PART 4 #6
She looks at me from head to toe, as if appraising me in a store, and then shakes her head. ‘You know, even if I could be with you, which I won’t . . . Maa would never live with it.’
‘You found me on a dating app. Why are you under the impression that I want to be with you?’
It’s a lie so blatant that I can barely force the words out of my mouth.
The anger in my lie is obvious. I avert my gaze from her, trying to hide the undeniable fact that I’m still pathetically and passionately in love with her.
I feel steadier now, though I know I’m being delusional.
The alcohol is obscuring my judgement. The lights of Delhi shimmer in the distance as the naked truth rears its head again.
I need her.
I get back on the motorcycle. She climbs on without question. The motorcycle roars to life.
‘Because that’s who you are, Daksh,’ she tells me. ‘You’re born to love me.’ She grips me tightly and rests her head on my back. ‘You’re in love with me, Daksh, you always have been.’
‘That’s presumptuous.’
‘Where are we driving to?’
‘. . . someplace not boring.’
I can feel her breath in my ears.
‘You remember that time we stayed up all night, talking and laughing on that rooftop?’
‘That cliché date of ours?’ she says.
‘It felt like we had all the time in the world.’
‘A few floors above from where my brother hung himself.’ This time, her barb is less pointed. She adds after a pause, ‘I should stop doing that. Stop bringing it up.’
‘You and me both.’
‘I don’t deserve happiness,’ she says. ‘That’s what I keep feeling. It’s nonsense, of course. We didn’t hurt him, he hurt us.’
On the darkest of my days, I have said these words to myself a lot of times. ‘No offence, but he did a terrible thing to us. Absolutely unasked for. You know what they say about addiction—’
‘I’m a licensed therapist.’
‘It’s in the genes or whatever.’
‘Keep mansplaining me.’
‘He had everything; he didn’t need to do anything of what he did.’
‘That kind of thing is common among the rich and the spoilt,’ she says.
‘Good to see Aanchal achieving all her dreams of being rich and spoilt.’
‘Never thought I would say those words about our family, but that’s what it is.’
‘Umm . . . congratulations?’
‘We used to look at people like you and imagine problems for you guys, so we could say, yes, they are rich, but they have strange problems. And here we are . . .’
‘Gaurav threw a good thing away.’
‘He made this happen,’ admits Aanchal. ‘. . . or . . .’
‘Or.’
After a small pause, she says, ‘Had he not done what he did, we would have been together, Daksh. Now . . . it’s just wrong.’
‘Is it?’ I ask, adding, ‘I’m old enough to shed my arrogance and admit that I’ll never get over you.’
‘I know that, Daksh.’
‘I will never stop being in love with you. I can find replacements, but I know where they will end.’
‘I don’t think you will find substitutes.’
‘Cocky,’ I remark.
‘That’s you. The cockiest.’
‘Are we talking about organs or attitude? If it’s organs, I agree.’
‘Still a teenager inside despite the grey strands of hair, Daksh.’
‘I think a large part of why I have remained sane is because you’re alone too. Merely considering the possibility that you might end up with someone else burns me up from the inside.’
‘That’s—’
I interrupt her. ‘Rabbani would call this toxic.’
‘So would I.’
‘I can die alone; I can watch you die alone—that’s acceptable. But the thought of you being with someone else is . . . blasphemous.’
‘Blasphemous, interesting choice of words. That would mean—’
‘My love for you is a religion, unyielding, unchanging, irrational.’
‘Where are you going?’ she asks, as I pull into the empty parking lot of a deserted mall. ‘The mall seems abandoned.’
‘I know.’
We get off, the streetlights casting an eerie glow around us.
For a moment, we just stand there, looking at each other.
Gradually, she inches closer and tenderly takes my hand.
My heart pounds as I slowly place my hand around her neck and, with the weight of the shared and chequered history between us, draw her in and kiss her.
The kiss obliterates our past. It yanks us into the present. There’s just want now. My eyes now lock on Aanchal, her dark eyes gleaming with desire. In the silence of this isolated space, the crackling energy between us becomes tangible, pulsating.
‘You know what’s going to happen now, don’t you, Aanchal?’
‘I’m going to fuck you.’
‘And me, you.’
Our bodies collide with an electrifying urgency. I kiss her, tasting the sweetness of her lips.
‘I missed this,’ I mumble as we separate.
‘This is a slippery slope,’ she moans.
‘I am in for the ride.’
Aanchal pulls me closer, her delicate fingers gripping the fabric of my shirt. She unbuttons it and it falls to the ground.
