Rati sits on the bed, looking at the laptop screen blankly. Surprisingly, it is only today that her boss has no work for her. The fact that it’s a weekend doesn’t even matter. He always has her on the call. But no.
Not today. Today the blurry gaze that has been the consequence of welled up eyes just stare at the object until new tears drops form in her eyes and rolls down her cheeks. She harshly wipes at them.
She can’t believe herself.
Why is she so weak? So emotionally vulnerable?
There are so many people who are suffering in reality. What is she crying for?
For the fact that Shaurya’s friends weren’t as good as Shaurya? Or is it because of the girl who was eyeing him throughout the meeting, the other friend, that Jatin had even tried to introduce the two to each other. Or is it because of what that guy had said about her, that she is using Shaurya. At that moment she had been more hurt on Shaurya’s behalf. He worried so much about her and at the end he had to listen to those words.
And maybe, out of all the reasons, it is because of that. Shaurya worries so much about her, cares so much for her, and yet, yet he couldn’t admit to their relationship out loud.
Wasn’t she his soon to be wife? Or was he…
Her gaze instantly falls on the ring adorning her thumb at the thought that she grazes gently.
No, it’s not that. It could never be that. This ring tells her this much.
Whatever it is, at this point she just feels stupid. And afraid.
She has already cried in front of him twice. Twice. And they have only met a handful of times.
She wouldn’t even blame him if he wouldn’t want a cry baby for a wife.
A fresh wave of tears threatens to fall down at the thought that she instantly suppresses with a loud exhale. God, she really needs to grow up.
Rati is woken out of the self-pitying haze by a knock on the door.
Though the lump in her throat doesn’t let her speak for a few seconds.
“M-Ma, can we talk later?”
Rati says and it is Shaurya who hears it from the other side of the door, the voice thick with emotion.
Shaurya doesn’t knock again instead just stands in front of the door with both his palms on it. Giving himself a minute to gather all the courage in the world.
“It’s me.” He mumbles in his mouth, so low that even he has to strain his ears to hear himself, but by some miracle the girl inside does. The next thing he knows, the door is suddenly opening resulting him in losing his balance slightly. Though the slight imbalance has him tripping on his feet, his body colliding with the person opposite him, and the said person losing the balance too.
He is quick to change their positions so that it is him who takes the fall first.
Surprisingly the impact never comes, at least not to the back of his head.
“Ah,” the girl hisses lightly before slowly taking her hand out from below his head, the same hand that shielded him just a second ago.
“Sh-Shaurya, are you ok?” she asks worriedly, still on top of him, too busy worrying for him and not herself or the position that they are in. Shaurya, on the other hand has his gaze fixed at the girl’s face, his mind continuously reminding him that she chose to get hurt in his stead. The same girl whose eyes glitter with a melancholic sheen that no doubt is because of him.
And yet it is her asking about his well-being and not the other way around.
This time when his hand threatens to do something his mind doesn’t permit, Shaurya lets it.
Her hair that is tied into a messy braid hangs by her neck while a few tresses escape and frames her face. The ends land directly on his cheek, the slight flowery smell of the shampoo making him swoon.
He gently touches the same tresses and takes them back to their destination, behind her ear, his fingers grazing her cheek the entire time. Shaurya can see the sad sheen in her eyes getting replaced with something else. Something that makes her avert her gaze from him.
He lets her.
He’s here to apologise, not to tease her.
He stretches his leg gently, picking up his body from the ground. The girl gets the message and quickly rolls off him, not making any eye contact.
He stands up and so does she.
“Are you ok?” he asks then, gently, looking at the hand she is cradling in the other. She drops it when she sees his gaze stuck on it, and nods, smiling.
It’s forced smile, one that might have taken so much strength to form, just to hide her pain from him, both physical and emotional. Shaurya doesn’t want it to be like that.
It’s with a silent sigh that he takes a seat on the edge of her bed and has to remind her to sit down in her own room.
With every step she takes towards the bed, he sees the solemness return to her face.
“Rati…” Shaurya begins when the girl is sat but she doesn’t let him continue.
“Shaurya, what are you doing here? We just met a while ago.”
Yes, and he ruined it.
“You should get home; your mother would be worrying –”
“She knows.” He says, interrupting the girl. “She knows that I am with you.”
“Oh.” Rati exclaims, eyes slightly wide before they go back to normal.
“She knows that I am with the girl who makes me the happiest but whom I failed to make happy today.” He says then, lines of distress marking his forehead while the girl eyes yet again widen.
She shakes her head. “N-No, Shaurya… it’s – it’s not –”
“I know it is. And I know I have hurt you. But please know, it was never my intention. My only intent was to take you out, pamper you and make you smile. I wanted to show you what our future may look like together.” He confesses, gaze downcast and then sighs bitterly.
