You'll find that I'm not very good when it comes procrastinating major events the way it is required in a long fiction. But I keep writing, which is quite the point. 😳 So, this chapter is a significant one in terms of Swayum and Sharon together. In the chapters to come, I'll be working on them as individuals because like you, I also fear that falling in love will change Sharon. I'll see to it that they don't change, either of them.
Now, there was something wrong with my PM account the day before yesterday when I updated. I'm sorry if any one of you didn't receive the notification. Also, I'll make one more update tomorrow after which I shall switch to update three times a week than every day. I hope it's alright. That's about it.
Thank you for the reviews.
Chapter Seven
It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you."
- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Samantha 'Simmi' Davis was Sharon's best friend and maternal cousin. She had flown down for their college reunion two days before it was to take place. Sharon and Swayum had gone to receive her at the Airport. They were to hit the road the next day in a Volvo with a group of classmates as most of their batch no longer lived in the town in which they had attended college over eight years ago. The Airport was thickly populous that day. Sharon had found the nights far smoother at the Airport. It was rather humid and she had a nagging fear she'd get separated from Swayum who seemed to know where he was going and end up outside by her car. Speaking of the car, she decided it was not such a bad idea. "Don't even think about it!" was his answer when Sharon asked him if she could go and wait by the car.
They waited on Simmi for forty minutes. At long last she could be seen descending an escalator with luggage twice her size. Swayum asked Sharon if she was even allowed to carry that much and Sharon said, "She may be seeing the officer who checked her luggage at the other end." Swayum wasn't amused. She wondered why he thought she wished to produce that effect. He took her hand and pulled her with him in Simmi's direction.
"Hey!!" Sharon left Swayum's hand and delightfully hugged Simmi.
"Hello, there." Simmi airily greeted Swayum, hugging Sharon very tightly.
Swayum and Sharon offered to help Simmi with her luggage. She obliged and left them with her two humongous suitcases. Her handbag dangling from her arm, she went to get coffee. "Get me mocha!" Sharon yelled from behind her and received a thumbs-up in reply.
"You need anything?" Sharon asked Swayum, acting like she'd forgotten Swayum could do with some caffeine too.
"I'm good. I'll have to finish three-fourths of your mocha, anyway." Swayum said, dragging one of the suitcases.
"Fair point," Sharon exclaimed and followed him outside.
Sharon's '67 Chevy Camaro had a pleasant reunion with Simmi. Sharon wasn't a cousin person. But she'd liked Simmi more than any of her cousins because they shared a thing for cars, a rather huge thing. And then they had ended up in the same college. Swayum was left to load the luggage in the back of the car where he was to find room for himself too. For, Sharon was riding with Simmi by her side today. "You two never really did heed the masses." Swayum muttered but both Simmi and Sharon could hear. "Too right, we didn't." Simmi replied and chuckled.
The drive to Sharon's house where Simmi was going to stay could have been better. Traffic jams every half a mile irritated Swayum as he tried to occupy himself in work on his laptop. Sharon was looking at him. Simmi was talking to Sharon. The song playing on the stereo was 'All you need is Love' by the Beatles. Sharon started humming, still looking at Swayum, observing his attempts to keep working even though he couldn't concentrate.
"Would you put that thing off, Swayum?" Simmi asked irritably.
"Oh, well, sorry. Tell me." Swayum said absent-mindedly.
"If it's alright, I want to visit Rhea's grave." She said grimly, looking into the rear view mirror. Sharon averted her eyes from the same before Simmi could notice and started singing with more relish, not faking it. She did like a good song in the middle of a traffic jam.
"Of course it's alright, Simmi. I'll take you there in the evening." he smiled, shutting his laptop at last.
"Did Swayum tell you about his car, Simmi?" Sharon asked enthusiastically after a few minutes of silence.
"What about it?" Swayum and Simmi asked in unison, the former annoyed and the latter mildly interested.
"You'll see," Sharon chuckled and when Simmi did see the car an hour later, she was miming Sharon to the best of her ability. They animatedly mocked Swayum all day until they heard him complaining about why Vicky and Nilesh could not come to town too. "Don't worry, you'll see them at the reunion and your car won't be there." Simmi said in a mock consoling fashion. To which Sharon added, "Nobody needs to know."
*
Sharon had shed considerably very many tears the first time she'd visited Rhea's grave. That's to say when she had returned home and Swayum was away. She did not mind revealing her emotions when she felt them that intensely, she simply could not cry in the vicinity of Swayum. And that day she learnt that it's normal to not be able to cry in front of a widower over the death of their wife. It wouldn't mean anything, she thought. And because Sharon hardly ever cried, she did not want her tears to mean nothing. Sharon's grief about Rhea's death turned into a silent understanding between her, Rhea and Swayum. She firmly believed that both man and wife and she agreed that Rhea was in a better place. Thinking on these lines, Sharon pulled a short black dress over her bra and carefully adjusted it. Her tattoo was visible through the dress. 'Ramble On' it said in bright bold black, small font.
