Infinite

Chapter 3

The sound of the shower running awoke Khushi from a deep, well-rested sleep. She sat up and blinked her eyes to adjust to the sunlight peeping in through the poolside. Instinctively, she rested a possessive hand on her stomach, where there was a visible bulge that had begun to show. She was close to 6 months pregnant and finally, the pregnancy began to feel a lot more real. Her doctor had said that her baby probably won't be able to hear a lot of things from outside yet, but it could distinctly hear and recognize its mother's voice. Ever since then, Khushi liked the idea of being able to talk to her baby.

She also felt a lot better with regard to sickness and she even seemed to have put on a little weight. Her face got a little rounder, her cheeks plumped in a healthy way. She had always been thin - though slender is a word her husband would have liked to use - but had been painfully so during the first trimester of her pregnancy. Her balance improved, and she was also beginning to feel hunger.

On the other hand, her clothes began to feel a little tighter, her breasts which had been a steady B suddenly seemed to not fit into her bras anymore and her shoes were suddenly smaller on her feet. Tiredness was common but it didn't feel like it had overtaken her life.

But if there was something bothering her, then it was the feeling that somehow her husband had distanced himself from her. While the rational part of her mind dismissed her worries, the irrational part didn't stop from adding to her stress. As a result, if she was all positivity and radiance one day then it was gloom and sadness the next. In addition, her study and experience as a counseling psychologist led her to overthink to an extent that the worry had become a persistent nag in her brain. She had seen numerous cases where couples felt distant during and after pregnancy with some husbands even cheating because they did not feel wanted.

She had to remind herself that Arnav would never ever do something like that even if he met countless beautiful women almost every day.

She frowned. What was she thinking? This was not her.

She had to remind herself of all the ways her husband attended to and cared for her. Arnav had been the center of her being before all this happened but for a while now, she had been a little preoccupied with herself. He was used to her fuzzing about him so did he feel left out now?

Arnav was a man with a high sex drive. And in the time she had known him, she had also understood that he integrally used it to emotionally bond with her. She couldn't say she hadn't enjoyed it because he had never been a selfish lover.

But the last she remembered of their intimacy was the moment of shared passion while he had fed her the other day. They hadn't even made love for days before that. Moments like those had become so rare these days that it had felt almost new and for the first time in days, Khushi had felt normal. But then the knock on the door had ruined it. Arnav had then been taken over by a phone call. Khushi remembered nothing after except waking up in her bed the following morning. Their intimacy had been an integral part of who they were and she missed it.

For a while, all she had ever done whenever she had a little free time was sleep. But now that she began to feel better, it seemed as if Arnav had stopped trying. She didn't know if that was all in her head.

Just at the moment, Arnav walked in from the bathroom, fresh from his shower, wearing a soft cream sweater and jeans. His hair was wet and tousled and he looked every bit the sophisticated man that he was.

"Good morning," he said stopping short when he found her awake and walked over to the mirror to get dressed.

"Good morning." She repeated self-consciously. She wasn't sure how she must be looking in comparison to his groomed self. She felt a little disappointed that he hadn't kissed her. Didn't he find her attractive anymore?