Chapter 40 #3
“What?”
“This intimacy with you,” she opened her eyes. “Knowing you, experiencing you, being the only woman who gets to…”
Her phone buzzed. She leaned forward to slide it closer, trying to see the caller ID when Samar’s nostrils flared over her hair.
KAHL Calling…
“Why is he calling you so late at night?”
“He must be in Srinagar.”
“But why this late?”
“We will find out.” She deadpanned, pressing her thumb onto the swipe button when he wrapped his fingers around her wrist — “On speaker.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“Speaker.”
“No.” She swiped and plastered her phone to her ear, glaring at him. “Hey, Khalil.”
“Hey, Am… What’s up?”
She glanced at herself, freshly pleasured and in between the thighs of the man she loved, on a dusty floor of his rented flat in Srinagar.
“Nothing much, tell me.”
“I am in your city and done with my work. Wanna catch up?”
“As I guessed.” She chuckled. The fist in her hair tightened. That’s when she realised it. He had wound her hair around his fist. The caveman!
“All other places would be closed but they have this 24-hour bar in my hotel that serves great margaritas. Want to meet there?”
“Oh, no, Khalil, I am done for the day.”
“Is this because of the breakup?”
She glanced at the profile of Samar’s dark jaw in her field of vision. “Umm…”
“It’s been a year, Am. We can still meet as friends, can’t we?”
“Of course! This isn’t the first time we broke up…” Her head was pulled around and Samar’s mouth stamped over hers before leaving it in a millisecond. Amaal pinned his neck back with her free hand, fuming.
“Sorry, I missed the last part.” Khalil raised his voice.
“Network issue… I said it’s not because of anything but I am just not up for it. Maybe another time.”
He huffed. “Cool, another time. Now that you are the mighty Press Secretary to CM Kaul, you don’t even meet me for work anymore.”
“I did meet you for work in Jammu.”
“With eight other editors in the room.”
“That was still meeting.”
“Yeah but I want to meet one on one!”
“Now I think you are tipsy or tired. Go sleep, Khalil.”
He yawned — “Yeah, maybe I will. See you, Am.”
“Bye.”
Samar’s hand grabbed hers from his neck and pinned it down to her chest — “He is drunk-dialling you.”
“No.” She got her hand free. “He is tired.”
“Not the way to call you.”
“He is a friend and an ex two times over…”
“Quiet.” Samar put his finger on her lips, his eyes fire. “He is nobody.”
“What about all the women you have been with?!”
His finger slipped from her mouth. His expression went hard, then blank, then unyielding.
“You are already throwing it in my face…” he began to turn his head. She grabbed his head and turned it back — “No! I am reminding you that we both have history.”
“And mine does not call me in the middle of the night!”
Amaal quietened. He had a point.
“Fine,” she nodded. “He is nobody where my heart is concerned. But he is still a valued media contact and an old friend. And you will not dictate that part of my life.”
“As long as you show him his limit, and he doesn’t cross it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but nodded.
Amaal leaned her head back on his chest, splaying her palm on the warm skin of his chest beneath his neck.
She set her phone on the top of his knee, breathing the peace in after their fight.
It wasn’t their first fight, not as a couple, and definitely not as acquaintances of six years.
It wouldn’t be their last. But even the aftermath of this fight with him felt peaceful.
His hand came to cup hers over her phone. He patted it. “Should have forgotten it at Rajbagh,” he muttered.
Amaal chuckled, relenting her mobile into his hand as he set it on the floor and brought his hand back up to clasp with hers.
“Let’s talk about something other than the world, work or… distasteful things,” she said.
“Hmm.”
“What are you outside of your work, Samar?”
“You are asking the wrong person.”
“Meaning?”
“I am my work.”
“And what is your work? Can you define it?”
“Doctor, KDP President, karyakarta who opens and closes the office nowadays, emasculated donor wooer.”
“And if it all goes away tomorrow, then?”
“It almost did go away not very long ago.” He paused. “I couldn’t handle it well.”
“Hmm,” she turned her eyes up and let her head fall back, getting a more comfortable view of his face. His jaw tilted down to press into her forehead. That gesture felt so affectionate.
“What about me?” She asked.
“You call yourself work?” He smirked.
“What do you call me?”
“Amaal.”
Her name from his mouth, for the first time, felt like an endearment.
“You are not planning to do straight talking tonight then, fine.” She rolled her eyes.
“I’ll shut up. We are meeting after two months and you what?
Just bring me to your new house and sit here giving one-word answers and not even airing my conversation starters.
What will we do in regular life when everything is said and done?
Just sit silently like this looking at each other… ?”
Her mouth was taken with a vengeance. She hit his shoulder, making it vibrate. Samar pulled back.
“I have never seen somebody talk so much after saying they will shut up.”
“Because you only live in your own company and obviously that company is quiet. Hmm? Hmm. Hmm hmm? Hmm.”
His body warmed up, vibrating louder beneath hers. And Amaal found herself chuckling too. He didn’t laugh often, but when he did, silently like this, it was infectious.
“You are enough of conversation between the two of us.” He gripped her chin and shook. “We could easily spend a lifetime on your side of conversations.” Samar’s eyes softened.
“Where is this going, Samar?”
“This as in?”
“This as in this.” She ran her knuckles up and down his kurta buttons.
“It’s been five months and we haven’t been able to meet even five times.
Today, it felt like starting all over again between us even though we met like we’ve been meeting every day…
I am not complaining. But long distance has to have an end date, no? ”
He stared at her.
“There should be a day of meeting finally for which we go through all this.” Amaal croaked. “One day, at the end, that we believe in.”
His hand smoothed the hair off her face and cupped her cheek. “What do you want?”
“I am not demanding. I just want to know what is the plan for you.”
“Plan…” he looked away, shaking his head.
“Plan was to move away from Kashmir eventually. Establish Himachal Development Party, hold my own in Jammu. After years, I am reclaiming something I had let go under Atharva’s shadow.
My own voice. I may not be great at things, but I am me.
I have a way of doing things and I would like to keep doing that until I see if I can succeed on my own.
It is now more about putting something… inside me to rest. Grow up and face the world without asking for comfort of places that were never mine in the first place. ”
Amaal cupped his neck. His eyes came to her.
“Do I fit there somewhere?”
He smiled. “You have fitted there where I never knew any place existed.”
“But I want to make a home here,” she whispered, looking around them, expecting this to be a roadblock in their plans. Srinagar had always been the endgame.
“Can there be two homes?” He asked, and jumped the car over the roadblock even before she could realise it.
She looked up and smiled, then nodded.
“Some more months,” he wrapped his arms around her, laying his jaw on her head. “Let us get through these primary membership drives and establish grassroots.”
She nodded.
“This long distance is meant to end, one way or another.”
“There is no another where we are concerned now!” She shot back. And heard another rare vibration of his laughter.