Healing Hearts

CHAPTER ~ 19 — TEASINGS

ONE WEEK LATER

A week went by. Priya settled into a chair she was still frightened of, and the girls went in with her twice, and the study material for the MBA arrived in two enormous boxes that Navya refused to open.

And in that entire week, Manik Malhotra and Nandini Murthy did not exchange a single sentence.

Not an argument. Not a formal greeting. Nothing at all — only the occasional look across a room that neither of them intended to give, held one second too long, broken by whoever remembered first.

Saturday came round again, which meant the flat filled up, because that was the rule: everybody at Priya’s from Saturday evening to Sunday night, no excuses. Manik had produced three and Priya had dismissed all of them without appearing to listen, and Cabeer had simply arrived at his door.

On the terrace, Nandini sat with her knees drawn up and her back against the water tank.

NANDINI’S POV

Ayyappa, what is happening to me?

Every single time. Every time I am within four feet of that man, something goes wrong with me and I cannot even describe what it is.

I love Arjun. I have loved Arjun for two years. I said it out loud on the phone eight days ago and I meant it.

And eight days ago, I was lying on a couch two inches away from somebody else and I had entirely forgotten Arjun existed. That is the truth. Not tempted. Forgotten.

We would have kissed. If I had not said his name we would have kissed, and the appalling part — the part I have not been able to put down all week — is that I do not feel as though I did something wrong.

I feel as though I stopped something.

That is not the same. Those are not the same thing at all.

If Arjun ever knew. He trusts me completely. He has never once asked me where I am or who is in the room.

No. I will stay away from him. That is all. It is not complicated. Nothing has happened, nothing is going to happen, and in any case, that man and I cannot be in a hallway together without one of us saying something unforgivable.

So stop thinking about the Eiffel Tower, Nandini.

… Stop thinking about him.

POV ENDS

Two kilometres away, in a car, Manik was losing exactly the same argument.

MANIK’S POV

Right. Rules.

I will not look at her. If she is in a room, I am elsewhere. If I am spoken to, I answer in one word. That is the entire plan, and it is a good plan, and I have run harder operations than this.

Because I am losing control of something, and I have known that since a Monday morning when I stood in a doorway blocking sunlight like a piece of furniture.

Her eyes are the problem. There is something behind them, she is not telling anybody, and every instinct I have wants to get in there and take it out of her, and that is not a thing I do. For three years, I have not wanted to know one single fact about another human being in three years.

And she has Arjun. Which does not concern me. It is completely irrelevant to me and I have thought about it perhaps forty times this week.

Stay away from her. Done. Simple.

POV ENDS

Beside him, Cabeer watched four separate expressions go across his best friend’s face in about six seconds and said nothing for a while, purely out of enjoyment.

Then he shook his arm.

Manik came back from a very long way away. “What the hell?”

“Sorry. Did I interrupt something?”

“Yes, actually—” Manik stopped, one word too late.

Cabeer’s smile widened enormously.

“Cabeer,” said Manik, looking straight ahead. “You do not love yourself very much, do you.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you are aware that I can put you out of this car while it is moving.”

“I am terrified.”

“You should be.”

Priya opened the door and hugged both of them, and Navya came through with juice, and Manik sat down and immediately began looking at doorways.

“What is it?” said Priya. “You look lost.”

“No. Nothing.” He stood up again almost at once. “I’ll go and find Aman. You sit.”

She let him go. Cabeer watched him leave and frowned at the empty doorway.

Manik checked the two bedrooms on his way, and the corridor, and — for no reason he could have defended in court — the kitchen, and then gave up and went into Priya’s room, where Aman was gathering documents off the table.

He sat down in the other chair with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders somewhere around his ears, and stared at the carpet.

Aman looked at him for a moment, and then had to look away to keep his face straight, because a twenty-nine-year-old man was sitting in his fiancée’s bedroom sulking like a child who had been told there was no cake.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Tired.”

“Right.” Aman shut the laptop. “Come on, then. Everybody’s waiting.”

Everybody was on the sofas. Everybody except one.

Cabeer waited a full four minutes and then said, at a volume slightly above conversation, “Priya — where is Nandini, by the way?”

Manik’s head came up so fast that Cabeer nearly missed the whole performance.

He glared. Cabeer looked back at him with the serene face of a man who had all evening.

“Terrace,” said Priya. “Navu, has she still not come down? Call her.”

Manik let out a breath he had been holding for the better part of an hour, and sat back, and permitted himself approximately one second of relief before he noticed Cabeer watching him do it.

Nandini came down 5 minutes later, and stopped in the doorway.

Their eyes met. 8 days, and neither of them had said one word to the other, and they stood there for a beat too long in front of 4 people before both of them looked away at the same time.

Priya waved her in. She sat down beside her sister. Manik studied the carpet with tremendous concentration.

Cabeer nudged him. Nothing. He nudged him again. Nothing.

So he pinched him.

“Ow—”

Every head in the room came round.

“What happened?” said Priya, half out of her chair.

Manik looked at Cabeer with murder in it. Cabeer looked back with enormous innocence.

“Mosquito,” said Manik.

The women went to the kitchen and Aman’s phone rang, and he stepped out, and the moment the room was clear, Manik went for him.

Cabeer got off the sofa and put the dining table between them, laughing so hard he could barely run.

“You cannot catch me—”

“Come here—”

Aman came back in to find two grown men circling a table, and by the time everybody else arrived, Cabeer was behind a chair holding a cushion up defensively and Manik was rolling up a sleeve.

Nandini laughed.

It was not loud, and it was over quickly, and she put her hand up to cover it — but it was the first time in that flat that anybody had heard it happen without warning.

Manik stopped.

He put the sleeve down, walked back to the sofa, and sat, and said nothing at all.

The room went quiet in a way nobody could account for.

Cabeer lowered the cushion slowly. Then he came round the table, sat down beside his oldest friend, and laid the back of his hand against his forehead.

“Are you unwell?”

“Get off me.”

“No, seriously. He never lets it go. In eleven years, he has never once let it go.” Cabeer turned to the room with an expression of genuine grief. “My friend has forgotten me. Whose shoulder am I supposed to cry on now?”

“You,” said Priya, wiping her eyes, “are the biggest drama artist in this city. You are wasted in construction.”

“I have told him,” said Manik, from the sofa. “Repeatedly.”

“Has everybody finished?” said Cabeer, standing up with dignity. “Is there food in this house or not?”

There was, and it was his favourite, and every trace of injury vanished from him the moment he saw the table.

And nobody except Manik noticed that Nandini, sitting down opposite him, was still smiling faintly at nothing at all.