Abhigya SS - Vulnerable - PART 7 UPDATED May1st Pg16 - Page 2

So there she was. After ten months of missing, dreaming, repenting and agonizing, he had finally tracked down his Chashmish. Although from the way his world seemed to come into better focus at the very sight of her, maybe he was the one with the real eye problem. She turned to look at him and suddenly tried to duck behind her glass. Oh my cute Chashmish. Instantly he felt a pang of regret at the nickname, he had lost his rights to use that term months ago. 

But he started walking towards her. He had tracked her down to Nasik for a purpose, and marinating in his own feelings a hundred feet from her was not going to help him achieve it. Coming closer to her though, robbed him of about fifty IQ points. Those doe-like eyes that he still believed made magic; that aquiline nose he was just a touch obsessed with; and the lips he had always thought a little too much about transformed from fragments in his memories to reality, and it was a little too much to handle. I really was short sighted. Why did I never dare to admit how attracted I was to her?

All that pent-up longing, affection, regret and attraction threatened to spill over as he came face to face with her. But she was determinedly staring into the mid-distance, and he realised he needed to do a little more than gape like a fish if he wanted to be acknowledged.

"Hi Pragya." I was right; those eyes do have magic in them.

"Hi." Oh God, this was painful. "But you deserve it" a voice in his head reminded him.

"Is this seat taken?"

A raised eyebrow. "The entire bar is empty." A pointed hint, that. Still, he ignored it and pulled up a chair in front of her. Closer, he could see the grey smudges underneath her eyes. Had this year been as hard for her as it had been for him?

"How have you been?"

"Fine, thank you." She wasn't going to make this easy for him, was she?

"How is everyone at home? I keep hearing about Bulbul from Purab but how is Sarla aunty, Rockstar dadi?"

At the mention of her family, the weariness in her eyes lessened a bit and she almost smiled. "They're doing fine. Mom and dadi are happy that the marriage hall is up and running again. And Bulbul is very happy you've given your approval for their wedding. Thank you for that."

"You've started working again?" She seemed surprised that he was interested but the mention of her job drove away a little bit of the weariness from her eyes and she thawed a little as she told him a little bit about her new job at the university. As happy as he was to hear about her professional satisfaction - he had been worried about her in the aftermath of their separation - he was simply content to just look at her as she spoke. She looked quite different than he remembered her. 

Gone was the chatri and replaced by smart business casuals that displayed an exquisite collarbone that had always been covered by her ever-present dupatta. God, what a beast he was, ogling his estranged wife only two minutes into their conversation. Focus. She seemed not to have noticed the direction of his thoughts and continued speaking.

"How is dadi? I haven't spoken to her for a couple of weeks."

"You keep in touch with her?" He didn't know why he was even surprised. Her concern and genuine love for his dadi was what had drawn him to her in the first place.  But still, his heart warmed. If she still cared for dadi, maybe...he quickly put those thoughts away. Not yet.

She looked a little insulted at his surprise. "Of course! We decided to end our marriage but not my relationship with everyone else. How is everybody?"

"Dadi's fine, she started knitting something new for the baby..." It killed a little him to keep talking about these superficialities but it relieved him too. He had forgotten how long it had been since he had simply talked to someone, and had someone listen back. Abhi's world had narrowed considerably in the past few months. One by one, almost all the people close to him had dropped out of his life. Aliya and Tanu, two of the three most important women in his life had betrayed him in the worst possible way; Pragya, who's place in his life he had just started to understand, had left him; and Aakash had become too busy with Rachna and the baby to talk to him much. Even his beloved dadi, the centre of his very existence, had been so heartbroken to see the failure of her upbringing that she had returned to Ludhiana. Even when she had returned four months later, it was not the same. A little of her sparkle had died at her grandchildren's actions and daughter-in-law's departure. 

Now Abhi only had Purab, but he couldn't bring himself to discuss his own loneliness with his friend who had finally, won some well-deserved happiness in his romantic life. Without realizing it, he told her everything, and the black fog of loneliness starting to part a little. It was only when he came to the news of Tayaji's new business that he realized how long he'd been prattling. "Get to the point, Abhi."

"Actually, dadi is not fine Pragya ... and neither am I." Her head shot up at this. "No, nothing like that. Dadi has aged ten years in the past ten months and I...haven't been the same either." Another raised eyebrow. "You probably think that's a good thing," he admitted ruefully, and continued, when he was still met with silence from her, "Pragya, our ... divorce will be finalised in two months."

He could see the pain in her eyes but her composedness didn't falter. "I'm aware."

A bar wasn't the best place to do this again, but at least it was better than outside a family court. The words had formed a sticky mass in his throat but her expectant face encouraged him. "I'm really, really sorry for how I behaved with you," he choked out. "I know you told me never to come in front of you again..." Did he imagine the flash of regret in her expression? "But I didn't want to leave things between us like that. I wanted to ask for your forgiveness once again."

Her face remained immobile. "Abhishek," she sighed. "I've forgiven you. I've moved on," she stated.. There he had it, his forgiveness, but it felt hollow. Pragya seemed like an impenetrable fortress at the moment, with her arms crossed against her chest and her lips folded in. Still, despite his better judgement, he pressed on.

"Thank you. Pragya, nothing was the same after you left. No one was happy with our divorce and I was wondering if we could perhaps...try again? For dadi's sake, your mom's sake and ...for ours too. We did have fun, remember?" He pulled out the charming smile that he had kept in the vault for too long.

Finally the fortress cracked. "How dare you? How dare you waltz back into my life after so long, just as I was starting to put it back together, to demand your place in it? And just because we had fun'? What do you think of yourself Mr. Rockstar?"

"I just thought - "

"Do you have any idea what you did to me?"

"I do, and I regret it every day."

"No you don't know, you can't know. I lost myself for you. I went from Pragya, the fearless college professor to Mrs. Abhishek Mehra, the woman who would rejoice if her husband ever condescended to look at her instead of his girlfriend," she said bitterly. How had he not even noticed this sea change in her personality before it was too late? "I became so weak that one day I couldn't even recognise myself anymore. I was so naked in my feelings for you that I started hating myself. Even seeing you here today has left me too exposed."

Was that a proclamation of her feelings? He wished he knew but he couldn't think straight when she used words like naked' and exposed' with him. Now all he could imagine was her, standing there, uncovered by those ungodly chatris. But she wasn't done.

"I really can't do this Abhi, for my own self-preservation. I'm too vulnerable in front of you. You have too much power over me, and I have none over you."

An unholy vision of just how much power she could have over him if he placed himself in her hands played through his mind. Focus. He didn't know what he was thinking when he said it, but Abhi had long ago learnt that thinking before acting wasn't really his strong suit. He leaned in, "you want me vulnerable? As you wish."