New SS: Starlight Express CLOSED Indefinitely - Page 65

She was starting to breathe again only after she saw Aashi come through the door, instead of a tall curly haired someone who could have accompanied Ritu aunty given that she usually never drove herself anywhere. Her body gave out signs of the ebbing tension coursing through her: cold sweaty palms and feet that began to give out as her knees bolted. Restless, she found strength to walk back into the kitchen before Aashi or Ritu aunty could reach her. The help was busy tiding the kitchen grounds and she leaned on the pantry door to catch a calming breath.

It didn't matter anymore that Maan would be soon visiting Mr.Agarwal's home. She had to leave before any of those unwitting triggers start puncturing the dam that she was inside.

In the closed inter-connected web of her mother's acquaintances she socialized with, this was bound to happen, she realized. Only she didn't think it would be within days of her return to San Francisco. Dear lord!, a mute prayer escaped her lips. But she soon gave up on that appeal when she didn't know what she wanted to ask of the gods above her.

"Geet" A soft voice sounded close to her and she jolted into a turn finding Aashi a few steps from the kitchen arch, "You won't greet me?"

"No..." She found herself saying before she could think through a fair response, "I was just...I needed some air" She instantly caught her mistake when Aashi looked around to gesture at the closed windows.

"I was choking when..." She was quickly starting to correct herself, when Aashi cut in.

"You don't have to hide from me..." Aashi reached out to take Geet's hand before adding, "If anything I was ill-advised to protect you against my mother's misguided plan to take you home with us...And I don't think I have to explain who we are talking about"

Her free hand went around her chest to clutch her upper arm that Aashi was still holding as if she was suddenly cold. The remnant heat wave that still lingered in the kitchen did little to warm any of her defenses. A hazy picture glided in her head making her wanting to go home right then. Unable to drive out that pressing need to run, she began addressing Aashi again casually, willfully ignoring all that sparked inside her mind's eye.

"How is your writing coming along? Any recent publishing that I have missed or book deals?" She asked trying to sound genuine in her inquiry despite the hoarseness that was showing her panic.

Aashi gave a knowing smile. When she caught onto the knowledge that Aashi knew she was trying to stay impersonal over their talks, she looked away for a moment. Guilty as charged. None of it was Aashi's fault to treat her with any trace of detachment, she told herself.

"Not at all..." Aashi shook her head, "Unlike a few I'm acquainted with, I think my life would take much longer than a month to go topsy turvy"

Her eyes flickered up at once to catch Aashi staring at her holding that same smile, a hint of disdain growing stronger in the glint of Aashi's eyes.

For someone whom she'd known for almost two years, Aashi was proving to be a surprising puzzle. And she couldn't tell anymore whom Aashi was siding with. What gave Aashi that faint air of patronizing?

"Trust me...if it ever gets to that point then it takes no more than a second to set your world at sixes and sevens. It's the picking up after that takes time..." She paused, her gaze trailing past the corridor that muddled with people and into the garden that painted the image with blotches of green, "Sometimes a lot longer"

She felt a gentle squeeze of her hand and looked back at Aashi. "I'm sorry...I didn't mean it to come out like that, I was only..."

"Its alright" She smiled taking in the shadow of ruefulness that took over Aashi's face. Almost unnatural it was to understand Aashi's plight when she was the other party involved and she couldn't help that understanding that didn't seem to have existed all those innumerable nights when Aashi had tried calling her in Seattle.

"You want some Kheer?" She drew her hand out of her hold and walked to the counter. Ladling some kheer into a bowl, she addressed Aashi who seemed to have gone still from a haunting that could only be of their good times together.

"How are Aunty and Uncle keeping up with..." She amended when it occurred to her that she wouldn't be able to avoid a few forbidden subjects if she kept up with that line of questioning. "I hope they are well?" She ended with a question.

"Yes...They are good" Aashi's voice sounded strained as if she was struggling to withhold something inside her. She handed Aashi the bowl and went back to leaning on the same side of wall where Aashi was standing.

A brief interlude of silence arrived as Aashi tasted a few spoonful's of the dessert.

"Remember" Aashi's eyes were almost misty, her voice chocking with a grave desperation to divulge, "The first time you came home and mom asked you to make Kesar Kheer..."

A shiver passed to the tips of her fingers and a slow steeling of herself to what she was about to hear then began involuntarily.

"You were so scared that the kadai clattered against your bangles...And when you fretted over the kesar color being so light...and it just wouldn't be that yellow you wanted no matter how much kesar you added" Aashi had a woeful smile when she directly looked her in the eye and asked again, "Remember?"

Of course she remembered. She could picture every detail of that recollection, vivid as if she was living that instant as her present. Her eyes closed briefly as she saw him clothed in a jean and black shirt sneaking into the kitchen without his mother's knowledge and throw in a pinch of turmeric before closing her mouth with his turmeric stained hand right when he was certain she would have thrown a fit.

The ever-present tightness in her chest was beginning to come out of its shadows; the core of the pain heating up her almost dead emotions. Not here please, she pleaded to a higher power that seemed to be holding her reigns. She grimly shook out of her thoughts and moved a little farther to sit on the bar stool nearby. It was obvious by then, that she wasn't going to be baited by those traps Aashi was intentionally or unintentionally laying out for her.

"You still seem to be in a shock Geet..." Aashi prompted taking her silence to having come from being caught off-guard at the Agarwals' home. Nearly sighing aloud with relief that Aashi was onto another topic, she shrugged.

"I somehow didn't think I would run into you folks here..."

"I know..." She laughed and came to sit next to her, stirring the kheer in the bowl aimlessly. "Mom didn't want to, but then Sweety aunty convinced her..."

Aashi went quiet for a few seconds and appeared absent to her surroundings.

"I wonder when they will ever rest...I can't help but think that our moms almost always want one or the other matchmaking project going on for them...as if we are all dolls in their hands"

We? Her eyes narrowed. They were indeed one of their projects too. Only they were also one of their projects gone wrong.

"Why do you say so?...I don't get you..." She asked and Aashi began smiling wide, trying to hide a thrill behind the deepening glow of her eyes, as if it was inappropriate to be feeling all of that in Geet's presence.

"It's crazy...I don't even know why I agreed...It's some guy they want me to meet here"

"You don't tell..." She gathered a discomfiting ease and slapped Aashi's hand. However, her senses picked up on a siren at the same time in the way her skin tingled with a growing awareness from what she was piecing together then.

"I mean who names their kid Maan..." Aashi gave a conscious spurt of laugh and her eyes widened awkwardly "Really?...Maan?"

Her hand slipped off the top of Aashi's fingers as she whispered, "Maan?"

While her mind coiled into denial and made an odd connection that the question on her lips was far from the one that was amusing Aashi to no end, her heart took a free fall...

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