Chapter 7: The Apartment Aftermath
The cab ride from the airport was a silent, charged thing. They sat in the backseat, not touching, watching Delhi’s familiar chaos slide past the windows—the glittering malls, the choked intersections, the endless streams of headlights. The hotel bubble had definitively burst. The world outside was loud and real and demanding.
Sid’s knuckles brushed hers on the seat between them. A tiny spark. She didn’t pull away.
“You should just drop me,” Kirti had said at the baggage claim, her voice assuming a casual, colleague-like tone that felt like a glove pulled over a burning hand. “It’s on your way.”
It wasn’t on his way at all. He lived in the opposite direction. “Yeah,” he’d said. “Makes sense.”
Now, standing outside her building in a relatively quiet lane in Mayur Vihar, the awkwardness was a physical presence. A dog barked distantly. The smell of dust and night-blooming jasmine hung in the air.
“Well,” she said, shifting her small suitcase. “Thanks for the ride.”
“I’ll carry it up,” he said, already reaching for the bag. It wasn’t heavy.
“Sid, you don’t have to—”
“I know.” He walked past her towards the stairwell. The lift had an ‘Out of Order’ sign taped to it. He heard her sigh, then the click of her heels following him.
Her apartment was on the second floor. The hallway light was harsh and flickering. She unlocked the door, pushed it open, and a wave of her hit him—lavender laundry detergent, the faint, clinging ghost of cigarette smoke, something uniquely warm and lived-in. Home.
He stepped inside, dropping her bag just inside the doorway. The living room was small, dim, cluttered with books and a laptop open on a low table. A half-drunk glass of water sat beside it. It was so utterly, intimately her that it felt more invasive than seeing her naked.
“It’s a mess,” she said automatically, tossing her keys into a ceramic bowl. “I wasn’t expecting…”
“Yeah.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I should go.”
Neither of them moved.
The golden light from her bedroom spilled into the hallway, the half-drawn curtains backlit by a streetlamp. He could see the edge of an unmade bed, a tangle of sheets, yesterday’s newspaper spread across it.
She followed his gaze. A slow, unreadable smile touched her lips. She walked past him into the bedroom, not looking back. He was supposed to leave now. That was the plan. The sane, professional, correct thing.
His feet carried him forward instead.
In the doorway, he watched her bend over the bed, gathering the scattered newspapers. The rustle of the pages was loud in the quiet. She was just a silhouette against the window, all curve and suggestion.
“Kirti.”
She straightened, turned. Her face was in shadow. “We said we couldn’t do this in Delhi.”
“I know what we said.”
She took a step towards him. Then another. She stopped just inches away, her warm brown eyes searching his in the dim light. He could see the pulse beating at the base of her throat. She brought her hand up, placed it flat on his chest, right over his pounding heart.
“I’m already wet,” she said, her voice low and direct, stripped of all pretense. “So just come inside.”
The words were a detonation.
He didn’t kiss her. He pushed her. A gentle, firm shove backwards until her knees hit the edge of the mattress and she fell onto it with a soft gasp. The newspapers crinkled violently beneath her. He was on her in an instant, his mouth finding hers as his hands shoved her skirt up, fingers hooking into the waistband of her underwear and tearing them down her thighs. There was no finesse, no slow build. It was all hunger and claiming.
He entered her in one deep, sure thrust. She cried out, a sharp, ragged sound that was swallowed by the room. Her legs locked around his hips, her heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper. She was telling the truth. She was more than ready, hot and slick and tight around him, welcoming the frantic, punishing pace he set immediately.
“Yes,” she hissed, her head thrashing on the newsprint. “Just like that—I told you.”
He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, each drive of his hips a futile attempt to push the outside world away—the office, the commute, the knowing looks they’d have to avoid. This bed, this smell, these sounds were the only facts that mattered. Her nails scraped down his back. Her breath was hot and quick against his neck. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.”
He couldn’t have if he wanted to. It was a short, brutal race. The tension of the cab ride, the flight, the sheer insanity of being here in her bed, it all coiled into a spring too tight to hold. Her climax hit her suddenly, a series of sharp, internal clenches that pulled a guttural groan from his throat. He followed seconds later, spilling into her with a shudder that felt like it cracked something loose in his ribs.
Collapse. Heavy, sweat-damp breathing. The acidic smell of newsprint and sex.
He was still on her, inside her, his face buried in her neck. Her hands were limp on his back. The city hummed outside, indifferent.
Slowly, the world reassembled itself. The feel of the rough newspaper under his forearms. The ache in his knees from the wooden floor. The absurd headline next to her cheek: “Monsoon Delays Expected.”
He shifted, withdrawing from her, rolling onto his back beside her on the ruined pages. They lay side by side, staring at the ceiling, a faint crack running across it like a river on a map.
After a long while, she sat up. The newspaper stuck to her skin. She peeled it off with a slow, deliberate motion. She stood, naked and unselfconscious in the golden light, and walked to a dresser. He watched the muscles shift in her back. She lit two fat, sandalwood-scented candles. The match hissed, and a softer, dancing light pushed back the shadows.
The intimate glow made everything more real, not less. He saw the titles of her books stacked on the floor. A faded concert poster on the wall. A single, lonely earring on the nightstand.
“I’m starving,” she said, her voice normal again, but softer. She picked up her phone from the floor. “You staying to eat?”
“Yeah.” His own voice was rough. “If that’s okay.”
“It’s okay.” She opened the food delivery app, her thumb scrolling. “Chinese? There’s a place that does good Sichuan.”
“Perfect.”
She ordered, reciting her address, adding extra chili oil. The mundane ritual of it was stranger than the sex had been. She pulled on a large, soft t-shirt and a pair of shorts, then tossed a similar t-shirt at him. It smelled like her. He put it on.
They ate cross-legged on the living room floor, containers open between them, the candles flickering. They talked about nothing—the awful movie on the flight, a funny client story from months ago, the unreliability of the building’s lift. They carefully built a fence of normal conversation around the raw, exposed thing between them.
When the food was gone, the containers stacked, the silence returned. It was past midnight.
Sid stood, his joints stiff. “I should get going. Big day tomorrow.”
Kirti nodded, hugging her knees. “Yep. The Gupta presentation.”
He walked to the door, her t-shirt hanging loosely on him. He felt like an imposter in his own skin. She followed, leaning against the doorframe.
“So,” he said. “See you in the office.”
“See you in the office,” she echoed.
He wanted to kiss her goodbye. It felt like the natural thing to do. Instead, he just nodded, a stupid, formal little dip of his head. He turned and walked down the flickering hallway, down the stairs.
Outside, the night air was cooler. He hailed a cab. As it pulled away from the curb, he looked up at her window. The candlelight was still glowing. He saw her silhouette appear, just for a second, looking down. Then she turned away, and the curtain fell back into place.
The cab merged into the late-night traffic. Sid leaned his head against the cool glass. His back stung where she’d scratched him. He could still smell sandalwood and newsprint on her shirt. The presentation, the office, the Monday morning greetings—they all loomed ahead, a script he had to follow. But the script was blank now. He had no idea what his lines were supposed to be.