Seventeen
Vikrant
I dream about you too.Fucking hell!
I cursed the air blue the next morning as I recalled the pathetic way I’d confessed those words to her. They still ricocheted inside me with all the force of a gunshot wound tearing through human skin. Damaging organs. Realigning them.
Confession was supposed to be good for the soul, but I felt like crap.
As it was, waking up to a sleeping Anika, sheets tangled around her legs, so half her sexy and familiar body was completely visible was hard. Emphasis on the hard. But to know that now she kne w some of the stuff I was bottling up inside, the secrets I held onto because I couldn’t hold her was a little humiliating.
It gave her all the power.
And I was a little scared of what she would do with all the information.
Anika wasn’t careless or callous. But she wasn’t raised like me – to always put others before self. Not that that was a healthy way to live, with the guilt and the desire to please everyone always choking my own ambition, my own desires. Hell, sometimes my very existence.
The counsellor had talked about me needing stronger emotional boundaries in order to maintain my sense of self. And I dismissed it like it was a load of bullshit. Stuff the counsellor had to tell me to justify their hourly price tag.
But today morning was the first time in a year I felt I’d enforced an emotional boundary. Not by that admission in the end, but the calm and non-judgmental way I had that conversation with Ani.
Go, me!
***
I finished quickly in the bathroom, wanting to slip out before she woke up. The alarm was supposed to go off at six am and there was still forty minutes to go.
Unfortunately, she was wide awake when I opened the bathroom door, fully dressed, down to the comfy thongs I wore at home. I wasn’t sure I could trust myself around her when we were both half-naked.
It was like tempting fate and fate was never on my side.
‘Good morning,’ she said quickly, before I could say anything.
Not that I could form words. She was…sleep-flushed, her hair sticking out of the cute ponytail she’d put it in before bed. The faded blue tee shirt slid off her shoulder, revealing a creamy curve I wanted to caress before moving down.All the way down.
Best of all, she was here. In my bed. The one place I ached for her to be. And always would.
My tongue stuck to the roof off his mouth.
‘I was thinking…’ Anika trailed off. Hesitating.
‘Yes? What?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind, we could go to the cli- hospital together. For rounds.’ She looked wary.
As if she expected me to refuse. As if the idea was preposterous. And maybe it was. She was leaving in five days. But she was here now, and I wanted it to last…this fragile peace between us. I’d deal with her leaving when I had to.
I had the rest of my life to mourn her leaving.
‘Sure. Of course. We can wrap up the morning pooja, the rituals, by eight and then spend the afternoon working. Is that okay?’
She blinked slowly and desire hit me like a sledgehammer. I took a deep breath that expanded and contracted my chest... which felt tons lighter than it had felt in months.
‘Yes, that’s fine. That works.’
‘You get ready and come down when you’re done. I’ll bring your coffee up in fifteen.’
Anika blinked again and I scolded myself for sounding too eager and autocratic. She might not even take coffee anymore. People changed.
‘That sounds like heaven.’ She slid out of bed. I stifled a groan at the amount of leg revealed in the tee shirt. ‘But make that ten minutes instead of fifteen, okay?’
Then she walked to me, leaned up and kissed my freshly shaved cheek. ‘You’re a good guy, Vikrant Pandit. I don’t know how I forgot that in all our drama.’
I blinked, stuck back in the moment when the woman I loved voluntarily came up to me and kissed me. Even if it was just the fucking cheek. Then her words registered in my Anika-starved brain and I mustered up a smile for her.
‘I’m not that good a guy, Ani. I screwed things up with you.’
Then I left before I did something only very bad guys would do – plant her against the wall, rip that tee shirt off and eat her up whole. Even if she didn’t want to.
***
I hated covering the Jeep up but the rain hadn’t given up, so I had to Velcro the oilskin while Anika patiently held an umbrella over both our heads. Finally, we were off to the hospital I’d chosen to make my workplace for the last year.The town hospital.