Chapter 20 Ruk Jaa Oo Dil Deewane #2
Her eyes narrowed. He knew she was getting ready to snap back. Which made him even more angry and bulldoze on.
“I have been blabbering like a lovesick fool for days to you, about everything. Whatever I thought was your problem with me, I worked to fix it, and told you about it. Everything. And I am not this chirpy outside. If you haven’t registered it yet, here is me telling you — nobody knows even one-tenth of what you know about me.
And this is information that I have volunteered with all my free will.
Now tell me, what else is your problem so that I can fix it and we can move on.
Although, looking at your track record, I am certain it will be something you’ve cooked up in that brainy but idiotic head of yours and not really true… ”
She blinked, and there were tears on her eyelashes.
“Fuck, sorry,” he ran to her. “Sorry, sorry, I’m livid… but sorry, don’t cry…” he lowered himself beside her and pushed her face into his shoulder, kissing her temple.
“I am sorry.” She mumbled into his T-shirt.
“I like it, but elaborate why.”
She chuckled. “Can’t you let one moment pass with one emotion intact?”
“I don’t think so. I just discovered this about me recently.”
“What?”
“That if you are crying, I want to make you laugh. And if you are laughing…”
“You want to make me cry.”
“In a happy, emotional way.”
“That isn’t how it often plays out.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I know. Now tell me why you are sorry.”
“Always so eager for your worship.” She pulled back, rubbing her eyes.
“Grovel, Doctor.”
She pushed at his chest, and he trapped her hand there — “Careful, that part’s broken.”
“Not anymore.”
Their eyes held. Not anymore. His heart had never been broken. In that way. It had never known the fear of somebody leaving, a companion not returning, a person abandoning it. His mother had left, but she had no choice in the matter. Here was a person who had a choice, and had returned.
“I got scared.” Ritu finally said those three words he had wanted to hear. He knew it this morning when he had read that letter. Now, she surrendered it in words. They were so getting out of this and running like wildfire with their life now. He was more certain of it than anything else.
“Why did you get scared?”
Her mouth pouted, holding the words in.
“Doctor.”
“You have been everything I never knew I wanted at a time when I had given up on it all!” She blurted.
And kept blurting. “You were stolen moments, and dreams slotted in the afternoon between mornings and evenings, you were my Falguni Pathak heroes and Mills & Boons all wrapped into one big obnoxious package,” she hiccuped, her voice cracking.
“But when I craved those things as a teenager, I never thought what they would look like in real life, and how zapped they would leave me. It’s one thing to read about some girl experiencing the world at her feet.
It’s… different when it happens to you. Especially after… so much has already happened.”
Her eyes lowered. “I know you told me all that you were feeling, and every time you did that, I found myself lacking because I couldn’t. Not because I did not want to but because… I got…”
“Scared.”
She nodded. Her eyes rose back to his — “After years I am living in a world I used to love,” she shrugged, crying.
“My city, my people, Maya, the bond we had, and then you came. The other shoe always drops. Always. In New York, I don’t have to be wary of it because nothing matters there.
Nobody matters there. Here… everything matters. More so now.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“No I don’t.”
“Because you matter, because you are more to me than anybody else. Happy?”
He bit back his smirk. “Go on.”
“That’s it.”
“I can listen to more.”
“More what?”
“More grovelling.”
“This is enough for your ego.”
“What the hell did you think would happen to it when you up and left my house this morning? After everything we shared last night?”
She opened her mouth but he held up a hand — “No, seriously. What did you think would happen if you had actually managed to fly to New York? Don’t I know how to get a ticket?”
Her lips pursed in a pout.
“Idiot, idiot…”
“Don’t call me idiot!”
“That’s what you are! Leaving in the middle of the night like some thief…” he muttered under his breath, unable to soften the glare that he was lazering at her. “Now onwards, you are not to leave here without telling me.”
She opened her mouth but he cut her off again — “No, without asking me.”
“In your dreams!” She glared back through her tears.
“That means you agree to stay here.”
Her mouth again pursed in a pout. Stupid, Doctor. She wasn’t in her right senses to see where he was taking her with this.
“You are trapping me!” She whined.
“Alright, then,” Nilay gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger. He pushed her hair away with his other hand and smiled at the part-grumpy-part-shy smile that made her even more beautiful to him.
“Yes. I am trapping you. And that’s because it’s you.
All you. Not children, not any gratitude, not some god syndrome, Doctor.
It’s only and only you. For me, right now, and now onwards till this thing stops working,” he pointed at his chest. “It is you, Ritu. You looked like winter and smelled like rains to me, and then you smiled like the summer and held me close like spring. They are all mine. And this, your dense, idiotic…”
“Hey!”
