"Diti aunty..." Payal placed her small stubby fingers on her cheek, "Are you paining?"
She didn't mean to concern the little one, holding onto her stomach like her tight hold was what tied up the pain and kept it from spreading over her torso. Payal had been cranky through dinner and she'd come in to lie down with her for a while to put her to bed, before she could turn in for the day. But now, there were thoughts in her head that made her think that Payal's room was perhaps a better sleeping arrangement for that night.
"I'm fine baby..." She lifted her hand off her cheek and kissed the inside of her palm, "You sleep now..."
Obedient that Payal was, she closed her eyes the same second and that made her reflect wistfully: if only everything else that had been on her mind for the entire evening - and in all likelihood for the next few weeks - could be brought to an even keel.
She didn't know where he was. In the hours since the evening miasma, he'd locked himself into the study having summoned for an urgent client call. She'd skipped dinner quoting her Vrath that she didn't keep and got away from the other female household members - who were only too happy in giving her a happy gleam from having heard about their intimate kitchen moment from Vidhi di - by keeping Payal company in her bedroom.
Late in the night, when she was sure he would have retired for the night, she went back to her room and found the bed empty. Having had lady luck at her side for the longest stretch, she didn't think there was any way in hell she was going to outlast the night without running into him. When sleeping in Payal's room had not been an option after factoring the possibility of someone finding out that she hadn't spent the night in their bedroom, she snatched a pile of sheets, a spare comforter from the closet and ran out - to the side of the lawn that opened up from their bedroom - with a few pillows, which in turn made her realize she'd always needed the full works of a bedding ensemble to sleep through any night.
Once on the grass, it was easier to let her mind slip into absorbing the other details of the garden around her. The view of towering trees and the expanse of the grey clouds clustered thick at the horizon diminished her to a size that was of universal insignificance. Lord! that wasn't so much the case inside her own head. And it only began increasing exponentially when she heard the soft rustle of the grass and knew without looking that it had to be him at that hour.
Though she hadn't felt like having anyone's company, she couldn't ask him to leave. By the time she'd worked up words into her head, he'd settled next to her in the plush of the comforter with her back to him. In that proximity, her nose picked up scents of a strong curry and something turmeric, but that still didn't manage to arouse her curiosity aplenty to make her turn and face him. It was only natural that he'd been told about her vrath and he must have got her dinner, discerning that vrath had only been an excuse to avoid him at the dinner table.
"Is it the cramps again?" He asked first, noticing the manner in which she had her arms around her belly.
"Yes..." She found herself saying failing to keep her initial decision to stay mum.
"Are you mad, Aditi?" The resolve in his voice told her that he didn't expect her to be anything but that.
With his coming there was an ease in the moment that came with his presence and then there was the lingering memory of those uncharted sensations; those opposing sentiments being at such great odds that they perfectly cancelled out each other, leaving her in a void and exiled.
There was no point not talking to him and leading him to believe that what went down in the kitchen mattered to her anymore than the wedding itself.
"No", she sounded more herself this time without letting him get to her.
"What do you want, Aditi?"
She took her time before she responded. "I want to be a five year old who doesn't hesitate to wail and break into a loud cry and demand to be sent to her mommy...", there was a fake laugh in her voice, "But, I can't want all that, can I?"
"I believe I have known you long to tell that your mom is the last person you want to be talking now"
She turned over and caught him with a smug look; a knowing smile on his lips. He really did know her too well when it was more or less the precise conclusion she'd reached in her head.
"Won't you talk to me?"
Her eyes darted away to a damp spot on the comforter that it must have absorbed from the moisture in the ground. "There isn't much to be talked about the tomato and the knife adventure..."
"Sorry to disappoint you Aditi", his eyes showed his disbelief, and he added shaking his head, "but a kiss is a kiss".
Agreed, twenty nine year olds were expected to call a kiss, a kiss; not resort to an indirect reference as a coy teenager.
"A kiss by any other name wouldn't do justice to it...And technically I didn't kiss you...", he ended.
"You did too..." She gave a tight punch into his arm and made a face, when it was her own knuckles that hurt and he remained disinterested as if only a fly had grazed past him.
"Well...There was half the tomato that I bit off which you held in your mouth. But, believe me when I tell you that that isn't a kiss...", he made a dismissing sound.
