Healing Hearts

CHAPTER ~ 18 — BUT I LOVE ARJUN

Nandini woke at ten and sat up with her hand pressed to her forehead.

“Ayyappa. I have slept the whole morning.”

Navya put her head round the door.

“Why did you not wake me?” Nandini was already out of bed. “It was dii’s first day. I was supposed to go with her.”

“She left at half past eight. With Cabeer and jiju.”

“She has already gone?”

“Nandu—”

“I am the worst sister in this country.” Her eyes had filled before she had finished the sentence. “Her first day. Her first day, and I was lying here—”

“Nobody woke you because dii said not to.” Navya sat down beside her. “She stood over you for a minute and told everybody to leave you alone.”

Which made it considerably worse, as Priya’s kindnesses generally did.

“Take me to the office. Please.”

“How? Everybody’s gone, there’s no—” Navya stopped. “Manik bhai is still here. Let me ask him.”

Nandini’s face did something complicated and she stood up quickly. “Fine. Yes. Go and ask. I’ll get ready.”

Navya did not move.

“What?”

“What is going on with you?”

“Nothing is going on.”

“Nandini.” Navya had her arms folded now. “Four days ago you could not be in a room with that man without one of you shouting. This morning I said his name, and you say fine, yes, go and ask. That is not you. What happened?”

Nandini’s eyes went wide, and every single thing that had happened on that terrace arrived at once.

“You have misunderstood something,” she said, half a beat too late. “There is nothing. I want to be with dii, that is all, and I do not care how I get there.” She recovered, and went on the attack, because that is what her family did. “And madam — just because you feel something for a certain person does not mean the rest of us are all the same.”

Navya went scarlet and hit her on the arm. “Be quiet.”

“Beat me later. Go and ask him before he leaves too.”

Navya went.

Nandini sat back down on the edge of the bed and let out a very long breath.

Manik had his keys in his hand when Navya came round the corner on a run.

“Bhai. Stop. I need help.”

“What happened?” He was already frowning. “Why are you running? Is everything all right?”

“Can you drop us at Murthy Industries? Me and Nandu. Please.”

He was quiet for slightly too long.

Navya clicked her fingers in front of his face and raised her eyebrows, and Manik came back from wherever he had gone and shrugged with tremendous unconcern. “Fine. I am going that way. Be quick.”

“Ten minutes,” said Navya, and vanished.

There was a step-down from the corridor into the hall, a shallow one, the kind that every household stops seeing after a week and every visitor finds.

Nandini came out looking for Navya and did not see it at all.

Her foot went over the edge and the floor came up, and she had about half a second to be certain of what was going to happen — and then somebody had her, and the two of them went sideways onto the couch instead, and it was Manik, and he had taken all of it.

She landed on his chest. Her hair came down over one side of his face and shut out the room.

Neither of them moved.

They were close enough that she could feel him breathing. His hand was at her waist, and his other came up, slowly — along her arm, over her shoulder, and then he put the hair behind her ear the way he had done twice before, and Nandini shut her eyes.

She was not thinking about anything at all. That was the whole trouble.

His thumb moved along her cheekbone, and stopped.

MANIK’S POV

Put her down.

Take your hand off her face and sit up and say something appalling, because that is what you do, that is the arrangement, and it has worked every time for three years.

Do it.

I am not going to do it.

POV ENDS

Nandini opened her eyes and started to push herself up, and his arm tightened, and the room turned over — and then she was underneath him with his weight held off her on one forearm, and neither of them had said one word.

They looked at each other.

There was nothing in it that either of them could have named. They were both, at that moment, entirely quiet — no fighting, no city, no company, no six months, no three years. Only a hall in a flat in Mumbai at half past ten in the morning, and it was the most peaceful either of them had been in a very long time, and that was precisely what made it dangerous.

He laced his fingers through hers against the couch. He came down.

And two inches away, everything arrived at once.

“But I love Arjun.”

It came out of her flat and much too loud, like something dropped.

Manik was off her and standing before the sentence had finished, and Nandini sat up and pulled her top straight with hands that were not steady, and neither of them looked at the other.

Navya came round the corner with her bag. “Ready. Shall we—”

She stopped.

Two people in a hall, four feet apart, both extremely occupied with the floor.

“…Right,” said Navya.

Nobody said anything in the car.

Navya sat in front, worked it out somewhere around the second signal, and had the sense to say nothing at all. Nandini sat in the back and looked out of the window, and twice in twenty minutes her eyes went up and found his in the mirror and came away again.

Neither of them had any idea what to do with it.

There is a stage in a thing like this — before either person will use the word, before either has admitted anything to a friend or a diary or on the ceiling at two in the morning — when the whole business is carried entirely by looks in mirrors. Nothing is said, because nothing can be said. Nothing is settled, because nothing has been begun.

They both believed they were fighting something off.

They were both, by that morning, well past the point where it could have been fought off, and neither of them had the faintest idea.