Tangled || ArShi FF

Chapter 13 - My work here is done.

Khushi took a sip of water and placed the glass on the center-table. She leant back on the couch and waited for Arnav to process it all. He was sitting across from her, scrolling through their texts and shaking his head in disbelief.

"Holy sh*t," he kept repeating the phrase to himself.

It had been some minutes now, since she told him everything. At first, he had listened patiently without revealing any emotion. Khushi was a bit scared that maybe he wasn't as excited about the situation as she had been. But then again, she had taken days to figure out what she wanted. He, too, deserved the same.

Once she had finished talking, his partly open jaw shut and his eyebrows crinkled. He opened is mouth to say something but nothing came out. Since then, he had been going through his texts. That was some 20 minutes back.

"Hold on!" he exclaimed abruptly and showed her the screen of his phone.

(Saturday, May 20th)

-Unknown- 7:13pm || [+Attachement.jpg]

-Unknown- 7:14pm || As someone who never goes out much, do I look okay?

It was the picture of her in the white gown that she had sent him. "This was the night I met Akash's girlfriend and we both found out that our cousins were dating. But you weren't wearing this white dress that night."

Khushi nodded, "I was going to wear the white dress but I spilled red wine on it and had to change at the last moment."

He pressed his fingers on his chin, "If you hadn't changed, I would have recognized you immediately."

She nodded again. The way everything happened, almost as if the universe wanted to draw this out...

"Wait!" he exclaimed, eyeing her from head to toe. "You are wearing it right now. The same white dress."

"Yeah..." she ran her hands over the fabric of her gown. She had thought that wearing the same dress would add to the surprise of the reveal. Now she wasn't quite certain if "surprise" was the word for Arnav. He seemed more in shock. Again, she calmed her mind down and repeated, "he just needs time to process" like a mantra in her mind.

"So for nearly 2 months we have been unknowingly texting one another," he mumbled. He had repeated this line a few times now to which she nodded in affirmation.

"And how long since you found out?" he asked.

"A week." She responded and told him how she reached that conclusion. She told him that right after confronting him in the men's washroom, the pattern of the tiles ticked something off in her brain, she then found out that the stranger of her texts was someone in the office and later that night, when Arnav was telling Payal how he had never heard from Khushi despite of giving her his private no., she put two and two together. She told him that she called him as well, to double check.

"That call from the stranger!" he raised his eyebrows, "You were confirming my identity."

"I am sorry I didn't tell you before," Khushi apologized, "I was trying to wrap my mind around all this," she gestured to the empty space between them, "I wanted to respond to your texts too but-."

"It's all right," Arnav interrupted, "I understand how shocked you must have been."

She nodded slowly, "Yeah." His words relaxed her. Like she had thought, he just needed some time to wrap his head around everything.

He set his phone down and pressed his palms on his face, "This is... This is... extraordinary," he commented.

"I know," she agreed with him, "To think we're each others strangers when we, initially, couldn't even look each other in the eyes."