“But unfortunately, all I did was make you sad. This is definitely not the future that I have been planning for us.” He says his eyes landing on the back of her left hand. The knuckles have turned red.
“I am sorry.” He says glancing at the hand, voice not more than a murmur, throat drying from containing in his emotions. “I’m so sorry, Rati.” He says and finally looks up.
It does nothing to help his strained emotions when he sees the girl looking at him with welled up eyes, lips wobbling.
He panics. “Rati –”
He freezes.
His body stops working and so does his mind. Everything goes blank. All because ethe girl that sits in front of him, the same girl that he saddened today, the same girl that he wants to make his wife, that same girl has her arms thrown around his neck, face pushed into his shoulder.
Her frame shakes as she sobs, her fingers unintentionally threading through the hair on his neck.
The action as him coming back to reality.
It’s with all the time in the world that he wraps his arms around her though once he does, the hold is snug, not wanting to let go of her, not until her sobs have subsided.
“R-Rati… baby, please don’t cry.” He doesn’t notice the pet name that slips off his tongue but just want to calm down the girl who is bawling like a baby.
This time it is her turn to freeze. But she doesn’t pull away.
Shaurya doesn’t want to let go.
He can feel her inhaling in a deep breath and once she does, she lets it out in her words.
“Sh-Shaurya?”
“Yes, love.”
“Can I share something with you?” she asks with all the hesitance in her voice.
He nods immediately. “Yes, baby, anything you want.”
Rati tries to pull back, making Shaurya lose his hold on her with a heavy heart. But then she seems to decide against it, closing the distance between them once again.
Shaurya is more than happy to comply and holds her back.
“I… I didn’t like the way the girl looked at you or – or the way your friend talked to you. You are so considerate to me, you think about me and care about me, it’s so unfair, and – and unreasonable and nonsensical… whatever he said to you and how he said it. I hated it. But I promise he can’t be more farther than the truth, not about you or about me.” She says and exhales a shaky breath, one that hits the side of his neck, making a shudder run down his spine.
A new wave of anger surges in his blood knowing that Rati is still thinking about that asshole’s words, that she is trying to give an explanation to him. Him.
He’s equally angry on that girl. Hadn’t he made obvious enough that he was with someone?
Though he knows that neither this anger can come in handy now, nor Rati is telling the entire truth. The tears in her eyes tell a longer story.
“I –”
She says then with another courageous breath, and this time when she pulls away she doesn’t change her mind.
“I’m sorry.” She says then, gaze averted and cheeks red, probably realising only now that she had hugged him.
Shaurya shakes his head. “Don’t be, Rati. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” He says, hesitantly manoeuvring his hand so that now it is resting on top of hers.
He grazes the red knuckles gently.
“We’re soon going to get married. I – I don’t mind.”
The answers seems to have shaken Rati.
She looks at him, but this time her gaze is not gentle. It’s hurt. Not filled with tears but a tinge of… betrayal?
“Why didn’t you –” she says and stops, grabbing the bedsheet from her good hand and holding it into a fist.
She’s trying to suppress her emotions, probably her anger. Shaurya doesn’t let her do that anymore.
He keeps his hand on hers, the one fisting the bedsheet and gently uncurls her fingers from it. She looks at him with slightly widened eyes, gulping thickly.
“Don’t do it. Don’t suppress your emotions. If you are angry on me, on something I did then tell me. Don’t hide it from me. You’re going to be my wife. I don’t want my wife to hide her emotions from me.”
He knows he has hit the nail. He knows it from the way her breathing instantly gets uneven at the comment.
She averts her gaze but has a thorough frown between her temples.
“Why didn’t you say it then?” she asks, voice a mixture of hurt and anger.
Shaurya feels ecstatic to hear those emotions seeping into her voice, finally not cowering from him, but feels a jab in his heart when he realises that he has actually done something to hurt and anger her.
What didn’t he say when?
Rati answers his thought, her voice yet again lowering. “Wh-When we had seen your friends… why... why didn’t you tell them that? That I am your …”
She leaves it at that.
And Shaurya gets that he can be incredibly dumb sometimes, but this is not one of those times because this is the dumbest, he has ever been. He understands now what he didn’t say.
That “This is Rati. She is my soon to be wife.”
He takes back his words. He was dumb and will always be dumb.
He had thought of almost every relationship label in his mind, anything to categorise them into, but he couldn’t think of such a simple thing. And to know that Rati had been upset because of that, because he didn’t introduce her as his soon to be wife; that she cares about their relationship so much, and not because he had said too much, not because she didn’t want him to say, “she is with me”. She in fact wanted more.
All these thoughts have a number of feelings unfurling in Shaurya’s chest all at once. He feels sad and angry at his dumb self, but he also feels a joy that is exclusive to his time spent with Rati., this time just double or even a hundred times more than usual.
He doesn’t think much before he gets down on his knees before the girl who gasps at the sudden action.