Strings Attached (On-going)

21. HOME

OSCAR'S POV

As the CEO of such a huge firm, one would expect that I got to get to work late like the regular bosses do.On the contrary, I was always early to work. I got to work earlier than most of my staff, they actually adored me for that too.

So as usual, I was early to work and the front desk at the reception was empty. Raya of all people? Late?
No matter how early I was, she got there before I did. I always wondered if she ever had enough sleep.

A few minutes after I got settled in, she came through. Normally, she would enter my office with her set of white teeth mirrored at me. This morning though, she came in face down, her eyes puffy and red. I rose immediately and met her midway, a little dazed by her change in demeanor.

"Come here, come" I opened my arms and she fell into them, sobbing silently but bitterly onto my chest. I rubbed her arm gently, soothing her. She released herself from my embrace and wiped her face with a tissue paper, sniffing the cold air.

I stayed quiet, waiting for her to open up. "I never thought he could even hurt a fly" she said in her thick Indian accent, wiping her face which had turned redder. "He thinks I don't put in much effort into our relationship like he does" she sniffed.

Apparently, her fiance, Mohan, had a problem with him always being the one coming to see her and that any attempt to make her go to India with him failed. Due to that, he thought she was seeing another person, hence, her reluctance to go with him.

A little agreeable...I dared not say it to her face though.

Also, a little immature, that, I had the mouth to say.

"We had an argument this morning and he..he broke it off with me"

"I'm so sorry about that Ray" if she wasn't in tears, she would have chided me for calling her that, but I wasn't ready to repent.

When we meet people, it's either one or many things that attracts us to them. When we get attracted to them, we see them as golden bottles, even eggs that we don't want to crush. We adore and cherish them like our very own heartbeat, as if their absence will deprive us of oxygen.

When the golden surface begin to fade off and we see the actual colour beneath, when we get to know they're actually not angels, it breaks us and kills our very souls.

When Raya met Mohan about nine months ago,he was all she could think of. He practically became her god. He stayed for just a few months and went back to India but they kept in touch, as he did sometimes, came back to spend some time with her. She loved him, I knew it, she would talk about him almost every time. As far as I was concerned, she was very happy with him, very happy.

All that had sunk into the ocean now, or on its way down.

I closed on the space between us and took her hand into mine, "you'll be fine, he walked away but if he loves you, he's gonna come back. Believe me", I soothed her

"Yeah", she sniffed and chortled. "I guess"

"You never know, people change"

"He just did"

"He might change back"

She stared down to her feet for a while and smiled back at me.

"Did I ever tell you how much I disliked the size of his nose?---Too huge" I joked....or didn't, he actually had a big nose.

"You're mean", she laughed and swatted my arm

"And how he always stood silently behind you till you saw him, by chance, that's so weird,who does that?" I said and Raya was gasping for air as she laughed her lungs out. She nodded in agreement amidst laughter.