His bags were packed and stood neatly in the corner of their room. Ragini found her attention drifting towards them throughout the day, always catching them out of the corner of her eye despite her best efforts to pass by them.
She wondered how he could condense the past few months to nothing but those dark grey suitcases, content to leave all else behind. If they were hers, the seams would be bursting - with pictures, memories, the sound of her mother singing hymns in the early morning, the dishes that piled up in the sink because their entire family was having dinner together, the laughter of her children, all of them, even the one she was afraid had forgotten how to laugh.
But there they waited, ready to be wheeled out the next morning, everything neatly tucked away (she knew because who else would fold his clothes). Everything he deemed necessary, compartmentalized.
--
He had been out most of the day, running errands and taking the kids on a final shopping trip as each suddenly remembered all the things they just had to have before leaving (It's not the same there Dad, Suhaani had insisted. And a lot more expensive, she added, hoping to appeal to his practical side). On that matter, Nachiket had seemed unperturbed, confident that his assets would be restored before the bills began rolling in.
She had offered to take the day off to help, but he insisted that it would be an unnecessary inconvenience for her and suggested she save her holiday time for a trip to the States instead. The thought should have either thrilled or saddened her, but she found herself unable to envision the next few weeks and months without him, and the idea of stepping off a plane for a short visit was as foreign to her as the land he called home.
Even after dinner he continued to bustle about, checking for his charging cables and his razor for what seemed like the hundredth time. Finally she snapped at him, asking why he was so worried about his razor when he never seemed to use it anyway.
He looked up in surprise and had the nerve to smile at her. "I thought you liked the beard."
"I did," was her only response before entering the washroom to look for the item in question.
When she returned, triumphantly waving it in front of his face, he took it from her hand and pulled her towards him.
"Nachiket," she warned, in no mood for his games.
"Ragini...what else haven't you told me?"
She narrowed her eyes. "I've told you enough these past few days."
At her words he looked sufficiently chastised. "It's been hard...for me too, how close we were to losing it all."
She could feel the tension coiled in his frame and felt guilty for bringing up their relationship when he was in the process of putting his life back together. But a part of Ragini couldn't help but wonder if that life would ever truly include her.
"But it's better now, and I couldn't have done it without you," he said as he gazed at her, and though they weren't the words she wanted to hear from him, she took them anyway, having quickly learned the difference between reverie and reality in these past eighteen years.
And even after all these years she could still get lost in his eyes. And he still knew just how to kiss her so that it left her wanting more, still greeted her parted lips with his eager tongue; the taste of him was still as pleasurable as the first time she had dared to reciprocate his audacity.
She felt her body come alive once more at his touch, his hands boldly measuring the curve of her spine through the satin and then traveling lower still, his mouth swallowing her sighs but then unable to hold back a groan as her hips reflexively arched towards his.
Her own hands had started at the nape of his neck but were soon tugging his shirttails out of his trousers, and only when he dug his fingers into the soft skin of her thighs did she stop to splay them against his broad back, in a futile effort to stop the world from spinning.
It was a short trip to the bed, and as his beard continued to scratch against her neck she bit the delicate arch of his earlobe in retaliation.
She felt him exhale against the hollow of her throat and could only close her eyes as he moved lower to mete out her punishment. Her body hummed in anticipation of his strong hands but instead sensed the rough texture of his tongue, soothing when compared to the nip of his teeth over the same sensitive skin.
Somehow she pulled him back up to her and somehow he knew how to read her incoherent gasps, just like he always had. Her thoughts narrowed to the firm muscle of his biceps under her fingers. The salty taste of his skin. His mouth, meeting hers. When it was over he pulled a blanket over them and they drifted off to sleep.
--
The next morning, she watched them disappear among the throng of travelers, her hand still poised in the air even after she could no longer make out the set of his shoulders moving away from her.
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