30. Mayukhi
THIRTY
Mayukhi
Mayukhi glanced over at Ishaan’s set face in the dim light that filtered into the car from the shop windows that they crossed. He looked completely shut down, his entire face and body screaming at her to keep her distance. It wasn’t normally the look a man who’d gotten some action the previous night would wear. Especially around the woman who’d provided said action.
“You know,” she said, her gaze back on the traffic outside. A lorry with a ‘kiss me please’ sticker filled her vision as she tried not to look at the remote, locked off man beside her. “We don’t really know the little details about each other. If we’re meant to be engaged, shouldn’t we know more.”
“What kind of details?”
Ishaan’s voice was like granite, igniting a flare of irritation in her. What the fuck was his problem?
“What do you like? What don’t you like? Shit like that,” she snapped.
“I like tomatoes. I don’t like cockroaches,” he snapped right back. “What else?”
Mayukhi stared at him in disbelief. “Tomatoes. You like tomatoes? That’s what you’re giving me.”
Ishaan pulled out from behind the ‘kiss me please’ lorry and flicked his indicator on signalling a right turn.
“Where are you going?” she asked, pissed and ready for a full blown fight now. “That’s not the right way.”
Ishaan pulled into a quieter by lane, lined with trees and apartment buildings. He parked the car to the side and dropped his head against the backrest.
“Fuck.” He dragged his hands through his hair, pulling it out of its perfectly groomed style.
Mayukhi stayed silent, uncertain of what exactly was going on. She had never figured Ishaan for a brooder. Most of the time he was either irritating her, teasing her, fighting with her and in recent times, kissing her. Right now, he was doing none of the above and it was freaking her out.
“I like tomatoes or pretty much anything edible because I didn’t have a lot of food to eat growing up. I figured if I could just grow my own food, I’d never have to go hungry again.”
“The cherry tomato plants in the school garden,” she murmured, memory sweeping through her.
“Yeah.” Ishaan didn’t look at her, his cheeks turning a dull, brick red. “I never waste food that’s on my plate. If we go out to dinner and don’t finish our meal, I will always pack it up. I don’t care how downmarket you think that is.”
She didn’t care about any of that shit but Mayukhi didn’t interrupt. She let him get all of it out of his system.
“I dress well,” he said now. “I’m particular about the clothes I wear and the fit because I spent most of my life in hand me downs that were either too tight or too loose. So, this,” he tugged at his suit jacket. “It matters to me.”
Ishaan sighed. “When my father lost his business and our homes at the poker tables, we moved into a chawl in Mumbai. It-“ The red in his cheeks deepened. “We moved from a six bedroom bungalow to a one room tenement. It was the first night of my life when I slept on the floor on a sheet that probably cost more than the entire room. I woke up in the middle of the night with a cockroach crawling over my face.”
Mayukhi reached for the hand he had clenched around the gear box. She covered it with her own, squeezing tight, hoping to offer comfort for past wounds and ever present grief.
“Crestwood was supposed to be my escape. But-“
“Yeah,” she said, her voice rusty with emotion. “The DD’s made that impossible.”
“But I found Virat and Amay.” He slid her a sideways glance. “And in a twisted way I found you too.”
“I was a shit to you at school.” She swallowed hard, shame coursing through her.
“I was a shit right back,” he murmured. “The chip on my shoulder was a damn brickhouse.”
They fell silent for a while. And then Ishaan said, “So, yeah, I like tomatoes and I don’t like cockroaches.”
“I like sour candy and I don’t like dogs.”
“You don’t like dogs??” Ishaan turned to face her for the first time that evening, his expression aghast. “Who doesn’t like dogs?”
“I don’t.” Mayukhi put her hand up in the air like she was attending roll call in college.
“Golden retrievers? Labradors? Huskies??”
“No. No. And nope.”
“I don’t get it.”
It was Mayukhi’s turn to sigh. “I was ten when I went to the beach with my dad. A black dog, I don’t know the breed, chased me. I fell down and it stood on me and peed on my stomach.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you dare laugh!”
“I wasn’t going to,” Ishaan said, a tremor of suppressed laughter in his voice.
“I’m not the girl people like. I’m not sweet, submissive, and cooperative. I’m not all things sugary sweet. I’m –“
“You’re fierce, loyal, and a complete badass. You’re not sugary sweet but you’re fucking magnificent.”
His words silenced her, emotion clogging her throat as she looked at him in the darkened car.
“And tonight, I have the utter privilege of walking into that party with you on my arm.” He looked away from her, his jaw working. “And then I have to leave you and go seduce that bimbo with breasts the size of freaking watermelons.”
Mayukhi felt the slow slide of warmth seep through her veins. She’d gotten so used to not being liked, to just being tolerated that having him look at her like that, with intense longing mixed with naked adoration healed something in the scarred, fearful child inside her.
“You know you need to,” she whispered.
“I do,” he admitted, his gaze holding hers. “But I don’t want to. I’d rather be with you.”
“I will be right there. I’ll be your wingwoman.”
He laughed, a harsh sound. He turned from her to put the car in gear. “Thanks Kraken. But I haven’t forgotten how to woo a woman.”
“If you keep using words like woo, I think you’re going to have a problem,” she said with a grin, trying to lighten the mood.
He shot her a droll look. “I got you, didn’t I?”
“I hate to break this to you, Adajania, but I don’t think blackmail is going to work with other women.”
They bickered all the way to the party, the tension from before dissipating and their earlier balance restored. It was only as they drew up to Naveen’s house and saw that group of shitheads gathered outside for a smoke that Ishaan said, his hard gaze on the men who’d ruined his past and were doing the same to his present, “Fuck. I really do hate cockroaches.”
Mayukhi bared her teeth in a feral grin. “Let’s go stomp on them.”