Chapter 6: The Unexpected Visitor
The touch of her fingers on his cheek was a brand. It lingered long after she’d withdrawn her hand, a phantom warmth that spread through his skin and settled somewhere low in his gut. She smiled, a knowing, maternal curve of her lips that didn’t quite reach her tired eyes.
“You look like you’ve swallowed a lemon, beta,” Anjali said, turning back to the sink where she began rinsing Sameer’s teacup. The casual domesticity of the gesture clashed violently with the riot in Rohan’s head.
“I just don’t like how he looks at you,” Rohan muttered, the words thick in his throat. He leaned against the kitchen counter, the cool marble doing nothing to douse the heat inside him.
“He’s a boy.They all look.” She shrugged, but her shoulders were tense.“It means nothing. It’s just… the old photos.The persona.Not me.”
But it was her. It was the swell of her hip in the cheap jeans she wore for laundry days, the way her hair fell over her shoulder as she bent forward. Sameer hadn’t been looking at a magazine cutout; he’d been looking at the sweat-damp tendrils at the nape of her neck, the curve of her back as she’d reached for the sugar. The reality was infinitely more potent.“He’s not a boy. He’s a pig,” Rohan said, sharper than he intended.Anjali sighed, placing the cup on the drying rack. She wiped her hands on a towel, a slow, deliberate motion. When she looked at him, the teasing was gone, replaced by a deep, weary vulnerability.“And what are you, Rohan? My guardian?My husband?” The question hung in the jasmine-scented air, dangerous and blunt.
He had no answer.The silence stretched, taut as a wire. Down the hall, the soft, rhythmic hiss of his father’s oxygen machine was a metronome marking their uncomfortable stalemate.“I’m sorry,” she whispered finally, her eyes dropping.“That was unfair. I’m just tired. The shoot yesterday ran late, and the director kept wanting… more.” She wrapped her arms around herself.“Sometimes I feel like a mannequin they keep dressing up. The bones are getting old.”
He couldn’t bear it. The slump of her posture, the defeat in her voice.It erased the image of Sameer’s leering face. He stepped forward, into her space, and put a hesitant hand on her shoulder. The silk of her blouse was slippery under his fingers.“You’re not old. You’re the most beautiful woman in any room.He’s just… he’s not worth your energy. Or mine.”
She leaned back, just slightly, into his touch.Her head tilted, her hair brushing his forearm. He could smell her shampoo, something with coconut, and beneath it, the faint, exhausted salt of her skin. The balcony door was still open from Sameer’s exit, and a city breeze drifted in, fluttering the hem of her kurta.
Her phone, the one he’d bought with his father’s card, buzzed on the coffee table beside the forgotten kulfi. She stiffened, then moved away from him to get it.The moment shattered.
She looked at the screen, and all the color drained from her face. “It’s the hospital.”
The two words turned the air to ice.Rohan’s possessiveness, his simmering anger, evaporated instantly. “Papa?”
“They… they want me to come. His stats are fluctuating.” Her voice was a thin thread.The model was gone, the teasing mother was gone. In her place was a terrified wife, her hands beginning to tremble.
“I’ll drive you,” he said, already moving towards the door to get the car keys.
“No, no, you have your class tomorrow, I’ll just call a–”
“I’m driving you,” he insisted, his tone leaving no room for argument. It was the same voice he’d used when he’d insisted on the new phone, on the bike ride, on paying for dinner with the ring-store money. A voice that brooked no dissent because it was forged in the fear of losing her too.
She didn’t fight him.She just nodded, grabbing her purse with clumsy hands. “Let me just… I need to check on him first.” She hurried down the hall towards the master bedroom, her footsteps silent on the plush carpet.Rohan stood alone in the vast, quiet living room. The soaring windows now felt like the walls of a glass cage, the glittering city below a indifferent spectacle. He looked at the framed Femina cover on the far wall, her younger self laughing forever in a world without sickbeds and midnight calls.That woman seemed like a stranger.
When she returned, she had thrown a light scarf over her shoulders. Her face was composed, but her eyes were wide and dark with panic.“Ready,” she said, the word barely audible.
The elevator ride down was silent. He watched their reflection in the polished brass doors: a tall, tense young man and a beautiful, hollowed-out woman.She stood close enough that her arm pressed against his. He wanted to put his arm around her, to pull her into his side, but the gesture felt too big, too loaded with all the things they weren’t saying.
In the car, she stared straight ahead, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap. The streetlights strobed across her profile, highlighting the famous cheekbones, the vulnerability of her parted lips.
“Remember that time,” she said suddenly, her voice quiet against the hum of the engine, “you were maybe fourteen, and I had that awful flu?You skipped cricket practice to make me soup.It was terrible. All pepper.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “You ate the whole bowl.”
“I was so touched. You were trying to be the man of the house.” She paused, the smile fading.“You still are.”
He tightened his grip on the wheel. The hospital loomed ahead, a concrete monolith blazing with cold light. “I don’t want to be the man of the house,” he said, the truth stumbling out. “I just don’t want you to be alone.”
She placed a hand over his on the gear shift.Her skin was cold. “I know.”
He pulled into the emergency drop-off lane. Before she could move, he turned to her.The interior light was harsh, showing every fine line, every trace of fatigue. “Go in.I’ll park. I’ll be right behind you.”
She searched his face, her gaze lingering on his eyes, his mouth. Then she leaned over, and for a heartbeat, he thought she might kiss his cheek. Instead, she pressed her forehead against his temple, a desperate, platonic intimacy. He felt the flutter of her eyelashes, the quick, hot exhalation of her breath.“Thank you, Rohan,” she whispered.
Then she was gone, sliding out of the car and hurrying towards the automatic doors, her scarf trailing behind her like a whisper of smoke.
He sat there for a full minute, the ghost of her forehead against his skin, the scent of her hanging in the air.The fear for his father was a cold, heavy stone in his chest. But beneath it, coiling and undeniable, was another emotion, sharpened by Sameer’s visit, by her touch, by her whispered gratitude in the dark.
It was the fierce, terrible thrill of being needed. Of being, for her, the only one.