Chapter 8
8
D P tidied the living room and broke down the empty pizza boxes for recycling, the need to escape battering at him.
“Leave it,” Chaaru said, reaching for the blanket he was folding.
“It’s done.” He fluffed the pillows and hung the blanket to the side the way she liked it. And when he was sure that the sticky feeling of loss from his throat was under control, he looked up.
Her wet hair had dried into a tangled mess and her eyes looked red-rimmed. She looked like how he felt inside—knocked down, winded. Tenderness filled him, urging him to take her in his arms. He tucked his hands into his pant pockets instead. “You okay?”
She gripped her temple, still sniffling. “I didn’t realize he was thinking all these things.”
“You raised him to be a thoughtful man.”
“But I don’t want him to worry over me,” she said with that stubbornness that both awed and frustrated him.
“Remember what you told me when Maggie first said she wanted to go to California and I said no and we got into that big fight?” he said, gentling his tone. “She didn’t talk to me for a month.”
“No,” she said, with a watery smile. “What did I say?”
“That just because I raised her didn’t mean I could curtail who she wants to be. You did everything right by Kaasi. Sooner or later, he was going to wise up to how much you’ve sacrificed for him.” He swallowed, the words he needed to say sticking like thorns in his throat. “On the relationship front, you made your stance clear.”
If only his heart could get the message too…
She nodded, her gaze distant.
He grabbed his keychain and set to working on unhooking one from the bunch. His fingers shook and that rational part of him said he was being unfair, punishing her for knowing her heart. But he had to look out for himself.
It was time to imagine his life without Chaaru.
Finally, he had the damned key off the bunch. Turning around so she didn’t see his actions, he dropped it in the ceramic dish on the coffee table. The damned thing tinkled loudly in the silence.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” he said, cursing himself.
“You dropped something.” She pushed past him and stared at the dish.
“Just the key to your house,” he said, sweat pooling at his neck. God, he couldn’t bear to look at her. “I never returned it.”
Her hands came to her hips. “So? Why are you returning it now?”
He sighed and rubbed his temple. “Why do I need it, Char? You or Kaasi will be here when I come over and it’s an unnecessary headache to keep track of-”
“Unnecessary headache to let a key hang from that monstrous bunch you have?” she said, folding her arms across her midriff with a resolve he knew too well. She wouldn’t let this go until it was all out. But for once, he couldn’t back down either.
“I just…”
“What, DP?”
“I don’t need to be here all the time, invading your privacy. Our lives are too…”
“Too what?”
“Stop saying what in that tone,” he whispered, frustration making his voice low. Forty years old and he still hated confrontation.
“Yes, well,” Chaaru said, her mouth wobbling, “apparently everyone important in my life has things they’ve been stewing over. You know me. I’d rather just have it all out in the open.”
“I just think our lives don’t have to be so…linked,” DP said, finally meeting her eyes. “You know what they say.”
Her eyes widened with shock, her chin rearing down as if he’d yelled the words at her. “What? What do they say?”
“Familiarity breeds contempt,” he said, blurting the first thing that came to his mind.
She flinched, her shoulders bowing just a little. And he hated himself for hurting her like this.
“So you find me contemptuous?” Even as she tried to hide it beneath bluster, a whisper-thin crack emerged in her voice. “Because you found me cuffed to the bed in my lingerie at some rando’s apartment?”
“Jesus, no,” he said, covering his face with his hands. “You know I’m the last man who will shame you for how you live your life. You know that, Char,” he said, desperate to escape. But he’d begun this, and she would see it through until there was no way back to normalcy for them.
“Then what is it? First Kaasi and now you…” Her breath blew out in a long, ragged pant. “I’m scared,” she said, rubbing a finger over her brow. His brave, hearty lioness rendered small. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
“Let it go, Char. Just this one time. Leave it.”
She walked around the coffee table to him, such earnestness in her eyes that all he wanted was to pull her to him and never let go. Raising her hand to his face, she rubbed her knuckles over his jaw, then let go with a shuddering breath. “It’s about pulling you away from the date, right? DP, you have every right to be angry. Rip into me and I’ll take it.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Nothing is a big deal with you,” she said. Her voice rose and fell on a catch. When she spoke next, it was a solemn whisper. “Except here you are, breaking up our friendship and quoting shitty proverbs.”
She fell back onto the coffee table as if her legs had given out. When he reached out to catch her, she leaned away. The growl of thunder outside and the pounding rain underlined the fracture he’d willingly started.
“I’m not breaking up our friendship,” he said, his own voice cracking. It felt like there was a crack through everything now. Him, her and… them . “I don’t think I can, even if I wanted to.”
She paled, eyes flaring with pain. And he realized it was the worst thing he could’ve said.
“Clearly, you’ve given this some thought,” she said, getting to her feet. “But you know what? I’m not giving you up so easily.”
Her words rooted him to the spot. It was exactly what he wanted to hear but only a hollow imitation of the real ones.
“I’m going to fix this,” she said, throwing her rain jacket on over her robe haphazardly. With her hair wild and dried tears drawing lines over her cheeks, she looked like some kind of enraged Goddess. Car keys and phone in hand, she muttered, “I have her address somewhere here.”