It wasn't like she could show him proof when a kiss doesn't leave a physical mark behind. Or when she wasn't sure if any of what she'd felt then had only been her imagination - that brush of the smallest inch of his lips ; the cold sweat that had sprung in her palms, the shake of her fingers and the few seconds that she'd to force some strength into her knees from turning into liquid, to keep herself upright.
She raised her eyes to him and saw the same guy she'd met years ago, without guile; who did nothing without an earnest appeal which reminded her the few times he'd asked her to trust him before he'd made his move to rescue her from his own people; for her own peace with them.
And just like that she gave up that fight, "Ok..."
"That's it?...", she sighted a real surprise in his eyes and even as he spoke, she felt a rush of warmth spread and dissolve the last of her doubts that had had her in knots all that time, "You have got nothing else for a comeback?"
"You are a complete ass and have turned half as shameless as Salman khan overnight...", shaking her head, she smiled, "Only, you don't take off your clothes every scene, but go around stunning your friend with something along the lines of a kiss...No...it is almost impossible to have a comeback for you..."
"At least they will mind their jobs going forward..." He reached out to her hand, that was beginning to draw circles over the white of the comforter, "And putting up a show for them doesn't change a thing between us..." You know that, right?"
"Yes..." She squeezed his hand in return for assurance, "I know..."
"Good...let's go inside..." He pulled on her wrist when he was ready to get inside.
She stilled him by pulling his hand back to her and he was on the ground once again, "Will you talk about Arpita?"
"No...", he said without giving it any thought; his tone was absolute and a stern look came into his eye then. Perhaps, she musn't have broached the subject as direct as she'd done.
"You never were much of a talker..." She mumbled, letting go of the last of his finger when her clasp slid over his palms, "It was a mystery that I was the only one who could figure you for what you sometimes didn't share..."
"Indeed..." he smiled in response, meddling with a thread that had come off his t-shirt end, "you could always tell when I was nervous about unfinished assignments, about books that I forgot to return and about sneaking out for late night movies..."
"Are you telling me that you kept secrets even from me?" She managed to sound as if that had been a serious offense on his part.
"The noodles have already gone cold, Aditi...", he shrugged, his eyes confirming the secrets that she'd always known he'd withheld from her, "Don't you want to eat?"
For some time, her cramps had been less intense from their talking and she'd managed to give him a few smiles taking her mind away from the resignation she'd thrust upon herself when he'd claimed that he'd not intended to kiss her; nor that there had been a kiss between them. Finding herself in a better state of mind than she'd been all day, she couldn't refuse the offer of noodles.
Noodles! Their favorite - a constant companion on the long nights they had spent on her terrace throwing themselves over books and last minute term papers.
Undoubtedly; she was about to roll her eyes, remembering how hot he liked his food; he must have prepared it to his liking with the chilli sauce that he always added towards the end, while she liked hers with plain butter and the spice mix that it came with.
But when he dragged the bowl to her, she saw that the noodles were a stale mustard yellow - without the transparent red that came from the chilli sauce - and her eyes lit up from the feel of predilection that he'd displayed in making the noodles to her savoring.
"Stay..." She shifted to lie on her belly and raised her legs off the grass and crossed them at her ankles. "Let's sleep outside...", she said twirling a few strings of noodles around her fork.
"I think, it might rain tonight..." He said tipping his head back to take a look at the sky.
"So..." Her eyebrows drew together and a second later, she smiled wide luring him to play silly as she felt like for that night, "We will get wet..."
"This isn't too bad an arrangement.." He stretched his lips into a thin line, nodding, and appeared contemplative, looking around the garden as if it was the first time he'd been there, "Sort of like a private picnic..."
"The irony being", he quoted, his eyes narrowing from a stumbled discovery, "I have lived here all my life and never once slept outside..."
"That's because you are blind as a bat to what you have around you...", she said shaking her head from side of side, as if that was his single most failure while, her playful smile made her accusing mild and throwing her head all the way behind, forked in another mouthful; after which she tugged the fork out slow, lapping her lips about it to draw out the last of the juicy remnants.
He looked at her for a long minute, his eyes perhaps in agreement to her pronouncement and then he lowered himself next to her, imitating her posture. Grabbing his bowl and fork, he took in a large coil of the noodles into his mouth.
"Not anymore..." he said, putting a smile on her lips, with a deliberate thoughtfulness that seem to come from a firm, decisive place inside him.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Cricket
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