FF: New York times with Maan&Geet Thread 3 05/03 - Page 99

She didn't know who in the right mind could be at her door at those early hours of dawn. The loud knock at the door took her out of the shallow slumber, she had striven hard to achieve. With reluctance, and hoping it was not a chatty neighbor, she got down the stairs to open the door.

The handsome man at the door was quite unexpected. Her mind went blank on the possibilities that would lead such a man to her door.

Knotting up her eyebrows curiously she enquired "Sorry..." she exclaimed.

Fumbling with the cellphone in his hand nervously he responded. "Hi...Geet right?"

he continued without waiting for a response from her "I'm Rishabh...apparently your family thinks you are missing" He said, launching her into a full blown confusion and panic.

"What?" She asked unable to process all that he had just informed her.

"May I come in?" To which she first opened up the door mindlessly, to widen the crack through which she had spoken to him. But just then her doubts had magnified and her protective self took over and slammed the door back, locking up the bolts and activating the alarm.

"Geet...what happened?" He shouted back puzzled. To him the Khurana's always overplayed any scene.

"How do I know you are Rishabh?" She called out, cursing her own foolishness not having checked him out on the Internet yet.

"Look through the key hole" he said, leading her to squint through the hole to catch sight of a picture on his cellphone. It was Naini and him holding each other intimately. The picture indeed spoke a thousand words; strangely assuring her hunch that he still loved her, even when the photo seemed, not recent. With an earnest glee playing on her face, and forgetting the initial news he had delivered, she instantly let him in.

"Your family is worried for you and now on a charter...they didn't know you came up here from the city" He detailed as he walked in.

When on the call, she had walked off so far off pacifying her wayward thoughts about taking that flight to NY that she then decided to go to Sausalito instead. Allowing herself access to traces of him left behind, even if not himself, she looked forward to sleeping dowsed in his scents that was sure to linger in the pillow at their new home.

She came to a stop, right by the couch and his words now left her obtuse. She had followed him to the living room in her sleeping tracks and a top. Quickly she had thought to change into presentable attire, but when her mind picked up the inference that she would be seeing Maan anytime, she leapt into a numbing haze. Maan would be here, her mind repeated the sentence like a broken record while she slipped in and out of reality. He remained oblivious to her mind's workings and strolled around carelessly, inspecting the new addition of homes to the Khurana collection. "Not bad" he muttered more to himself.

His loud phone call, got her thoughts grounded and had her dart towards him. She asked him to be seated. Of course she wanted to chat him up on a hundred other things, but first she had to call him to relieve his fears.

Before she could get to it, she heard a melodious tune play up in a low volume. She followed the sound to be led to the home phone. Noticing the number on the caller id, she hurried to answer.

"Maan..." she answered urgently only to hear his maniacal tone shout back "Where the hell have you been?"

Overflowing silence chocked her words. At the private hangar, as he climbed down with his duffel, her excited voice slowed him down. Clutching his clammy forehead as a sense of calm rose in him, he sat down midway on the stairs. Daadima was close and placed an assuring hand on his shoulder. Naini stood by the door, very much panic driven. His sweaty palms made his cellphone slip while he was stuck in a gripping reverence listening to her thrilled breaths.

With her back to the wall, she had slid down and now sat on the floor close to the couch. As Rishabh saw tears gushed down her cheeks, he understood the emotional tension that powered the call.

Rushing to get to his phone, he staggered his way behind the steps and called out to her.

"Just stay there ok...don't move...I will be there in 45 mts" he said trying to calm down. All the while she had not let another sound escape her lips, except her sobs that pierced him. Really he was here? She yelped as she thought of the torture they lived through the last three days.

Somewhere between the time another one of Rishabh's cellphone blared to wake her up from the stupor she was in and between the time a loud screeching of the speeding vehicle sounded by the entry way, she had made tea for her brother-in-law, showered and wrapped herself one his favorite cotton saris. She had just come out of the dressing room, swinging her aanchal over her chest and adjusting her pleats by the feet, when she saw him open the bedroom door scuttling in pace and taking out his anxiety in the full deadly twist of the doorknob.

"Where did you go?" He leaned and rested his forehead on the door, as she made a mad dash towards him. It was a first, she saw him with moist eyes.

"It was a trip to hell and back" He spoke softly as he took her into a tight embrace. "Oh! Maan" she cried in a hushed mumble.

There was no need to hold back now, and she entirely surrendered to his hold. No exchange of words could have given him the poise he welcomed. His angst of eight hours was not something that could culminate over a phone call, not when nothing but her puffing breaths and warm sobs, against his aching skin, could dispense his compelling need for her. This time around, there were no substitutions that came close to relieve him, when he had spent hysterical hours sitting by the phone to have any soul inform him of her safety. When it comes to one's precious, the mind tricks always overstates the danger they can encounter than underplay it. Such was the tumultuous labyrinth he had just crossed over.

