Chapter 9
9
C haaru sank into the rectangular tub and gasped as the luxurious warmth of the thick, mineral-rich mud enveloped her. She groaned at the pleasant warmth soothing her sore muscles after a long week. The same sounds came from Mona sliding into her own tub.
Slowly, Chaaru leaned back against the edge of the bath, the cool stone beneath providing a firm foundation when all she wanted was to close her eyes and float outside of her own body.
The texture of the mud was silky smooth with a velvety consistency that glided into every divot and nook as she settled deeper. A tactile overload she didn’t need with DP featuring in her X-rated dreams every night now. Which usually ended with her hand sneaking down between her thighs to assuage the ache.
Even when she got herself off—helped by her trusty vibrator, the aftermath was a hollow loneliness. Two weeks of this silence between her and DP, if it could be called that, and the life she’d so painstakingly crafted suddenly felt shallow. Even the rift with her family hadn’t hurt this much.
She missed him checking on her with perfectly punctuated texts, dropping in for dinner because TJ made another horrific-tasting protein shake, seeing him puttering around the house fixing this and that.
God, she just missed him.
Matching her morose mood, November rain pattered against the windows. The atmosphere inside the spa was cozy and inviting, thick, frosted glass diffusing light to create a soft, ethereal glow. Potted ferns and cascading vines added a touch of natural elegance.
“So…what’s up between you and DP?” Mona asked after a while. The mud had taken on a tacky consistency, forming a thin layer that tightened across her skin.
Chaaru huffed without turning. A part of her wanted Mona to drop the topic. Another confused part wanted to bawl until the mud washed away her heartache.
The next thirty years stretched out endlessly in front of her, with her chasing fragile, foolish men who couldn’t give her what she needed. The very freedom she had relished lacked anything deep and real.
No doubt Mona had noticed their stilted greetings to each other at Laura and Leo’s housewarming.
DP had barely looked at her. Avoided standing near her. When he’d finally made eye contact with her during the charades game...it had been like looking at the sun directly, blinding and intense.
How had she lost him when she wanted to avoid exactly that? And what was it he wanted from her? A fling? An affair?
“I know you’re awake, Char,” Mona said, her words muffled, thanks to the boozy brunch they’d already partaken in. “You better sort this out now before you two bring this… awkward energy to my anniversary celebration. It’s in a week.”
“We had a…fight,” Chaaru said, knowing she needed to talk it out. Suddenly, a week in Cancun with DP around sounded like a special kind of torment.
“What kind of fight?” Mona said.
Chaaru licked her parched lips. The taste of clay and something else she couldn’t pinpoint drifted on her tongue. Followed by a crusty flake that fell into her mouth that she absently chewed on before spitting it out. God, she’d probably just swallowed the dirt off her own body.
“A friendship breakup, I think.”
Mona sat up. Her eyes widened, managing to look alarmed in a face that was covered in brownish gray drying goo. “No! This is you and DP. You two are…” Mona frowned. Thick cracks appeared on her smooth forehead. “You’re stronger than the rest of us who’ve made vows to each other.”
“But we didn’t. Make vows, I mean…” Chaaru said, her best friend’s words hitting a tender spot. Not just tender, but raw. She felt turned inside out. Because vows meant nothing to her and that kind of relationship had no place in her life. Right? “We’re not a couple. So, when things go…sideways, the relationship falls apart.”
“That’s not true, Char. You adore DP and he worships the ground you walk on. No way you two are done.”
“He worships the ground I walk on?” Chaaru sat up, fissure lines appearing all over her skin like a major earthquake. There might as well be a million fissures in her heart. “You’re the queen of grand declarations, but that’s a bit much, no?”
“No,” Mona said without hesitation. She turned towards Chaaru, sloshing around in the mud. “I don’t understand. Why are you fighting this?”
Frustration crept into Chaaru’s words. “Fighting what?”
“You and DP. Yes, you aren’t officially a couple. But you would have been, eventually. If we weren’t all too nice, we’d have had a pot going on when.”
It felt as if the world fell out from under Chaaru’s feet. She stared at her best friend, her mouth opening and closing, a croak emerging from her throat. She wouldn’t be surprised if she looked like an oversized frog mucking about in…muck. “That’s…what…why are you saying that?”
