Meant to be

Ch 20 contd....

Shehnaaz felt Sidharth's stirring next to her, the room was still plunged in darkness and the morning song had yet to play. She was snuggled into his side with her back nestled against his body. He was semi awake and he turned towards Shehnaaz and spooned her from behind and flung his arm across her body and caressed her face with his. She instinctively acknowledged him by cupping his face with her tiny palm and cupping it she softly said "putthu uth gaya, abhi aur time hai, aaj Saturday bhi hai soja, kal late sey soye haina" saying this she lightly caressed his cheek with her palm. He purred a deep 'hmmmm' acknowledging what she said and yet unwilling to give up this intimacy for sleep just yet. This house offered very few opportunities to cuddle and express tender emotions. He snuck his hand under her top and laid his bare palms firmly against her tummy and started sensuously rubbing his fingers there, and he said 'chal tu bhi soja meri jaan'  and both of them gave into the physical exhaustion and the comfort they both experienced by being next to each other.

The next thing they knew the lights rudely came on and music blasted  and the morning was well underway. Sidharth deliberately joined in on the dance this morning to fool around and to also break the mood from the horrendous events of the night gone by.he had decided that today he will ignore all the people who got on his nerve and just hang with the people who he currently was able to tolerate and also be witty instead of aggressive. He needed to wind down and refocus on the game. Between the extreme emotions Shehnaaz and asim and rashmi evoked in him, he had lost sight of winning the game. So he spent beginning of the morning with paras and mahira and even indulged in banter with them. Even while he did that he in some way wanted to put Arti in her place and wanted to do that for a long time coming. The tea incident with Rashmi only confirmed to him that she was playing a clever game and stringing everyone along while coming out righteous and holier than thou. So he did what came best to him, that is teasing her but also taunting her.

Shehnaaz in the meanwhile was relieved that Sidharth and she were now talking but was also on the edge because so many things remained unclear and yet so many things came out uncomfortably clear. The sight of Sidharth flirting with Mallika SHerawat even though she knew it was all staged, the sight of Arti and Sid in the staged setting of feeding each other chocolate dipped strawberries, the fact that Paras and Mahira seemed to be in on the inner circle and were establishing boundaries that was trying to keep her out, it all rankled on her. She was coming slightly unhinged. All the things that rooted her, grounded her, it was all coming unhinged because Sidharth has entered her inner sanctum, hell she did not even know she had an inner sanctum till he waltzed right in! She took her morning cup of tea and went in and sat on the blue couch hoping to just come to terms with her swirling emotions and feelings. She settled there and desperately tried to ignore that Sidharth was sitting around a circle which consisted of Arti, ShefaliZ, Paras and Mahira....Mahira was mocking and celebrating the fact that she was not doing her breakfast duty, everyone was riling her on. These things went against Shehnaaz's life and work ethics, she could not bring herself to shirk away from duties irrespective of who the captain was. More than anything else, the fact that Sidharth was sitting there and doing this that did not sit well with her, it upset her but what upset her more was that he was doing things that were driven and directed by others. Whatever he told her the previous evening about her becoming a part of others game he seemed to have unwittingly fallen victim to the same tendency.

MEanwhile all of these emotions played out silently on Shehnaaz's face and Sidharth could see through the mirror that she was obviously vexing over something and at this point he could not afford Shehnaaz to over think matters and go off on a tangent, it took way too much effort to coax her. He did not want her to make assumptions about anything but he really could not afford to let out in anyway what was going on his head and heart regarding the game because as the past two days had proven, the creatives were piggy backing on her and them a lot. He wanted to be a few steps ahead of them and also wanted to not lose her along the way. For now he took a deep breath and sauntered towards her and even though seat next to her was empty he sat into her cooed 'moti baby chai akela pee rahi hai, kya baath hai aajkal unko dekho toh vo hee kaafi hai, haaye haaye kya baath hai' he said this to her while winking towards Paras. This broke her a bit and she sadly asked him 'tu yeh baatein Karnay ke liye yahaan aaya hai toh its ok sidharth, jaa apnay arti ke paas, ghar mein strawberries toh Nahin hai lekin fruits paday hain, jaa Khila apnee lover ko.'
She said that and got up from where she was sitting and shifted herself to the other seat, leaving Sidharth bereft, who took a deep breath and prayed for patience and at the same time a strange thought, no scratch that, a strange conviction washed over him that his sisters were watching all of this and were cheering this chit of a girl who had managed to make him do all that he managed to evade all his life. But not one to ever give up or give in to any tussle he cheekily pushed her a teeny tiny bit further by saying "achaaaa toh jo mainay kiya kal Aarti ke saath, task tha, aap Kaam ko aur reality ko mix kar raheen hain, Asia hai toh phir yeh jo aap har saans mein Paras Paras jo karti rehthee hai, an uska kya matlab mein nikaloon? Yes moti baby?"