Beautiful Girl

Part Twenty Nine

"Your child bride has taste," Lavanya comments as she peruses the paintings hanging on the walls, every piece painstakingly selected and fussed over.

I can keep screaming that I don't love Sam and yet you won't believe me.
You don't want to.
I am a woman and thus there is already a presumption against my character in your head.
You must be thinking that if I desire your touch upon my skin so desperately, it must be the touch that I am craving, irrespective of who it belongs to.

She is gone. Khushi is gone, and yet her presence is on the every inch of this house. She left him with a letter filled with things he had not let her tell him.
She left as if he was nothing. She left as if it didn't matter at all. The days they had spent together building a life just for them both - she didn't care much for it.

Blame me if that gives you closure. Tell your family thad I was a harlot who made a fool of you. Tell them I was a gold digger and you came to your senses. And if that's emasculating, then tell them the truth. That you grew bored. That you wanted someone better than a high school graduate, orphan nobody.
After all, fictional divorces are easily arranged for fictional marriages, aren't they?

"Where is she, Arnav? Your wife?" Lavanya asks.
He tells her he doesn't know. Tells her he doesn't care.
What a fucking liar!

In course of a month or so, you reminded me ASR, that I am only half a human being. No matter how hard I try, I am always gonna be someone's apostrophe and never the full stop. I am always gonna be a phase, never a habit, never something permanent.
You shouldn't have given me dreams. I was trying to build myself up. I would have managed somehow, but then you happened.
You came, a thief trying to be a knight and I was the fool who fell for your honeyed words.
I wanted someone of my own. A family...well, some things aren't meant for some people...

Lavanya has invited herself over with an excuse that it has been four days since they went out for lunch. He doesn't know what to do. It has been a week since Khushi left. His rage, that self righteous anger that had been so familiar...he can't find it no matter how hard he tries. He wants to be angry like he used to be before he met her. Like he was after he saw a boy hugging her...

Love?
You told me that you loved me.
I shouldn't have believed you. Shouldn't have hung on to your words. 'Cause they didn't mean shit.
They were shallow and just something you said to fill in the spaces left behind by the ghosts of your promises.
I should've done what you're doing now, ASR, when your sister had proudly announced that behind so called fascination of yours with me, was a far sinister reason.
I should have emulated your behavior when your family wrote me off as some greedy, two bit cunt...

He can't find the ASR. In the wake of Khushi's departure, it's Arnav who grieves. He can't find the asshole who had delighted in hurting Khushi inside him anymore.
Where is that beast?

I let you do things I haven't allowed others to do to me.
I let you hurt me.
I let you treat me like those women in shows that I abhor. Like some weak, pathetic thing.
I waited for you to give explanations to you when I had done nothing wrong.
I let you do that to me.
You were ASR then. The king who plunders and leaves only ashes behind. I wanted to hold you and ask - why you let that monster you created in your father's image rule you? I wanted to ask my Arnav why he lets ASR destroy every good thing in his life?
But then it's a little over-confident to presume, isn't it? Calling myself a good thing that happened in your life when you're probably one of the worst in mine?