‘Take off your clothes,’ I command. ‘Do it slowly.’
She steps back. And slowly, begins to shed her clothing.
The top goes first. Then the jeans. Then she unclasps the bra and teases me by covering her breasts.
Then slowly, she removes her hands. Her breasts, bathed in the dim glow of the lot, are perfect.
Her fingers trace the outlines of her nipples.
My fingers reach out to trace the curve, feeling her nipple harden beneath my touch.
‘Daksh,’ she moans.
‘I love you.’
‘Don’t say that, Daksh.’
‘I love you, and I don’t want to let you go now,’ I say and take in her nipple.
‘I don’t want you to . . .’
She undoes my belt. Her fingers are bold, sure.
I shiver, her touch sending sparks of electricity coursing through my veins.
Her hand wraps around my cock, stroking, sending waves of pleasure rippling through me.
She traces the length of it. My hand ventures lower from her breasts, caressing the smooth expanse of her thighs.
She shifts, parting her legs, inviting me in.
The slickness of her arousal against my fingers is encouraging.
I whisper into her ear, my voice shaking with need.
‘I want you, Aanchal,’ I breathe out, each word laced with raw hunger. ‘I want you now.’
‘Cute, because you have always wanted you, like I have wanted you,’ she says.
Our passion consumes us. The world beyond the parking lot dissipates.
We’re in a world of our own now, surrounded by the inky darkness.
Aanchal’s back rests against the motorcycle as she invites me in.
Her chest heaves, her breasts glistening under the scattered lights from the road.
She pulls me closer. As I hold her, she squirms, the motorcycle shifts with her movements.
I feel the wetness between her legs, an inviting warmth against my throbbing cock.
I can’t hold back any longer. She whispers in my ear.
‘What are you waiting for, Daksh?’ She, with her hands on my ass, pulls me into her.
As I enter her, she gasps, her fingers digging into my skin, a contrast to the cool metal beneath us.
Her legs hook around my waist, pulling me deeper, her body rhythmically following the strokes of my thrusts.
The echo of our gasps and moans fills the lot.
She clenches around me, her body convulsing beneath mine.
She moans. She’s close. Her voice is now reduced to a strained whisper.
Then she shudders, her body arching off the leather seat.
The sight of her pleasure pushes me over the edge.
‘Fuck,’ I mumble.
‘Your vocabulary is limited.’
‘My mental faculties are shot at the moment.’
We lay there intertwined. Spent. The cool metal of the motorcycle an odd contrast to our warm bodies.
‘This can’t stop here,’ I tell her.
‘. . . as it shouldn’t.’
‘What does this mean, then?’ I whisper into her ear.
‘For now, it means we dress up, go to your home and do it again. Because anything you ask of me right now, I will say yes.’
I look at her, the words forming on my lips instantaneously.
‘Do you love me, Aanchal?’
‘Yes. More than anything in the world.’
7.
Aanchal Madan
Daksh
I’ve missed you.
For the past month, he has been sending me this text every morning.
And every morning it fills the air with magic, the sort that makes you believe in second chances—or third, or fourth, I have lost track of which chance it is for us.
It’s a text and yet it feels as if he’s thrown a dagger right at my heart, piercing it through and through.
A single text from Daksh, the guy who lurked in the shadows and the corners of my dreams, haunting me, has undone years of coping mechanisms, the emotional rafu, patchwork, I had done on my heart.
It’s like I’m twenty and he’s in that hotel and my heart is aching for him. How can he turn back time like that?
In the past month, we have met sixteen times.
I have been to Hyderabad, Kochi, Ahmedabad and Chennai, and he has surprised me in all of them.
I pretended to be angry, but my pretence always fell through whenever he reached out to touch me.
Every time he starts to tease and flirt, it’s as if I’m instantly transported back to being a nineteen-year-old Aanchal, full of excitement and hope, while he stays the suave thirty-three-year-old, his age lending him an additional layer of wisdom and intellect, a leg up on me.
There’s an unmistakable dynamic shift there, a seesaw of power.
Funnily enough, his grouse is the exact opposite—he insists that he’s the one reverting to his teenage years, while I, like some experienced cougar, am the one wielding power over him.
I find it’s true when they say nostalgia is a drug, and memories can be deceptive.
Because my heart strangely glosses over all the pain.
Theoretically, it remembers every bitter word, every disappointment, every tear-streaked night, every promise he broke, every stroke of bad luck he brought on to me.
Yet, I can feel my pulse quicken when I see his text.