That got DP moving and before he realized it, he was snatching the phone and keys from her.
She rushed at him, trying to grab them, all fury and fresh tears. His mouth dried as he stared at her helplessly, floored even then by her fierce beauty.
The slip and slide of her body, her tits against his chest, was pure torment. Desire twisted through him like a coil, and he realized with an out-of-body kind of horror that he might be too late at this puny attempt to save his sanity.
She pulled back with a curse, her chest rising and falling. “Give them back. You’re acting like a child.”
“Me?” he said, holding them above his head. “You’re insisting on going to Pooja’s house at eleven thirty in the night. What the hell do you think she’s going to assume?”
A flicker of hesitation cut through her fury. “I already called her and left a couple of voicemails and texts.”
“What? When?”
“After my shower.” Her cheeks reddened, and he realized she’d done it because she’d felt bad about jerking off to him. “I want to explain to her, beg her if that’s what it takes. Clearly, she’s important enough that you’re...I will fix it.”
“There’s no fixing this. Not the way you think,” he said, his mind made up.
It wasn’t how he’d wanted to admit the biggest truth of his life but then when had anything involving her gone to plan? He’d fallen in love with her at their first meeting nearly twenty years ago, only to discover that she was engaged to one of his friends.
He threw the keys and phone down on the coffee table. “Pooja doesn’t want to go out with me anymore. Not unless I get my head screwed on straight, not unless…” he said, dropping to the couch and rubbing the heels of his palms over his eyes.
“Screw your head straight on?” Chaaru mumbled, squeezing herself between his legs and coffee table. “DP, you’re the most sensible, grounded man in the entire world. What the hell does she mean?”
DP looked up, his heart hammering in his chest so loudly that it should be a soundtrack. His stomach coiled and unraveled in painful pulses as if the rope he’d tied himself to had slackened. “She thinks I’ve got someone else in my head.” His mouth dried as he struggled to hold her gaze, and his palms turned clammy. “She’s not wrong.”
Chaaru leaned back as if to get a better look at him. “Another woman? But that’s…”
He simply stared back at her.
Slowly, it dawned on her. Her eyes searched his, breath escaping her lips in shaky pants. “Just because you answered my call and cut the date short? That’s bullshit.”
He kept his gaze on her, willing her to acknowledge the truth in his. “She said you always come first in my life and that it’s not fair.”
Something almost feral awakened in her light brown eyes, sending a sharp, near-painful spike of hope through him. “That’s not like Pooja.” Her words were a whisper, as if to not disturb the giant stomping elephant around them. “Didn’t you explain we’re just friends and that you feel sorry for me-”
“I don’t feel sorry for you and she’s right, okay?” His voice rose, thundering in the surrounding quiet. “My God! Why is it so fucking hard for you to understand that you’re in my head? You’re there, okay? All the time.”
The fear of losing her was a buzzing beehive in his throat. But now that he could see how pathetic he’d become in clinging to the margins of her life…he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t swallow it all back down. And once the words came, they poured out. “Pooja sees that I’m into you or attracted to you or whatever the hell people call it these days, okay?”
“But...” she said, grabbing his hands. And then jerked away, as if burned. As if reality had suddenly shifted into some extra dimension, with truth underlying everything between them now.
Turning away, he grabbed his umbrella, just to give his hands something to hold onto, an icy fist in the pit of his stomach. At the door, he stilled, his back to her. “All I wanted was some distance so that it doesn’t ruin our relationship, so that you’re…not in my head so much. I’m so tired of pretending like…”
“Stop, DP. Please.”
That she couldn’t even bear to hear his admission hit him like a body blow. “Okay,” he said automatically, every cell in him programmed to care for her. Even as he wanted to drive away to some far-off place.
He wanted a shred of happiness with a partner who wanted the same things as he did. It wasn’t too much to ask, he reassured himself. But that would never be possible with Chaaru around. Maybe moving away was the only choice left.
He turned the handle when she said, “I can’t, DP.” Tears croaked the words, but they still landed, crystal-sharp spikes on his soft heart. “We can’t go there. Ever. It’s not a line I’m willing to cross. If something went wrong, and it usually does with me, I…” she left the sentence hanging.
He thumped his forehead against the bright yellow door.
The color of happiness, she’d said years ago, dragging him through the paint store for hours, looking for the exact shade.
“I can’t…” she stammered, nearly choking on the words.
He hadn’t hoped for a different answer, rationally. But it seemed there was a tiny, fragile bud of hope. Crushed, it nearly took him out at his knees.
“I know, sweetheart,” he said, without turning. “And I never meant to put the burden of this on you. Or to make you feel as if you owe me a decision.”
She whispered, “I’m so sorry, DP,” over and over.
Even now, as he felt ragged and used up, he wanted to go to her. He wanted to hold her and comfort her and tell her she had ruined nothing. That he would always love her and…
Hands shaking, he opened the main door and stepped out into the rainy night. The chilly wind and prickling raindrops that drenched him instantly had nothing on how cold he already felt inside.