and he so damaged and cowardly next to her.

"I wouldn't have..." he began again, spurred on by the suicidal need to make her see his imperfections, make her understand that she was consorting with a broken man, a man riddled with the blemishes from his mistakes and those of others- she needed to understand just what kind of person she was offering her hand to, knowing that he wouldn't let her take that hand back even if she wanted to, "I wouldn't even have thought...without the diary...your diary..."

Khushi was shaking her head at him again, and she looked so earnest his heart faltered and he could not speak anymore, tonsils sore, throat raw.

"Is it selfish of me to say," she murmured quietly to him, and Arnav recognised his own words, clandestine and unspoken, tucked in between the pages of the journal lying on the floor now, "Is it horribly wrong of me to say, that a part of me is glad you made that mistake?"

And as he drew in a shuddering breath, not daring to believe what she was saying to him, even though every nerve in his body was pining for a taste of it, she added softly,

"And speaking of diaries...didn't you call me here to tell me something?"

She was blushing and he could tell that she was abashed, and yet she was standing there, fingers entwined with his, firm and steady, and she was watching him almost expectantly- almost eagerly.

He was powerless to deny her.

And so he said it.

"Khushi Kumari Gupta...don't ever think that you don't matter to me. You have no idea how much you do. You matter so much that I cannot let you go- ever. You matter so much that- that I...that I want to see you at midnight on every new year's eve- for the rest of our lives."

And as he fell weak to temptation and lifted their jointed hands to press chapped lips into her skin, Khushi, laughing tears standing in her eyes, quavered out, "I think I like that plan."

In the silence that followed, as they remained frozen there, caught in the enormity of a future that had suddenly thrown its gates open at their feet, Arnav recalled the lyrics Khushi had been singing to him before holding out her hand-

Tere meri

Meri teri

Prem kahani hai mushkil

Doh lafzon mein yeh

Bayaa naa ho paaye

She was right- it was difficult, it would be difficult...for him to forgive himself, for him to earn her in his own eyes, for them to move forward without the need of ever looking back, for them to get to the point where he could give her that diamond bracelet without fear, and have the right to tell her that she ought to wear her hair down.

But at least...it was not impossible.

***

"I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve." - Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

***

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PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE NOTE!! :)

Love the way you conclude, it makes me desperate to read more...

and he finally tells her
i know its not what we usually hear
but from him it is so equivalent of that aint it
him actually confessing that he cares for her
more like letting her know that he cares
that he did come back for her
goes a long way those few words from him
though he says less
but when he says it well it leaves a deep impact on you
and thats what makes those words so special
yes payal what you are thinking are right
and if things work out he will be your BIL in more than one way dear
he just had to get to her in the darkness
and that was the one moment which he showed his hand plainly
ahhh her childhood fear it cant leave her that easily can it
what did he give her
and why was he so nervous
guess the second part shall answer that
cheers for pm

standing ovation. 👏

ahh now i get why he was so nervous
well this is even better
he actually confessed h read her diary
he didnt keep her in the dark there
and that is something
if he wanted he could have not told her
and she wouldnt know either
but he couldnt do that to her and to him either
that he told her about diary and maybe even why he did what he did was enough for her to know that this time she is right in thinking that he wouldnt break her apart this time
that she can trust him to be there for her
man that was beautiful
he didnt make excuses gave her the facts
and let her come to her own conclusion
hoping that she would understand why he did it this way
she too got why he did what he did
his reading her diary was just the icing on the cake i guess
she didnt feel bad
not if it gave them a chance
so finally it came to the end i hoped it was touch and go there
but you managed it beautifully
wait why did the time go to 7th jan when arnie thoughts about giving her his diary were on 26th jan
maybe i didnt get that bit
cheers for pm
gonna miss this now