(Untold Stories) Chapter Thirty-Three (3): What Morning Brings

A/N: It’s been a while, so here’s the link to the previous two installments of the chapter to refresh your memory. 

Chapter 33(1), Chapter 33(2)

---

After ages, she had slept through the night like a dead log. When she woke up that morning, with closed eyes her hand searched for her phone that she knew would be upon the bedside table. When instead her fingers clutched at thin air, a frown appeared on her forehead and she reluctantly blinked her eyes open. The sight of a very familiar bedroom greeted her, but it took her some time to recollect exactly how she found herself in it. Lavanya’s gentle breathing from beside her was a reminder of how her two separate worlds had collided into each other the previous night. Past and present, entangled into one. Events and words then crystallized through the haze of drowsiness, until each vivid detail became sharp enough for Khushi to draw in a deep breath and sink her head into her hands. Sunlight flooded through the window and onto her lap, and when Khushi’s eyes traveled to the curtains flapping because of the morning breeze, another memory from the previous night came rushing back to her, this time bringing awareness along with it.

It’s strange how some walls build over the course of several years, brick upon brick, and then come crumbling down all at once without warning.  How insurmountable distances are sometimes covered in the blink of an eye, and how boundaries we carve in stones dissolve like finger drawings on sand with one determined wave. It feels deceptive, how love creeps slowly and silently, hiding behind excuses, distractions, and denials, completely blindsiding its victim. Then in one powerful moment, it breaks down all walls, dissolves all boundaries, and makes nonsense of all perceived distances.

Khushi remained quietly seated on the bed for some time, her face a picture of rapidly altering emotions but her figure completely still otherwise. Then a while later, she looked at the window once again, and all thought left her mind except one memory of who had been standing there with her the previous night…or rather in whose arms she had been standing there….the warmth of his embrace, the gentleness in his voice, the concern in his eyes, and the absence of all distance, real and metaphorical between them.

Khushi absentmindedly ran a palm across her neck, then threw the blanket off herself and got to her feet. She picked up her fallen stole from the floor, folded it meticulously and placed it upon the chair with fidgety fingers. Then she walked to the window, adjusted the curtains, paced about the room, and went back to the bed, clutching the mattresses a little too forcefully with her open palms.

She looked about the room, and realized that all the furniture, her furniture, was hidden underneath bed sheets. How had she only just noticed it? Where had she been all this time? How could she have only just noticed it, she wondered to herself, and it wasn’t likely a question of just the draped furniture.

She got up to her feet with a determined stance, and began pulling off the covers from all her belongings, perhaps by this gesture trying to uncover something of her own heart. She pulled the cover from her dressing table, her study unit, her bookshelf, each piece of furniture just as familiar to her eyes as the day she had last been home. Each carrying several memories of a Khushi she once was, a Khushi that all at once felt too distant and too close to her after the previous night.

None of the furniture had any dust settled. This room, her sanctuary, had been well maintained and preserved exactly as it was when she had left it. Khushi didn’t know how to feel about it. It wasn’t something she would have expected.

She tried to open her cupboard but it was locked, the keys perhaps in her parents’ possession. She knew that if she were to open it she’d find a lot of wedding finery carelessly stuffed inside, surrounded by college hoodies, and clothes she would recognize as her own the minute she laid eyes on them. She had left Delhi for Lucknow the previous day with hardly any luggage, and for a moment, it was like a young Khushi from three years ago standing in front of her cupboard wondering what to wear for the day. Everything reminded her of a time she thought she had forgotten amidst the storm that overtook her life in the past few years. But it’s a lesson it takes many the hard way to learn, that you never truly learn to forget home – its smell, its walls, or the memory it carries of you.

Suddenly too overwhelmed, she stepped back from the cupboard and felt a strong need to go out into fresh air.

“Where is Arn— the guests, my other two friends, are they up?” she stopped a house staff on her way to the terrace.

“Jee,” he replied. “One of them. He’s with your father upstairs on the terrace having tea. I don’t know his name, but he’s the one with—”

Khushi did not need to be told who it could be that her father would seek audience with alone so early in the morning. “I understood. Thank you,” she answered, not letting either surprise or alarm show in her voice at that piece of information. With a heart that wasn’t quite sure anymore of which way to beat, she made her way to the terrace.

 

---

This is a quick, final installment to Ch. 33, that was meant to be posted….well, ages ago. I know the conversation you would’ve expected to happen here hasn’t happened between our leads, but the good news is that there’s no waiting months for it. Next chapter is seeing touch ups and will be up as soon as I’m done with it (a day or so hopefully?)

It’s good to be back to writing this one. This is not a story I want to write half-heartedly, when I’m caught between a thousand distractions. So for your understanding and patience, I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart ❤