She opened her mouth but he set his keys down with a curt ping. “Not a word.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“I have had enough of you being silent and thinking things arbitrarily, and worse, assuming them from your vast pool of non-existent emotional intelligence…”
“You said you won’t patronise me if I came back!”
“Mostly,” he shot back. “This ismostly. Now listen.”
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 weresogetting 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…”
