Poles Apart

Chapter Twenty-One

When Arjun leans into me with a soft sigh, my eyes close on reflex. Instead of going for my lips, like I thought or hoped for, he presses his lips against my forehead.

My eyes fly open at the gesture. I don't know if Arjun knows or understands, but a kiss on the forehead means so much more than a full-blown makeout session, even. A kiss on the forehead is promising and comforting. I don't know a whole lot about Arjun, but his actions make me want to trust him; it makes me scared that a part of me already believes in him; it frightens me to think I was beginning to trust someone I didn't know.

~.~.~.~.~

I look at Arjun from the corner of my eye to see him looking at with a smirk. "Stop looking at me like that!" I whine, remembering how he had been at it for the entirety of the evening.

Arjun chuckles. "Like what?"

"You've been looking at me like that for the whole evening! As if I hadn't been feeling awkward enough, you add to it--"

I see him raise his eyebrows in surprise, his mouth agape as he tries to reason, but I cut him off. "--Shut up. You know you've been doing it, too!"

He laughs. "It was fun," he tells me.

Yes, to him, it was. He was having a mighty lot of fun as I sat in the restaurant, not knowing what to say.

He knew I was making it hard on myself and added to it. Nahi chahiye, this type of husband. [(Hindi) Nahi chahiye-- I don't want]

"Go on, have more and more fun. You're always teasing me!" I whine shamelessly, extending a hand to hit his arm.

He winces when I hit his arm, quite dramatically. "You know I could call this domestic violence if you did the same after we got married?"

"You know what? Call it whatever you want," I tell him, looking away from him as I lean on the window. The streets were relatively empty, considering it was past ten in the night. Arjun had such fun annoying the wits out of me he didn't want to leave until the restaurant until they kicked us out. But the restaurant wouldn't kick us out, it was a part of Raghu Mama's hotel chain, so I had to drag Arjun out of there.

Call him cute as you may, you have to agree he's an annoying jackarse. I look out of the window pout-faced as Arjun veers his Aston Martin along the Hyderabad roads.

"You keep making fun of my accent and calling me a British NRI, but have no problem driving a British car," I mutter, just loud enough for him to hear.

He chuckles. "What can I say? I have an affection for the British."

"I'm not British," I protest, turning to look at him with my grumpy face.

"I know you're not, Janaki," he says. One more annoying thing about Arjun? He insists on calling me Janaki, knowing that it annoys me. I have too many things that annoy me.

I let his words sink in. When they do, I narrow my eyes at his cheeky face. "What do you mean?" I demand in a low, threatening tone.

"I mean I like British things," he tells me coolly. He knows how to push my buttons, and I know how to succumb to all of his annoying tactics!

"Not that, what do you mean you know I'm not British?" I reinstate, knowing that he already knows.

"Are you British?" he asks, to prove his point. When I don't respond, he takes my silence as an answer and answers his question by himself. "That's what I said, too. I know you're not British."

"Do you know how much of an arse you're being?" I ask him angrily, restraining myself from wringing his neck.

"No," he chuckles. "You've only told me a hundred times in three hours. Can you please remind me?"