What's a soulmate? ~ MaNan

Chapter 12

I cut her off. "Do you know the directions to Mia's friend's house?"

My voice was more distant and cold than I wanted it to me and I watched her gulp from the corner of my eyes as she nodded before inserting the address into the GPS of the car.

An otherwise twenty minute route now showed a little over forty minutes.

Great. I was stuck with her in this car and the awkwardness for the remaining hour. Fuck my life.

Ten minutes of silence later, Nandini spoke up, "Thank you, for doing this."

I didn't reply. I just breathed. In and out. In and out. In and out. Fuck it. "Why didn't you ask him?"

She looked a little surprised, a little wounded and  a little tattered as her head snapped towards me, her eyes undoubtedly holding the question: how did you know?

And then, she looked away.

We didn't talk for the rest of the ride.

~

It was a few minutes past five in the morning when I parked my car outside my daughter's friend's house, wondering how this girl travels to and from school every day. The house was in the outskirts of the town. Rains were heavier, the otherwise perfectly good drainage of the city was becoming ineffective as water began filling the narrow streets and despite the sun being up, thick clouds and thunder still covered the sky.

However, it didn't seem like there was anything wrong inside the house.

"Now what?" I ask Nandini, my voice again colder than I wanted it to be. "We wait outside until somebody wakes up?"

"We drove all the way here just to wait outside?"

I knitted my eyebrows. "You want to go inside and wake them? At 5AM?"

"Obviously." There was no hesitance in her answer.

This woman was mad. "Go ahead then. I'll be here to bail you when those whites call the cops on you."

She glared at me, pouting like she always did, probably growing a little tired of my attitude. "Fine."

And with that, she opened the car and actually galloped outside without the umbrella, jogging towards the wrap around porch of their house.

I just started at her insanity with disbelief. She was mad.

And she drove me mad.

Turning off the engine of my car which was not made to survive such a weather, I f*cking got down behind her, letting the rain and chilled air soak me.

As I stood beside her on the porch, she didn't look at me but her face held the kind of smug smile that said I-knew-you'd-follow. Before either of us could say a single word, the door opened. I could guess Nandini had already rung the bell a million times.

A little shocked Mrs. Johnson stood on the other end, her hair looking like a bird's nest. "Mrs. Malhotra... and Mr. Malhotra... what a surprise. This early in the morning." Her voice was unwelcoming and borderline hostile.

"I'm sorry to barge in, Mrs. Johnson, we have a family emergency because of which we have to leave town. I was hoping I'd pick Mia up." Nandini lied with politeness, almost surprising me.

She was a far cry from the woman I once knew, who wouldn't lie even if she was at gun point.

"Of course." The other woman's smile was forced as she scanned us from head to toe, and how we were dripping rain water. "Why don't you both wait? I'll wake little Mia up."