All Strings Attached

Chapter Nineteen

This is one of those chapters where I feel like I must rightfully demand comments, and you'll see why. AHHHH so excited. Please vote and comment I really want to know what you think!

Dhushyanth

"Love you," I hear Sita call out on the phone to her best friend, gaining my full attention, at once.

She seems to be alerted by my sudden movements, she turns to look at me. "What?"

I shrug. "Nothing."

She shrugs to herself and goes back to scrolling on her phone.

"I didn't take you for an expressive person," I let on, a few TV drowned moments later.

"Have I not expressed my dislike for you enough?" She does not even look up from her phone, her nonchalance evident through her behaviour.

A chuckle escapes me, even though I know she's roasting me. The mouth on this woman, my god.

The mouth on this woman— "you've expressed other things a lot more passionately—"

A pillow smacks me square in the face, effectively shutting me up. "You're so lucky you're a woman and my wife," I tell her, holding onto the pillow.

"Oh," she challenges, barely humouring me as she goes back to sketching in her book. "And what if I wasn't?"

"To be fair," I concede, "We've done our fair share of WWE wrestling."

Sita lifts her pencil from the sketchbook, but her eyes remain downcast, and I notice the slightest flicker of movement to her peripheral vision, but she clears her throat and pulls her feet up, bringing her knees closer to her chest to rest her book on them, and continues to avoid any talk of last night.

"You can't avoid it forever," I let her know, flicking through the channels. "You can't fight with me, and then cry and then make me go back to the bedroom, wake me up and put me in a car to your father's, and then refuse to see your parents—"

"It's been a rough couple of days, okay?" She doesn't look up from her book. "And thank you—"

I hate the genuineness in her tone. "I don't need your thanks," I cut her off. "I don't want you to be grateful or apologetic or any of that, I just need you to help me understand."

She turns to look at me, her big eyes looking strangely soft. "Understand what?" She asks.

"Talk to me," I urge her, hoping she will finally have it out in a constructive way. "We're both in this together, you know? We're going through the same thing."

"No one is slut shaming you," she says, looking away as she blinks. "My own mother basically called me a slut for having sex with you. The worse thing is: you weren't the first, maybe you'd be the last, cause now we're stuck in this, but if she actually knew everything that I've ever done—" she sniffles, and rubs the tip of her nose with the knuckle of her index finger.

"Come here," I beckon, opening an arm for her, compelled by courage I did not know I had. What if she takes one look at me, scoffs, and returns to her sketching?

Sita looks at me, her eyes scanning my countenance and then my arms, as if contemplating her next move. She sighs, resignedly, and puts her sketchbook down, on the edge of the table.

I notice the sketch of the garden, but my attention is immediately captured by my wife who backs up, against my shoulder.

"Dhruv's called me a manwhore for years, if that comforts you in any sense," I let her know, trying to joke.

"You think it's a compliment," she accuses, "it's cool for you to sleep around."

My father won't speak to me because he thinks I did my wife wrong by doing that, exactly.