“Arbitrary EQ-less autumn is also mine. Only, don’t pull what you pulled this morning again. I am a heart patient.”
“Oh, shut it. You are fit as a fiddle now.”
“But now that I know the perks, I’ll never stop playing that card.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll never stop closing your eyes with my hand.”
“I can live with that,” she sniffled.
“I’ll never stop offering you my shoulder.”
“It’s…” she poked it. “Okayish.”
“I haven’t worked out in months,” he rolled his eyes, chagrined.
“What else?”
“I’ll never stop…”
She stole his next words with her kiss. And Nilay pulled her face even closer, kissing her with all the pent-up fear, rage, exhilaration, joy, hope inside him. Finally. Finally. Fucking finally.
“Now,” he pulled out and got down on one knee on the floor. Her eyes widened — “You can’t…”
He parted her knees to make space for him and stared into her hopeful brown eyes. “If you are done with your grovel, which, for the record, I had to dig out of you.”
She scowled.
“Am I it?”
That scowl broke into a smile, an honest-to-god beautiful, shy smile.
“You are far from perfect,” she croaked.
“But I am as close as they get.”
“I’ll make do.”
“Then,” he took her left hand in his, feeling her breath stall.
Nilay reached inside his pocket and pulled out his phone. He opened the BookMyShow app that he still didn’t know why he had but was grateful for in this moment. He tapped the PVR button and presented the screen to her — “Will you come?”
Her mouth dropped open. She let out an incredulous scoff, raising the phone to chuck at him.
“Marry me.”
Her body stilled.
“Nilay… we haven’t even talked about where we want to live…”
“Mumbai or New York?”
Her eyebrows shot up.
“Simple question, Ritu — Mumbai or New York? Wherever you pick, we will settle.”
“If I say New York, then?”
“I will have to travel a week per month but I’ll manage.”
“And if I say Mumbai?”
“Are you really that dense or just act it?”
She whacked him with the nearest pillow. He was not deterred — “Here or there, Ritu?”
“Here.”
“For the better quality of life?” He smirked.
“And the free cook.”
“500 rupees per month. You cannot keep stealing all my payments.”
Her eyes were shimmering. “I am not sure about children, Nilay. It’s going to be difficult, maybe even impossible. Think hard, we don’t have to do this right now…”
“Ritu.”
Her throat worked a swallow. He tightened his hand on hers.
“I don’t know if we will have children or not, but a life with you, with or without them, will be amazing. A life with you, give me that. The future I have been seeing every time I look at you… Give me that, Ritu.”
She nodded. He cradled her hand in both of his, then brought it to his mouth and pressed a kiss. His eyes rose from the back of her hand.
“Mills & Boonsy enough for you?”
She chuckled, looking at him with two big sparkles in her brown eyes.
“What?”
Her shimmering, sparkling, full-of-everything eyes beamed at him — “In true Mills & Boons fashion, tell me when.”
“When what?”
“You said you have read Mills & Boons, don’t you know that at the end of every book the man tells the woman when he fell in love with her?”
“I never said I read Mills & Boons. But,” he bent down and kissed the edge of her hand. “I can tell you when.”
She started to sit back but he pulled her wrist until she was leaning down, their noses touching.
“When you drove like a maniac at killer speed across Mumbai.”
She giggled. Giggled. Shoulders vibrating and all.
A sound he never anticipated from this uptight doctor.
Nilay pressed closer to her, pushing his nose to the edge of hers — “When you cared about my heart even more than your own fallen niece,” his voice softened.
“When you hated an obnoxious asshole like me and still made him a salad.”
“It was a sad salad.”
“I agree.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“Your turn. When did you fall in love with me?”
He felt her face stretch in a smile — “I don’t even know.
” Her lips puckered and pressed to the edge of his cheek.
She held his face between her palms, her forehead grinding against his, eyes closed — “All I know is that I spent all these months holding myself back from falling in love with you, in the end, finding myself right here. And nothing has felt better than this.”
Her mouth pressed to the corner of his mouth. Nilay sighed.
“Now, Doctor, again — Mills & Boonsy enough for you?"
She pulled back — “You don’t have that big, bad diamond ring.”
“You would make me return it for a gold bond, you kanjoos,” he laughed.
“That I would,” she grinned.
“But I will get it for you nonetheless.”
“NO! NO, NO, NO! It’s a waste. Diamonds are the worst investment. If you want to buy me something then buy me silver bonds…”
“Come here, Doctor,” he tugged her to him, and stole the rest of her rant with his kiss. Just like he planned to do for the rest of their lives.