Cigarette drinks
1094 Words
"I am curious if you are also hiding something from me?" I nonchalantly started the conversation, twirling my wine glass: fact number one about family–serious and deep conversations were extremely difficult to have with family.
Julian raised an eyebrow of toast. "Also? Who else are you referring to?"
"Mom. She met Tiara Raikar recently, that too inside a car. What could be the reason?" I said, taking in a bitter sip of the drink. He too mirrored my action, but in an elegant smile of taste.
"Maybe it was just a random meeting. You are thinking too much." Maybe not.
"But why inside a car?" I opinionated. "Mrs Raikar is very high profile. Not only she carries the Raikar surname form her marriage but also her native side is Hella rich and powerful. So, she must have preferred a light meeting."
"Well, might be so." I wasn't convinced with his explanation but it was not him who met, so I decided to drop the subject and chugged in two continuous glasses nonstop. It felt like my soul bathing in blood water.
"What did you find out about Father's case?" He asked me. "Nothing much. The same CBI update." I didn't want to lie or share hollow information, once I collect concrete evidences of why did Dad meet Meher several times in a week before his death, I will present it to him in the best porcelain plate.
"I want a smoke." He declared and slipped out a cigarette from his tiny box of whatever he stored in it, excluding a lighter. Handing it to me he stood up, "I will be back with the lighter. Stay here."
I sighed as he left for the item, and then placed the cigarette between my lips; staining its skin with my wine-red lipstick. Dangling it from one end to the other side of my lips I watched the flowers glow in the light's presence.
Will Dad still be alive if he hadn't come there that day? Maybe yes. I must be drunk to think about it again. There were so many people whom my father had given a lifeline, and not one of them is here to pay a last tribute, instead the one’s who had feared his existence has come to attend.
Quite strange but not peculiar, fancy is my brain to not comprehend that they must be here to laugh at my ridiculousness to get my father killed, then be threatened to close the case. Then someone who is present here must be an accomplice to the unforgivable malefactor, who gave direct orders for the killing.
I shouldn’t have had a drink. The moment I had seen that unfamiliar face of Shad, who works for TMZ, and brother of Meher the unforgettable lady, I should’ve put more meaning into it. I need to go and investigate his presence here.
Swinging the cigarette between my lips, again, I tried to get up from the stool.
"Want a lighter?" That voice, him again, I guess I can't escape him today after all.
I craned my neck slightly up as my eyes fell on a black waist length coat with a white-collar line; unbothered buttons seeping the white shirt which fell and rose as he breathed. My eyes then wandered to his V face; those full lips, the similar slant pole nose and finally his black eyes. The same eyes with which he once graced me the warmth of healing, and those bastard long fingers, the sinful ring on his middle finger made him ten more times sexier than he was.
"Yes." I replied, my teeth flanking the cigarette. I can't run away or avoid him forever, although I am not quite sure of why I wanted to do so. Mom and Jules saved me once but it's better I face this for once and all.
"I have one." He said calmly. Is he going to judge my character with one cigarette and tons of wine? Previously I was a teenager he rejected, this time will he just see me as a spoilt heiress and brat of drinking?
He took out a lighter from his pocket, with a weirdly blue-eyed tiger engraved inside a map on the steel cover, and bent down to reach my height level, as if the lodestone pulling out the key of its existence.
"I didn't know you smoke." He said, as the fire flickered between our faces like the sunset covering photoshoot magazines. "I do it too, sometimes." He added, and my heart warmed with an unknown feeling of relief, maybe that he wasn't judging me.
Although deep down I knew that I don’t need his judging, nor the approval rate to survive. But, something in me just wanted that recognition from him.
"How are you?" He asked me after lighting the stick as I took in a smooth first drag while he settled in the chair where Jules was seated earlier. Turning to the other side I took another drag and showed him a thumbs up and tilted it horizontal as a reply to his question.
Double raising my eyebrows’, I pulled out the cigarette and poured him the red wine in a spare glass from the below shelves of the table. "I am doing good." He replied to my question.
"Don't stare at my memorial. It will get jinxed." I said to him as he kept watching my memorial chain, a.k.a turned into bracelet frequently. He smiled, "There is no jinxing, it's just a false belief."
"False belief might be better than damaged beliefs." I reacted warily.
"Are you on a business trip?" I asked, honestly, I didn't know what he was doing for a living right now, and where he is gone after giving up on Mendel Sports Academy: he is overseas is what I was informed.
"Sort of a private vacation. I came to meet Mom, Greymon Gran, and . . you." He added the last part a little hesitantly.
"Me? Why?" I asked and wondered why didn't he mention Kriag and his father, do they meet regularly?
"Yes you. I have a proposal for you." He spoke, and I could see a distrust in his voice which I failed to recognise. Proposal?
I must really be drunk. Really. I wonder if I should ask him whether he was still in touch with Meher.
I blurted, "Anyways, I won't be any help. Someone wants me dead."
He looked a bit taken aback, and perplexed, perhaps. “What?”
“Someone is trying to kill me.”
- Writer