Mona frowned. “Why are you acting like this is news to you?”
“Because it is news to me. How does the entire world know how he feels about me?”
“How is it you don’t know that he loves you?” Mona fired back.
“Yes, but like a friend.”
“Like a man who adores a woman and wants to get into her pants and share his life with her,” Mona said with her usual, not always annoying this much, assertiveness.
Chaaru gripped the edge of the bathtub. “Did he say this to you?”
“It’s clear to anyone with a little common sense.”
DP wanted to share his life with her? Chaaru blinked, but the tears came anyway. “I wish you had warned me, Mona.”
“Will you please tell me what happened?” Mona’s voice gentled.
“It came out. His feelings for me. Then, he…said he needed to get me out of his head. Whatever that means.”
“Wait, did he propose? Declare it in song? Proposition you with a dirty joke?”
Chaaru knew Mona was trying to pull her away from the ledge, but it didn’t work. “No. See, that’s the thing. He said he’d never put the weight of his feelings on me. But that he had to make changes in his life. And he gave me back his copy of my house key. He had it since I signed the papers to buy the house, with him sitting by my side. My successes, failures, and everything in between, he’s been there.”
“Let’s forget how DP is an understanding man-fool who cares too much about you,” Mona said with renewed gusto. “What do you feel?”
“I told him it was impossible.”
“Is it impossible, Char?”
When Chaaru opened her mouth to protest automatically, Mona held up a hand. “This is me, okay? There’s no thought or emotion that’s wrong here. Is it impossible that you and DP transition from friend-zone to something deeper?”
“We had this silent, angsty eye-fuck that was better than ten orgasms with my vibrator,” Chaaru admitted, heat streaking through her under the cooling mud.
“Hot damn…” Mona said, clapping so hard that the sound echoed up from the cavernous ceiling. “Then, may I please ask, what the fuck is the problem?”
Chaaru rubbed her arms, wishing there was a bath to cleanse out her fears too. Reverting her to the bright, bold, fearless twenty-one-year-old she’d been once. Before her ex had crushed every inch of hope and confidence she’d had with his constant, relentless criticism. “You know what the problem is…Me. I don’t want a man telling me how to stand, sit, talk or smile ever again.”
“You and I both know DP would never be that man. Like ever . Like, not in a million bizarre universes that Sanjana dreams up for her comic novels.” Then Mona, adorable Mona, scrunched her brow and stared at Chaaru. As if she’d suddenly discovered that her best friend was a monkey, and she had the impossible job of teaching said monkey manners. “You know that, right?”
“DP would never,” Chaaru agreed.
“So?”
“If things don’t work out, because I’m me , I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t lose him.” Tears ran freely down her cheeks now, making a nice paste of the mud caked into her face. So much for rejuvenated skin. She was now drowning in tears, snot, and mud. “I’d shrivel up if he thinks I’m not… smart enough or beautiful enough or worthy enough. Not good enough.”
And then she heard those words in her head, as if some outside voice was playing them. Her stomach twisted in horror.
It had been a favorite litany of her ex’s—calling her too tall, too broad, too blunt, too-everything for a woman. Whatever she wore, however she dressed and spoke...there had been no pleasing him.
That insidious memory, sitting deep in her psyche like a coiled snake, waiting to attack her at a vulnerable moment…made her angry. Made her want to shuffle through her insides, looking for more.
“Oh, sweetie,” Mona said, pushing herself out of the tub. One hand over her boobs and one between her legs, she waddled across the tiled floor and climbed into Chaaru’s tub.
Two rhinoceroses waddling in mud at the zoo would have been more elegant. A bark of laughter escaped Chaaru.
Tsking and shushing, Mona’s arm came around hers and Chaaru tucked her head into her friend’s shoulder.
“Most men are clueless, but babe, the one you were married to was…a special brand of bad. Like all the toxic stuff in the world had been poured into his head. And when you married him, you were twenty-one, practically a baby. Not this badass you’re now.” Mona tapped her wrist, as if to brace Chaaru for what was coming next. “I…hate saying this, but you’re still seeing yourself through his eyes. You’re letting that asshole win after everything you’ve fought for.”
