All Strings Attached

Chapter Nineteen

"I don't think it's cool to sleep around," I let her know. "And you weren't sleeping around. People used to be married at fifteen and sixteen and have sixteen kids by the time they turned thirty. Now, we get married whenever, but the body's natural processes continue to happen, don't they?"

"The problem isn't that I have sexual urges, Dhushyanth," she murmurs, sighing as she settles into me. "It's that my mother slut-shamed me. After everything I've done and everything I've been, she undid me— twenty-seven years of my life amounted to the possibility of tarnishing my father's reputation because I am a slut, in her opinion—"

"That's not true, Sita," I attempt to make her understand that her mother was simply being protective, but she cuts me off.

"I don't want you defending my parents," she says sternly.

"Okay," I agree, "but you need to understand that they come from a different time—"

"You're defending them!" She says, pushing my face away. "I just told you not to."

"This isn't about them," I tell her as she holds her palm against my cheek, keeping me turned away from her. "I'm not defending them— I'm just saying that they're simply not capable of accepting some things."

"You never stop talking," she accuses, retracting her hand.

I chuckle, accepting it. No one's ever complained of that before.

"Sorry," I apologise. "I won't talk anymore."

"No," she mumbles, in a mildly unsettling way. "I'd rather you talked. The house was so..." she stretches trying to find the right word— "quiet without you. It wasn't nice."

My lips stretch into a smile that feels almost unfamiliar, as if I've never smiled like it. "I always knew you had secret feelings for me," I tease. "Couldn't stay apart for a week, could you?"

"It's cause you're constantly yapping," she says. "Not because of some secret feelings."

"Sure," I say, expressing my lack of conviction.

The early summer breeze causes the curtains to ruffle every now and then as the time for sun set nears. This summer in Kurnool is going to be something; hot, difficult, loud, over-stimulating.

Sita remains unmoving from my side, causing me to peer down at her, to make sure she's okay.

"Dhushyanth," she addresses me, softly, her eyes trained on a hair tie that she twists around her fingers, and undoes, continuously, maybe a nervous tick.

"Hm?" I engage her, trying to soothe her nerves as I rub circles onto her arm.

~.~.~.~.~

Sita

I let Dhushyanth's touch comfort me, almost melting into his side as I savour human contact.

"I'm used to figuring things out for myself," I tell him, "I've done it all my life."

He simply listens as I continue to speak, not interrupting, not asking questions.

"So, naturally, it's hard for me to open up to people," I tell him. "And I tend to push people away because I've never had the support that I needed, and I don't trust anyone to stick around for long enough to be there for me."

Dhushyanth pulls me closer to himself, and kisses my hair, soundlessly, in a way that makes me feel it was almost instinctive.

I look up at him, only to see him already looking at me. "I'm not telling you this to justify all of my tantrums so far," I clarify, "I was wrong to put you on the receiving end of all of that. I am sorry for the way I acted."