Rules Of Attraction#3 Chapter 37 02/10 Pg73 NEW! - Page 48

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

Mornings perched on his eyelashes. The warmth of his skin tenderly slipping its fingers between those of the sun rays. Every morning was almost the same. Soft giggles escaping her chest as delicately inquiring kisses would be planted in the hollows beneath her ears. Incoherent murmurs escaping him, as his lips wandered slowly along the side of her neck, seeming to savour the swift, unsteady surges of her breathing. Those murmurs ghosted against her skin, sending tremors down her spine. The kisses wouldn't stop until his mouth had touched every inch of her and she had come apart in his arms. Every morning was the same - a blur of lips and tastes. But that particular Monday, Khushi woke up to the clarion voice of Arnav berating someone on the other end of the phone. She felt her shoulders hurt a little as she leant back to rest against a pillow, admiring her ridiculously handsome husband, pacing the bedroom - a ferocious gleam colouring his eyes. She wondered if the pinstripe shirt seemed slacker on him, and if he looked more exhausted than usual. The kiss placed seconds later on her cheek as he came to sit down beside her, seemed like a brush of stubbles. "You need to shave! " She heard him sigh exasperatedly. "I just lost my head designer for next months Fall Couture Week. No time to shave - have to find a designer first, Khushi!" Nothing could've prepared Khushi however, for the end result of their conversation. The head designer was apparently pregnant, and Khushi for moments forgetting that she was battling a disease which was already a predetermined winner asked Arnav naively, if she could take her place. So engrossed she was in the conversation, she didn't pause to think how her husband who wouldn't let her get up from the bed if he had his way simply agreed to her offer without the usual catalog of arguments over her health. That moment she couldn't remember what unhappy felt like. She assumed that probably Arnav didn't remember the one time when she had let slip the fact that if given a chance she would have her own fashion show someday. She felt herself grinning till her face hurt, her tongue wittering almost inarticulately, giddy with unprecedented joy. Then lifting her face up, she planted her lips against his forehead, for a fleeting moment. But enough, for him to close his eyes, as if memorizing that moment then - her lips that were nearly blue that morning, the thin white chemise barely hanging on to her shoulders. It had been so long, and yet he would yearn greedily for these moments, a nervous blush scalding her throat, nights when they would do nothing except lie next to each other, holding hands. These moments held in them power enough to make him cry and smile, lose his breath momentarily and all at the same time.

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Then there were those moments which normally one would like to wash away from their minds if given the chance. Khushis mornings gave away if she would be having one of the good days or the mortifying bad ones. The aforesaid moments were generally interspersed between the timeframe of the bad days. But Arnav couldn't forget them, he didn't want to. He wanted to remember every detail, every tear shed and every smile forced. He would be classified a criminal if one choose to embark upon the fact that he had hoarded her memories in a clean, unruffled and reticent corner of his mind for ages.

One evening when he returned home from the grocery store, he didn't find Khushi in the bedroom, neither in the kitchen. It was nearly spontaneous, whilst he walked towards the bathroom - he felt his heart slow down, as his eyes trailed over the light coming out from the frosty glass doors. He simply walked in when she didnt answer him after calling out repeatedly. She seemed to be slouched against one of the tiled walls, her face glistening with tears and a stream of damp mascara. They were supposed to go out for dinner that night."Please leave. I want to be alone for some time. Please ..." He knelt in front of her, his hand reaching out to touch the hem of the black dress she had put on. But she slapped his hand away, trying to shout, summoning up the last few shreds of strength she had left."Leave me alone please. I don't want you to see me like...like this, sitting in a pool of my...my own urine. I just...just leave Arnav." He watched, rendered helpless by the steady flow of her tears, she was breathing heavily - trying to stop the intermittent hiccups. He felt stupid when he asked her how, his voice small and unsure. "I don't know. I was walking one second and then this...this pain shot up my back and I was on the floor. It hurts so much...everywhere." Arnav felt his knees starting to give away as he heard her breathing in-between the sobs. She asked him repeatedly, her voice quivering with despair as to not touch her, flinching away from his hands. But he held her anyway; his grip tight around her arms, as he lifted her up with genteel strength and put her right under the shower stall. And he didn't leave her there, even as her shoulders shook under the cold water cascading down over their heads. He didn't say a word even as she didn't stop the almost sporadic stance of her lips moving around the same syllables over and over again leave me alone. But he didn't move, not an inch. He stood there, his hands moving over the straps of the sodden chiffon dress, as he peeled it off her skin. What she didn't realize then, so overwhelmed with mortification, was that Arnav wanted to cry too. He felt like crying that moment, but nothing came out. Instead, he took a step forward and even as she kept slapping his hands away, he pulled her against him, embracing her tenderly. She seemed to relax slowly, but the tears didn't stop. Increasing with every kiss he placed the crook of her neck. But she was lulled into sleep soon, against his chest listening to the steady rhythm of their breathing mingling with the falling stream of the water.

That was the first time he had seen her so broken, so fragile.

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And then there were the marginally better days.

There had been these nights years ago, when Khushi would fight with her Amma when she oiled her hair overnight and she would have to make two tacky braids in the mornings before she went school. Evenings at the trifling saloon in one of the lesser known markets of Lucknow, where she would throw a fit when the barber would cut her hair a little too short. And now years later, she saw tufts of the hitherto lustrous hair fall down on the floor, as Arnav shaved it off. She was bald now - a fact that she couldn't get used to no matter how hard she tried. How does, one get used to looking in the mirror and find an oval face staring back at them barring the once cascading length of hair and then a smooth shiny scalp. But not once did she cry. Not when every time she was nervous, stressed, her hand out of habit would reach out to play with a strand, and all she would catch would be air. But it all seemed okay. Every conversation she had with Arnav, every time he reminded her he loved her, every time her mother called, or even Ajay - it all seemed okay. Not perfect or marvelous. But okay. And she was more than willing to settle for okay, because most of the times, okay was enough.

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Song: A Bitter Song - Butterfly Boucher