"You cannot wear that to a cemetery." Simmi accused her, clad in a navy blue dress a few inches longer.
"Agreed, it'd be funny." Sharon said. "I'm going to the nightclub, gotta work, actually." She explained.
"Right, sorry." Simmi said, pulling a grey cardigan over her dress. Sharon grabbed her overcoat and shut the lights and door of her room behind them as they walked down to Swayum and his gay car.
Now, here's the catch. Sharon's outings with Swayum had been on very cold days and nights. She'd been layered sufficiently. But suffice it to say she did have a s**ttish touch to her dressing, even though classily. Tonight she had only one-thirds of her body covered. Attempting to brush off an urge to pull her dress down to her knees, she approached his car. Then she decided that everybody knew what'd happen if she pulled too much at the hem. Chuckling softly, she decided to stand slightly behind Simmi for no reason in particular.
"I see that it'd be only you and me, Simmi." Swayum said, already opening the door of his queer car.
"Yep, Sharon's off to work." Sharon nodded in agreement as Simmi went to sit in the passenger's seat of Swayum's Ford Taurus. "Bye, you guys!" Sharon waved vigorously as Swayum pulled out of the driveway. She then went and talked to her '67 Chevy Camaro for ten short minutes. She explained to it her newly emerging tensions regarding Swayum. She told her car softly caressing the steering wheel that her tensions weren't about him but, because of him. Then she started singing and drove off, not thinking about it anymore.
*
"Oh, she's snoring." Sharon giggled as she pulled up the covers of her bed over Simmi and turned to face Swayum.
"I should get going," he told her.
"Sure. But your father would be asleep by now. You'd be so bored, dear boy." She giggled some more and threw herself on the couch, deciding she didn't care anymore about what she was wearing.
"I'm hungry and I want to cook something myself." he explained, sitting next to her now.
"Oh, you could use my kitchen and while you're at that, make something for me too." she said, now getting up and pulling her pajamas out of her wardrobe. She was hungry too in the earnest.
"On it, then." he smiled at her and left the room.
Sharon joined him about half an hour later and he seemed occupied enough not to notice even as she entered. She took a seat on the kitchen counter. She liked sitting on the cool, black granite counters of her kitchen and metal chairs. They were revolving! She started poking the ingredients Swayum had been using. Inspecting the sauce on the stove, she turned around to see Swayum making Pasta sheets.
"Rhea taught you that!" Sharon guessed airily, helping him with cutting the sheets in fine strips.
"Yes," Swayum fondly said.
"She taught me half the cooking I know too." she said, putting the spaghetti in the pan without instruction. Swayum smiled at her as he washed his hands in the sink and caught the towel before it hit his face that Sharon threw in his direction. She set the table (the kitchen counter with revolving chairs) and he carried the pasta to the table ten minutes later. "I'd do milkshake for dessert." Sharon delightfully finalized, eating her portion hastily. She hadn't consumed anything since that one-fourth of her mocha. Swayum was much slower; he was treating himself with the wine Simmi had brought for him.
"I like this!" Sharon praised him.
"Thank you," he said, he looked thoughtful.
"And, what's up?" Sharon's expression was as nonchalant as ever, but she was interested in hearing what came next, whatever it was. He replied two years ago on that very day (midnight, actually) Rhea had expressed her wish to become a mother. He told her they'd been trying to impregnate her when they found out she had cancer.
"I'm happy no baby was made." Sharon flatly said but she felt very sorry.
Swayum didn't say anything. He looked regretful. She didn't ask him why and decided to get started on the milkshake. He had told her no but she made a glass for him anyway, putting the wine away. "I'm too tired to drive tonight. It'd be unfair to my car." she said to him and he nodded, pulling his glass of milkshake toward him.
"This is so good!" he said and then started laughing at Sharon's milkshake moustache. "Don't you ever act like you're thirty, Sharon?" he asked, breathing lightly.
"Age is but a number. I'm about forty-five in my head, quite menopausal." she told him saintly, then thoughtfully added, "We could be baby-less together. Don't worry!"
She did not like the idea, though. She wasn't bodily sterile and she wouldn't know even if she was. Biting back the urge to tell him that, she laughed at the joke she'd made. For, he thought it was a joke so she didn't mind that the nature of her sincerity was received rather differently by him than her. She was one hundred percent in love with the man of her father's dream. But he was in love with his late wife. And she, Sharon, minded neither.
Tonight when he left, she hugged him more fully and tightly than she did usually. Tonight she also kissed his forehead for no reason in particular. Raising her head to look into his face, she realized he was pleasantly surprised but did not object. Giving her his patent side-hug he finally jumped into the driver's seat of his Ford Taurus and left.
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