Greetings to all, now, allow me to thank you all before anything. I am very pleased with your response, people. However, I am only five chapters ahead of you at the moment and I'm trying to construct the plot forward. So, I'll make only two updates next week as well. That's to say until I am making a move on, the updates will be biweekly.
Chapter Nine
This chapter here can be called one of the most crucial chapters thus far. But it's not climactic, to be sure. This is one long, long story.
So, I daresay, enjoy. 😳
Chapter Ten
"Maybe she made you feel better about your miserable life, but you didn't love her, because you don't destroy the person that you love." - Callie Torres, Grey's Anatomy
He was awake earlier than the crack of dawn. Dressed and ready to leave, Swayum silently opened the door into his father's room and saw that he was conveniently snoring, fast asleep. He shut the door just as quietly and left the house. The sun had begun to rise. In the background was a lemon hued and windy morning and in the foreground, a fast speeding Ford Taurus. Swayum did not know why he was so anxious to get out of town already. He needed a diversion. Sharon had told him that he would not fall out of love with Rhea. Hence, he was not going allow himself to dwell on the idea as long as it still hurt. It was in the way she said it. Sharon made it only too clear that someday it wouldn't hurt so much. Someday, he'd be happy about being in love with his dead wife.
He buttoned the jacket of his suit after he parked outside his office. As he entered his cabin five minutes later he rendered himself nescient toward Rhea, the hurt, Sharon, the warmth, his father, the wrath etc. He worked until very late in the night. When at eleven in the night he shifted his sight from onto his laptop into the deserted workplace outside the confines of his cabin he sniggered he did not quite know why. Still amused, he shut his laptop, packed his briefcase and turned the lights out on his way outside. He noticed it was just him, a junior and the night guard remaining now. Yawning broadly, Swayum left his office and walked into a night windier than the morning that it had followed.
He by no means was going back to his apartment that night. Swayum did not mind missing every game of that season if that meant he could be away from his father. He would just as well have wished somebody came and knocked him out of by kicking the football in his head instead of the goalpost. So, he called up to check what Sharon was doing. She said she was still at the night club. Swayum caught sight of her '67 Chevy Camaro while parking his car in the parking lot.
"It's on the house!" Sharon exclaimed, giving him a beer mug as he sat in front of her at the far end of the counter.
"Don't you have any closing hours?" Swayum shrugged, taking it.
"We do, we close in exactly ten minutes." said she, now pouring vodka in somebody's glass.
"Why do you do this, though?" Swayum asked, taking a swig of his beer.
"I like to, that's why." she cheerfully answered and chimed 'on the house' to somebody Swayum couldn't see.
"Great, I guess." he grinned at her. Sharon had her own set of logics. So, there were numerous reasons why Swayum's theory could be wrong but he still assumed that it was her way of staying grounded. "I never liked being a software engineer; it was far too easy for my liking." she went on, now devouring a beer bottle's cap with an opener.
"I don't remember anything easy about it." Swayum said seriously, shaking his head.
Sharon giggled. "I did it because I could do it. Like when you watch a really bad movie simply because you're in the mood to for no particular reason."
Swayum smiled at her and said nothing.
*
Swayum and Sharon were inside Sharon's '67 Chevy Camaro on their way to Sharon's. It was three in the morning and even though late nights with her were commonplace tonight Swayum wasn't going to get any sleep at all. She was driving briskly, looking as fresh as though she'd just woken after a good night's sleep and taken a calming bath. It was beyond Swayum how she could look like morning and the sun and happiness in the middle of a dark and cold night.
She wasn't talking much that night, though. He wondered why. It'd have fitted if she were speaking to her car or singing songs to it but she was not. Not even a drop of liquor had touched her lips that night and she had not told Swayum how beautifully queer his car looked that night. He was growing suspicious. And in his suspicions he had an epiphany. In the nearly six months he had spent in her company he had never once considered the possibility that something could be wrong with her too. "Are you feeling okay?" he finally asked her.
She alertly said no, she wasn't feeling okay but smiled all the same. That complicated matters for Swayum.
"Is something wrong?" he interrogated unsurely.
"Yes, something is quite wrong." she smilingly answered.
"What is it, then?" Swayum said, removing his jacket, relaxing his shoulders. He could hear anything she had to say at length. He braced himself for being of help to, she, who did not frown even while she admitted something was wrong with her, about her. Swayum did not have her skills. He could not repay her for what she did for him but he was going to be a friend to the very best of his abilities.
"I'm hurting." she was still smiling, no wistfulness in her eyes.
"On a scale of one to ten, how painful is it?" Swayum asked rather lamely.
"Twelve," she guffawed briefly and then went back to smiling.
"That's terrible." Swayum concluded.
They had reached her house now. Getting out of the car, Swayum saw Sharon mumble something to her car smilingly. He smiled at that and waited for her, sitting on the bonnet of her '67 Chevy Camaro. She did not object and simply took a seat beside him, hugging her legs. "Are you going to tell me about it?" he confirmed.
"Depends, man." she said, looking ahead into nothingness.
"I'm listening, Sharon." he flatly said and squeezed her arm very gently.
"Tempting offer," she laughed, loosening up suddenly.
"Ain't funny, not working," Swayum pulled a Sharon on Sharon.
"I haven't felt such exquisite pain in my life." she began and Swayum nodded encouragingly, had widened eyes. "It is excruciating and unbearable." She added. On being asked what it was precisely she did not answer. Swayum had been holding her hand for a while now, he squeezed it and Sharon reciprocated but said nothing. She then turned to look at him and covered the distance between them. His leg and hers were touching now. Searching his face, Swayum had no idea what she was trying to find in his expression. So, he couldn't tell if its absence would disappoint her. But it did. She looked disappointed.
"Oh," Swayum said meaningfully minutes later.
"Yes." Sharon was still staring at him without a speck of hesitation.
"You cannot fall out of love, I guess." he remembered her words out love.
"I cannot, yes." she smiled, considerably wistful at last. They mutually wriggled their hands out of each other's. But Swayum was looking away when he felt her hand on his cheek. He turned and had no time to decipher anything. She was slowly kissing him. She was also crying, his eyes were shut but he could tell that. Both her hands had shifted down around his waist, knotted together at the small of his back. Swayum had taken his time to part his lips to let her deepen her kiss. But he did. He was about to allow his hands inside her shirt. But she broke apart under the pretence that she couldn't breathe anymore. She did not look remorseful at all. But Swayum couldn't stop thinking for months to come if, then why he had permitted himself the intimacy she had initiated.
"Are we going to stop talking now?" she asked him, heaving air into her lungs.
"What? No." he said simply. "No," he repeated. "Thank you for stopping, though." he added.
"You're so perfect, Swayum, my father would marry you if he could." Sharon was laughing again, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hands. "But we need each other too much for his good." she finished and jumped off the bonnet and stood facing him, hands deep into the pockets of her jeans.
"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked, getting off too now, stupefied.
"It's a good time of year to visit Daddy Dearest, especially when you're an heiress. "
She giggled and walked into her house, leaving him outside. They had dinner at quarter past four that night and then Sharon took Swayum to his car parked outside his club. She did not look all that he vividly knew she had become. She had smithereens of a previously healthy heart inside her chest. That was the last he saw of her for three months.
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