Wrecked - An After-Divorce Romance✨

Chapter Twelve

Let go.

Let go.

Let go.

If there was ever a bullshit advice, Dhruv had heard it was this. How easily his father had let go, of his mother's memory, of him when he ran away from home. That was something he didn't want to do.

He remembered that when he was in school, he used to get attached to even his pens which is never threw away. How could he let go of her? She was a part of him.

When he came back home, it was home now because she was there. He entered the front door and the house was quiet until he found her in the kitchen desk with her laptop open.

"Oh you're back." She said.

He said nothing.

"What did he want to talk about?" She asked him but he knew she was trying to dodge the awkwardness of what she had confessed.

"About my mom." He moved to the coffee making station he had installed.

"Oh." She was silent for a moment and then she quipped in a chiller tone, "Well! Dishu was telling me that she was in mood for Chinese and she wanted to go out so I'm looking at restaurants!"

He finished his ministrations and put down a cup in front of her, it was her favourite concoction, dark chocolate mocha.

"Relax, I won't bring it up again." He said taking his coffee to his room, he didn't have to see her expression to know she didn't expect that. Any other day, he would've happily played along but he was tired now. There was an old ache that seeped in till his bones. There was no niceness left in him anymore.

***

"Bhai!" His sister called him and she twirled around the room. She wore a pink kurta and jeans.

"You look pretty!" Dhruv said laughing.

"It's bhabhi's!" She said to him beaming.

While the door opened again and his breath caught as she saw her. She wore a black chiffon saree with gold twinkling in her ears. Her neck was empty as she wore a high neck blouse, her hands gleamed with pretty rings and he had realised that in all these years he had never gifted her jewellery. Not even a pendant.

Dhruv could certainly afford it and he ran a mental check on the gifts he had given her and his heart steeled when he realised that he had never gifted her anything. She never anything. On her birthdays he cooked for her and baked a cake.

Dhruv realised, what a pathetic husband, he had been. How had he not given her even a flower? Not a saree, not a trinket. And yet she had been so grateful to his lukewarm efforts that she had willed herself to have sex with him even when she wasn't in the mood.

"Bhai! I'm saying, doesn't babhi look pretty?" Dishu nudged him out of his thoughts and he nodded, "Yeah. She looks pretty. You too, Dishu. Let's go!"

***

Drishti had insisted that Khushi sit in the back with Dhruv, while she drove. She wished Drishti would stop pushing them together because it made everything so awkward. She knew he was mad at her for not telling him about the baby and he was just indulging Dishu who took it upon herself to play matchmaker.

She pulled out of her thoughts when the car stopped at the signal. Someone tapped the window and it was a think boy selling gajra. She pulled down her window and nodded sideways. Her hair was already in a pixie cut, where would she pin gajra anyway.

But the boy was insistent and pulled over a cloth from his basket to reveal Roses. She smiled but still nodded no. The boy left from his window and she heaved a sigh of relief.