Chaaru hiccupped.
“I wish, just for a second,” Mona said, her voice incredibly gentle, “you could see yourself through my eyes. Or Kaasi’s or DP’s or Kash’s. I wish…I could somehow scoop out the hurt he left behind in you and send it down the drain.”
Then Chaaru was crying because her best friend was right. Despite everything she’d done to heal, the harm her ex had caused was still in her. Like a pulsing tumor hiding inside her marrow.
And yet, DP wanted her...the thought cut through the spiral.
All these weeks, she’d thought it was her fear of losing him. Instead, she feared that the man she adored would find her unworthy.
“And if things didn’t work out?” she said, still needing to walk through the worst-case scenario.
“Then you get great sex out of a hunky cinnamon roll who adores you. And when it’s not working anymore, you tell him. Because this is DP, he’ll hold you through the worst. Even if you break his heart.”
“And if…I fall in love with him?”
Mona thumped Chaaru’s temple with the heel of her palm. Hard enough that some of the mud crumbled off her face. “Then you get to live a happily ever after, you doubting dingus. That’s a good thing.”
“You’re assuming he wants that with me?” Her chest felt like an inflatable balloon, getting dangerously bigger, about to pop any second.
“I’m assuming, based on the information you’ve given me and all the things I have noticed over nearly two decades, that he wants to try. And that’s all you can do in life, Char. Give something your best. Isn’t that what we’re forever telling Kaasi and Sanjana and Sid? Isn’t that what you told me when I was falling apart last year?”
“Yes, but you’re stronger than me. You walked away from a privileged life for Dominic when he had nothing. I married the first charming man my family found me, hoping for a grand adventurous life, without even getting to know him.”
“We’re strong in different ways.” Mona smiled, her teeth blindingly white against the ashy mud. “I couldn’t have raised Kaasi alone or created a housekeeping business out of nothing, with twenty staff members. You’re not that girl who got caught in an abusive marriage. If anything, you’ve nurtured the best parts of yourself despite it.”
Chaaru stared into her best friend’s eyes and found the faith she had lost. Faith in herself, faith that any man could see, respect and love her for who she was.
---
It was a few hours before Chaaru and Mona emerged into the shopping area of the mall. Her skin felt tingly, her body loose and limber as if all the tightness and fears had been purged. A restless urgency claimed her now. For a moment, she considered haring off to DP’s house right then and demanding that he…
No, she couldn’t. This was way too important to mess up. Especially when she was feeling so raw from her own realizations.
“I can drop you off on the way,” Mona offered.
Through the exit with its revolving doors, Chaaru saw that the afternoon had given way to dusk. “You go ahead,” she said, eying the mall directory. “I want to treat myself to some new clothes. Especially with the trip to Cancun.”
“What? Really? But it’s all expensive boutiques in this mall,” Mona said, shock vibrating through her words. “You won’t even let me buy you a scarf from one of these places.”
“Something Kaasi said the other day stuck with me.”
“What?”
“That I should spend some of my hard-earned fucking money on myself.”
Mona blew a chef’s kiss. “That boy is wonderful.”
“Would you be okay to FaceTime once you get home? I want to run my choices by you.”
“Yes please, include me in Operation Seduce DP.”
“That’s not the only reason I’m treating myself,” Chaaru clarified, old fears and patterns raising their dirty heads.
Mona squeezed her hand. “I know. But one piece, you’ve got to buy it to knock his socks off. Promise me.”
“You got it,” Chaaru said.
After waving Mona goodbye, she walked towards the elegant boutiques. Quickly, she checked her savings account, looked at the bills that needed to be paid, and came up with a budget to spoil herself.
For years now, she’d reveled in her hard-won freedom and dressed only for herself. Even when forty had hit three years ago and unwanted suggestions began from her sister about how she should dress now that she was ‘of a mature age’.
Shaking her head, Chaaru eyed a sexy, elegant sheath in bright red that would hug her ass. The price tag made her eyes nearly pop out of their sockets. But it would be worth every cent to feel DP’s warm gaze drag down her curves.
A thrill zinged through her and she wondered if her body understood something that her mind was still grappling with.