What's a soulmate? ~ MaNan

Chapter 12

A part of my heart swelled knowing that she still thought of me in a time like this, not Aryamman. Whoever that man is to Nandini, he would never take my place in Mia's life.

I will always be Mia's father.

"Manik, I have lived without her before! Stop dismissing my worry as hormones." Nandini's voice suddenly got sharper.

"Okay. Okay. Um. I'll come. I'll come to your place and then I'll drive you to Mia's friends house and we can check on our daughter, okay?"

"You'll drive to me at this time?" She sounded surprised. "In all that rain?"

"You need me," I answered whilst picking up my car keys from between the broken bottle glass and getting up to go up and wash the alcohol from my breath and take a quick shower to look more presentable. "Of course I'll be there for you."

"One more thing.." Nandini added, sounding hesitant.

"Hm?"

"I'm not at my place..."

I felt my heart stop. For a whole moment, I paused. I stopped breathing. I stopped walking. I stopped listening to the frantic rustling of the leaves outside of feeling the cold air settle on my bare skin and give me goosebumps or cringing from the stench of alcohol in my breath. I stopped watching the world around me, and if there was any life left inside my soul, for that moment, it felt like I stopped living.

And then, I breathed indifferently. "Text me his address." Without giving her the change to reply, I disconnected.

~

The clock was a quarter passed four in the morning when I impatiently tapped my fingernails across the steering wheel of my tesla. I watched nonchalantly as thunder and lightning boomed overhead and the rain poured loudly as if planning to sink the city in one night.

I stood outside 11th Broadway Apartments, just outside the gate of the address my estranged wife texted me.

I loved Nandini too much, right since the day I met her. It wasn't love at first sight, it was love at familiarity. At meeting someone again and again and again till your heart recognises them as home. And I loved her strangely, almost in a way they only write about in books. And that was always the problem. If she wanted to dance, I would book the entire ball room for her. If she wanted to cook, I would let her burn down my kitchen. If she wanted to read, I'd open myself to her as a free book. I loved her enough to give her the power to write my ruins.

And in the end, I broke her heart.

It's more often that way than not. You don't hurt people you hate. You only hurt people you love.

Hurt is the cost of love. You always feel it, sooner or later.

I was still lost in my thoughts when the door to the passenger seat opened and Nandini hopped in after closing her umbrella, her short hair dripping water and her teeth clattered from the cold as she shut the door behind her.

I didn't look at her. I didn't want to meet her eye.

I felt hot after the burning shower I had taken, but I know she was cold. Sighing, I switched off the AC and switched on the heater instead.

Love was strange.

It was getting hurt by a person and then giving them more power to hurt you, over and over again.

She was in the same clothes as I had seen her in that café. She was with him.

"This place.. it's..."