Never Ever ✔️

chapter 41

Reet avoided Varun all week. She didn’t return his calls.

Didn’t respond to his messages. Didn’t reach out at all. If he had done the same to her, she would have hunted him down and sliced off his fingers. She wouldn’t have let him get away with it, and she knew eventually he would come looking for her. But by then he would realize what she was trying to tell him, and she wouldn’t have to say the words.

She was ashamed of her cowardice. She cursed herself and called herself ugly names in Punjabi ,Hindi and English. But she didn’t know what to do. At times, she would find herself lost in daydreams of wedding bells and cohabitation, only to shudder and cross herself for thinking it could work.

And if it couldn’t work, she wouldn’t risk it. She needed to find her way back to the way it was before, to the RI that Varun loved but didn’t make love to, to the RI that he needed, but didn’t need too much. She wanted to be the RI that would grow old beside him, platonic and persistent, the kind of friend he never outgrew.

He caught her between appointments at lunchtime on Friday, walking up to the counter at Niyasa, terse and tight-lipped, his timing impeccable.

Grim face notwithstanding, he looked good. His pale blue dress shirt was tucked into fitted grey slacks, and he’d rolled the sleeves to his elbows and pulled off his tie. The color lightened his blue-black eyes and contrasted with his dark hair.

The counter separated them, but she could smell him, clean and warm, like pine cones and peppermints—and her thoughts tiptoed back to the way he kissed and the way he felt and the way he made her feel, even when she was afraid. Remorse for avoiding him grew in her chest and climbed in her throat.

“Hey,” she said weakly.

“Hey.” He didn’t smile, but he didn’t scold. Not yet.

“I have an appointment at one o’clock. I don’t have much time,” she said.

“I’m your appointment.”
Reet scowled down at the ledger, looking for his name.

“We can talk in the back, or we can talk with me in your chair, but we’re going to talk, RI,” he murmured.

“Your name isn’t on the schedule,” she argued, still evading him.

“I was afraid if I used my name, I’d be pawned off to another stylist, and you wouldn’t be here.” She deserved that, but she shot him a glare anyway.

He regarded her patiently. “Are we going to do this here?”

“Let’s go in the back,” she relented, the knot factory in her stomach going into overdrive. She didn’t want to talk to him on the open floor with ten stylists and their clients pretending they we weren’t listening in.

He followed her at a comfortable distance, but she could feel his eyes on her back and his mouth in her memory, and she wondered if she could kiss him once more before she told him they should never kiss again.

But when they walked into the employee changing room, he didn’t crowd her or try to take her in his arms. He sat down on the long bench and met her gaze.

Reet didn’t sit. She was too unnerved. And disappointed.

“Do I need to find someone else to watch Gia on Mondays?” Varun asked.
His voice was level and kind, and Reet imagined it was the voice he used with media, never getting ruffled, never losing his cool. She knew reporters yelled and screamed sometimes. She knew they cried, and she could picture Varun sitting with them, his face compassionate, his hands folded, looking at them the way he was looking at her.