A Journey to Trust and Heal

38- Forgiven but not forgotten

After clearing up the mess in the living room, I joined Rudra in the kitchen.

"Do you need any help?", I asked since I was getting bored.

"Ah! No. I am good. Everything is almost done", he said refusing my help.

His loss, he lost the rare opportunity of receiving my help.

Pouting, I stood by the kitchen's entrance so that I don't come in between his way and we could still talk.

"I am really sorry. You aren't angry on me, right?", he asked.

"For not accepting my help?", I asked confused as to why he would apologize for something so trivial.

"No, not about that. For lying and not telling the trio about me being your employee", he clarified.

"Don't be. I seriously don't care about it. It's your wish, if you want to inform them, you can and if you want to hide the truth then that's fine too", I replied shrugging.

It wasn't even a huge thing for me to get angry on him. After all, I was hiding something much more significant than this.

"Oh! I need to apologize for one more thing", Rudra said making his face like a light bulb suddenly lit up in his head.

"How many blunders have you exactly made that you keep apologizing for every freaking second?", I asked rolling my eyes, already tired of his sorry's.

"This is the last one", he deadpanned.

"Wow! Showing attitude while apologizing. You deserve a gold medal for it", I said clapping sarcastically.

"Can we be serious for a second?", he asked tired of my continuous diversion of the topic.

I gave a 'go ahead' sign by my hands so that he could apologize for whatever mistake he has done.

"You know when Jiya lectured me, I realized that what a blunder I have made. She was absolutely right, I shouldn't have come to your house just like that.

What if we were caught in embarrassing situation? There's lesser chance during evenings but I also come to your house early in the morning for making breakfast. I should have thought about, I am so sorry. I just hope that I didn't make you feel uncomfortable", he said with a guilty face.

"While I agree that Jiya's words are right to a point but you always came on a scheduled time so I was always expecting you hence there was no way any blunder would have happened. So it was fine even if you came in without announcing your presence.

Being said that, if ever you come here in any other time than your usual one, I would prefer that you ring the bell instead of opening the door by the keys", I told him my thoughts and he looked genuinely relieved that I didn't think anything wrong about his behaviour.

"Yeah sure, I will keep that in mind. Now go and sit down. Food is ready, I will bring them out", he said pushing me out of the kitchen.

"By the way, Ganga Tai told me that you did an internship in restaurant. Are you going to pursue cooking as a career?", I asked him when he was serving me the food.

"I should have known that Mom couldn't keep anything in her stomach. To answer your question, I am not sure. I do like cooking but still thinking about all the options out there", he answered.

"Yeah, you are just like your Mother, aren't you? Didn't you snitch about whatever happened here?", I called him out of being a tattle-tale.

"Well, not everything. I still haven't informed her that you threw me out of the house on my first day of work", he taunted.

I fell silent at that.

"You still haven't forgotten about my rude behaviour, have you?", I asked timidly.

He sighed, "Sorry for ruining the mood. Don't know, how did that come up. I have already forgiven you for that".

"Forgiven but not forgotten, point to be noted", I commented.

He winced and pleaded, "Can we talk about something else. It happened a long time ago and we don't need to ruin our mood for that".

I sighed but nodded nonetheless.

He quickly changed the topic to a lighter one. We must have left the topic today but I am sure it would come up again in future and that time it would be addressed properly.