Charmed

Epilogue

One year later:

As soon as her theme song starts to play, Prashasti Singh takes one final look in the mirror before walking out from behind the curtain and onto the stage. Her local talk show is the top-rated one in its time slot.

"Hello everyone, how are you all today?" she smiles when the audience stands and erupts in claps and whistles.

"We have a great show for you today, master magician, Shubham Jain will be here to entertain us," she pauses when the audience breaks out again a round of heavy applause, oohs, and ahs at the mention of his name.

"And then the world's best ventriloquist, Vignesh Pande will join us," she smiles when they clap again. Once everyone is seated, Prashasti gives her monologue and after a commercial break, she calls Shubham out.

He enters from the side of the stage; the handclapping is thunderous. He nods at the crowd then approaches Prashasti, kisses her cheek, and whispers a few words in her ear before taking a seat beside her.

"Shubham, how are you?"

"I'm doing great, busy, very busy."

"I read that you resigned with MGM for an extended residency."

"I did, looking forward to being home for a while after my world tour."

"Does a certain baker have anything to do with your decision?" Prashasti asks, winking at the audience.

Shubham laughs, "She would indeed."

"The bachelor's been tamed," she laughs and the crowd claps again. "We're going to go to commercial break and when we return, we'll see how good Shubham is at dancing," she announces just as the camera zooms and pans over the audience.

When they return, Shubham and Prashasti are wearing matching tee shirts, pants, a checked shirt tied around their middles and baseball hats, and bills in the back of their heads. The music starts to play and the two of them begin with the Macarena. They put their right arms out, palms down repeating the same with the left arm. After a short time, they transition into "Oops I did it again", "Bye, Bye, Bye" and finally they slide their feet up, bend their backs and shift their arms to the sounds of The Bangle's "Walk Like an Egyptian".

By the time they finish their routine, the audience is in stitches including the people backstage who watch Shubham closely. Aditi is doubled over as she watches from behind the curtain, but not because Shubham's a bad dancer.

"Aditi, one dance?"

She nods and follows Shubham to the dance floor. He turns and holds her tight to his chest even though the song is far from a slow one. Her thoughts coalesce and center on Shubham...his touch, his smell, his handsome face.

"I'm really glad you came tonight." He's looking at her strangely, his eyes still have the unflinching ability to make her speechless.

"It's Nikita and Manik's wedding, how could I not?"

Shubham brushes a tendril of hair out of her eyes. "Aditi, I'm going to kiss you now."

She nods and tilts her head slightly upwards. His lips find hers, fitting together perfectly as they ever had, and in his kiss, she learns everything she wants to know, nobody on this earth can kiss like Shubham.

He breaks away and his eyes sparkle a little. "It is tradition, after all."

Aditi nods dreamily, still relishing the taste of him on her lips. "We-"

He interrupts by kissing her again, this time longer and more demanding. "C'mon, let's get out of here," he takes her by the hand and leads her out of the door.