One Day At A Time

Chapter 15 - Tea For Terrace

Something flickered behind Arnav's eyes as his lips caressed her name and Khushi flinched. Her own name uttered by him struck her as unfamiliar, clouting her as if it was an intentional verbal blow. A moment of doubt assailed her. Khushi? When was the last time he had called her that? Had he called her by this name on any other day when she wasn't looking at him, she probably wouldn't have responded to him. For Arnav, her name had never been Khushi. Years ago, in a moment of jest, he had started calling her Khush, and it had seemed beautiful somehow. The name had stuck to her skin like glitter, and from that day onwards, she had been Khush to all her friends and most of her relatives as well.

Khushi felt nervous and fidgeted under his scrutiny, wondering what was going on his mind. She had been caught off guard by his address, and her mind had stopped working altogether.

"Ma has been waiting for you since morning." He breathed out in a hoarse voice.

She looked at his implacable expression. What was going on in his mind, she wondered. Her eyes threw a mute, impassioned plea towards him and she knew that he had heard it. But paying no heed to her request, he simply turned around and strode away towards his bedroom.

Khushi stood at the door, stunned as her mind raced to find all the plausible explanations for his reticent behaviour. She desperately tried to remember everything that had happened between them in the recent past, until her memory brought to the fore the moment on the train, where she had refused to take money from Akash to call him. So, that was it? All this fuss over such a petty issue?

She felt hot rage take over her senses—rage against the man who said he was in love with her, yet had left her standing at her door with a few words, all proprieties been damned. This kind of behaviour from him was completely unexpected, and she couldn't decide if she was more livid or shocked. It had taken him just three minutes to deride the pain, the agony and longing of three months that he had kept blathering about on all the phone calls to her! Not to mention the state of mind she was in over the last couple of weeks, which added to the fire, turning it into a full-blown blaze inside her. Incensed, she turned on her heel and started walking away. She was halfway across when Shaila Kaki's voice halted her feet.

"Khushu beta!" Shaila hollered. "What happened? Are you leaving without meeting me?"

Khushi stood still for a moment with her back to her, eyes closed, struggling to rein in the anger that had set her alight. She sighed as she turned around with a smile on her face.

"We've missed you, Khushu! Everything was so quiet when you weren't around!" Kaki enveloped her in a warm hug the moment Khushi came running into her arms. She then took her hand and dragged her into the kitchen. "Have tea with us and tell me all about your trip and what you did!"

"Nako, Kaki. I just had something to eat and—"

"Just tea and I am not listening to any more nako!" She reprimanded her lightly. "And where is Arnav? Did you not meet him? I was expecting you to scream seeing him here right now!"

Her heart skipped a beat the moment he was mentioned, and she hurried towards the crockery shelf and picked up a couple of mugs. "I met him downstairs, Kaki. I got a shock of my life."

Kaki laughed. "We all did! It was meant to be a surprise! I had called his dorm in the morning that day, would you believe it? And the operator told me that he was out and would be back in the evening! It appears that Arnav had taken the operator into confidence!" She smiled. "Khushu, can you call him for tea? It's almost ready."

A familiar feeling inside her heart had her stomach in knots. She hesitated but decided to ignore the tingles all over her body and call him before things became too suspicious for Kaki. Standing by the closed door of his room, she knocked on it a couple of times. Her heart was beating to a mad rhythm as she waited for him to open it. When he didn't respond after a few knocks, she pushed it open slightly and found him sitting at his desk, his attention entirely devoted to a bunch of papers before him. He glanced at her, and their eyes met once again.