Ignoring everyone else downstairs, he traced his arms along her arms and came to lay next to her on the bed. While her back rested against his chest and as he tucked his hand in the space between her and the bed, she closed her eyes in peace. This is how it feels to be with him, she reminded herself once again as she renewed the sensation inside her. If pain of his absence was a vile fluid that ran course in her nerves, then they now slowly receded back to the dark hole, they stemmed from.

He raised his head and rested his cheek upon her, laying sideways, which gave rise to a fresh stream of tears that streaked her cheeks.

By some strange flow of vigor that bound them with their mere presence next to each other, she spoke to him.

"I love you..." She whispered as she her hand fell backwards to hold his cheek. With a mind of its own, his hand drew off the hold around her and rested on hers that still cupped his face. Such bliss...he felt.

"Weren't you supposed to be out of the country?" Geet asked as she eyed the army of his minions outside their house.

A very valid question for which he could not answer without involving his deep sentiments and so he refrained.

His sources back in NY had kept a close tap on their home on their comings and goings right after Naini moved in. He was too concerned over what irrational acts his wife would commit to given their impending divorce situation. Secretly he wished she would run back into his arms any day and accept her follies. But then his senseless overpowering male-ego forbid him from even asking her to suck up to the faults, he felt were wholly hers. He needed her to own up to it in her own accords, without having him to bring up the same. Sometimes he felt he was mean and acting up baseless but then there was always his last name "Oberoi" that interfered with its mammoth sized overbearing pride that had him walking slightly raised from the ground that everyone else trudged on. In summary, his need to be ahead of her game had made him keep a close watch on her leading up to the very moment he had heard she was running helter-skelter over her disappeared sister-in-law. Even amidst all that raged between them, he could not deny that he had a sense of responsibility towards the situation; there was no way in hell, he would brush aside her pain and panic when he was still tied to her. So then what about the part of distress he contributed? That he was in denial, no doubt. He had blown his own cover of Asian tours over the Chinese waters and flown straight from Catalina islands (west of Los Angeles), he had been conveniently hiding at. After having stopped at the apartment, he had directed his limo to drive right up to Sausalito, but not before a series of calls to locate her. He didn't know what got him out of the palatial Mexican style home he had been laying low in. Was it truly the false-alarm family crisis or the fact that a mere trip up the coast would give him a chance to take a look at her again that got him out? A predicament he struggled with and ignored suitably.

Definitely outnumbered now by the number of women that surrounded him and as her question cast him down a path of insecurity, he got up to leave.

"I should be going" His words stuttered as he got up from the seat and lowered his gaze unable to meet Geet or Daadi's eyes.

Seeing him at their home had shocked the trio upon entering the house. Initially the caravan of cars outside had not made sense to anyone except Naini. But it had seemed utterly impossible even for her to believe her husband could be here in the same city as hers. Maan being the man he was, he had paused momentarily but had gone straight upstairs to meet Geet. Naini was shocked too and knocked out senseless when she realized he was indeed standing in front of her. Tears had brimmed her eyes and clutching her scrunched dupatta to her mouth to muffle her sobs, she had run straight to the kitchen. A very awkward Daadima alone had grinned and sat next to him, until Geet had come back downstairs.

"No...No...you cannot leave until you at least have breakfast" Daadima protested getting up along with him.

Unable to deny the elder of the family, he sat back without another word and hoped Geet had no cross-questions for him.

Somehow in the back of their minds, all of the family knew he was keeping up with the Khurana's for his own reasons and that he was here for one and one person only, whom with certainty was not Geet.

Back at the kitchen, Naini stared at the dripping water from the faucet in utter silence. Amidst the maddening stillness, the plop of the water on the stainless steel base, was slowly building up an ire inside her. No tear streaked her cheeks nor did any violent sob wreck her being. But blazing anger took over her sanity over his doings. She knew her husband too well to understand that he had only been waiting for a chance to stumble upon her. Arrogant ass, she cursed him. Out in the living room, he was only making a fool of himself, by claiming to have come in search of a soon-to-be-ex-family member, when all knew he was here for her, she mentally bellowed. A bridge of words is all that they had to crossover and yet both held their ground staunchly to the extent that they wanted to take themselves out of each other's lives for eternity. Why did everyone find it easy to come together at a time when they know very little of each other and sometimes wanted to walk away at a point in life when they fathomed the other person more than their own selves? she questioned severely. She understood in most self-sufficient lives, more often than not, one's silly personality traits and worthless principles overruled the other's, at the same time, resulting in permanent separations. Yet she felt he was in no position to comprehen the same or where their differences had its origins. This one dumb act of his homecoming was breaking her, centrally rifting to pull her apart into pieces.

There are two more parts to Part 80. Will update in the afternoon PST hours. Precap2 : Maan, Geet and Rishabh talk at the table. Precap3: "As the crescendo of the song played up his overarching emotions, he kissed her"