Part 5: There will be blood
On her way over to the gym from the elevator lobby, she caught sight of the grand pool area that seemed to stretch further as terrace space with its spa and rows of square wooden cabanas. Now, this was an interesting, she reckoned as the apartment building transformed itself into everything upscale as she moved up the floors.
The minute she'd stepped onto the street after getting off of Yash's car the previous day, she'd tipped her head all the way back and taken in with awe the towering height of the building she would be coming to take shelter at, day after day.
"Please tell me there is an elevator..." Had been her first remark, making Yash and Meera laugh at her fake mild panic.
If not for Meera's maasi moving away to Pittsburgh for work, Meera wouldn't have been renting even a broom closet in Manhattan. Apparently, transferred a subsidized payment to her maasi given her familial ties and now Meera had her to share that nominal amount too. Although it had been another matter when she'd heard of Yash leasing a one bedroom in the same building, a few floors down from their own. She'd had a mild heart attack when she'd learnt that he'd only one other person to share a horrendously overpriced pigeon hole sized apartment taking away almost all his salary in any given month. God knows! she'd thought, amazed at the prices people paid for aesthetic convenience in a prime location, which according to her was prime for everyone and everything else except the person paying for it. And here, she had been about to judge Yash in his indulgence when her thoughts drew her to another conclusion that it was perhaps not all the 37th floor extravagant excesses and heart of Manhattan living that had kept him hooked there.
Gazing at the needle of the empire state that came up into her view, she smiled now just as she'd then and moved towards the gym to work up that sweat she'd been planning on long.
Opening up the long glass door that ran up to the roof, she found the gym empty. But soon enough, she heard the grunts of someone struggling at the other end of the long room and realized she wasn't alone like she'd thought initially. In a single sweep of her eyes, she'd found him going at his push-ups in one stringed movement as if his entire body was a wired bundle which he was raising and lowering against the ground, all controlled by that precise sharp bend at his elbows. He was dressed in a black vest and sweat pants and she could see the sweat glistening on his shoulders, even as she walked to the closet bike nearest to the door.
Lord! What was wrong with her? She seemed to have suddenly gained an awareness to anything remotely bearing testosterone and her body seemed to only approve of her thoughts, when she found a nerve suddenly twitch at the bottom of her throat. The grunts in the room grew louder to reveal a fight in his voice, sort of like the men who sought out physical conditioning at times of internal chaos to regain their mental restrain and toughness.
She stopped by the exercise bike and threw her towel onto the handle and just as she was about to straddle the seat, the man stood up, stretching in length up to the bars that hung from the roof above and began taking his vest off while he still had his back to her.
Oh! shit...Indeed there were such fine beings on earth and she felt her breath catch in her throat.
If that hadn't made her jump up onto the seat and crank up a speed that might have cracked the odometer glass, then his next move had done it. The man soon twisted around and her eyes flew to his torso and again there was that mound of muscle, bundled and worked over to a lazy perfection, inducing a reaction opposite to what she'd just imagined. Her gaze drew up to his face slowly and she stopped short in her moves, even as she raised her feet to settle them on the pedal while she held onto the bike's handle bar.
It was him...all over again and she couldn't tell one word of greeting from another when they were all coming to her as muzzled echoes swirling up from a black well. Yes...she would smile and nod and not utter a word when she couldn't be sure they would make sense to him. But she could see even from that distance that he'd paused, frozen in his stance and the next second his face had stuck horror from recognizing her from the office. He instantly began moving towards her and she nervously peddled on, her eyes catching onto the green rectangle bars that flashed her vigor, her efforts to stay calm, on the panel, while it whizzed back and forth frantically just as her insides were.
Then she could feel the moment in its passing...In everything that slowed around her and magnified her general lack of grace and poise that accounted for most people not making a fool of themselves when they were around a shirtless male coming up to talk to them and towards the moment's close, her feet slipped over the pedal's strip of metal sticking out, making her wince from a sharp pain that dragged itself on her calf.
"Oh! shit..." She heard him say and before she could look down at her leg, she met his eyes. "You are bleeding..."
Once she heard him talk about the blood, she could feel the slow moving of something warm and thick soaking up her socks and the inside of her shoes. Her forehead crunched from the pain, from the mild burning that was also beginning to surface there.
She realized now that he'd been in a hurry to tell her just that - about the broken pedal of the bike and she caught him tilt his head down towards her feet and ask, "Are you ok? Can you walk Geet?"
Indeed...She said to herself, without responding to him as she got off the bike. If need be, she was going to walk back all the way to Toronto, but she didn't think she could stand to have him bare and luring and help her take one step towards the door.
But that had been her choice alone, for when she was about to put her hurt leg in front of the other, he was bending down to hunker already. In a snap of the finger, he had her shoe and sock removed and pulled the towel from the handlebar to tie it over there.
"Hang on now" He said and her brows knotted at what he meant when she saw him raise her feet further up. Oh! no, she was screaming mutely as she lost her balance and swayed in thin air, before she pulled herself forward and her hand firmly pressed against his shoulder to take support.
He looked up and she did too momentarily relieved she hadn't toppled over him. But soon, it all started over when his gaze held hers - even if only for a moment - and then the voice in her head went silent. The sound of her breathing grew louder in her ears and just like that it was again just him, her and everything else that weren't there between them.
Edited by 6th.Element - 13 years ago
Anupamaa
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