Vodka on the rocks

Drabble - 3.4 [Ft. Pallavi Raghav Rao]

"Pallavi...why did you come out? Everything okay..?"

Raghav blinked back the moisture collected in his eyes and started looking everywhere except at her surprisingly enraged face. 

"I simply can't understand what to even make of you anymore."

Raghav looked at her then confused slightly at the peculiar tone of her voice and noted with some relief at the lack of the garland around her neck. She poked her long ringed finger on his chest sharply and retorted a slew of words in Marathi completely incomprehensible to him. 

"Wha..."

"Here comes this man who has no qualms about shouting to the world whatever he thinks is right no matter the situation or the circumstance. He has to be one of the most brutally frank person I have ever come across who stops as literally nothing to gain what he wants... regardless of how cruel he can be. But suddenly when it comes to me he turns away. Like a.. like a... urghhh!"

Raghav had no idea when he had started stepping back with each poke on his chest while Pallavi kept storming towards him, looking gorgeous even in her maddening rage. Or maybe, especially because of it. He had hardly noticed their curious yet apprehensive audience who had by then stepped out of the hall behind his former wife. 

"Tum kya bol raha hain... mereko kuch samajh nhi..."

"Haan! Nhi aayega samajh.. dimag mein bhusa bhara hua hain na tumhara!Sirf apne business mein chalate ho kya dimag.. baaki kaam keliye kya ghutno se sochte ho?"

"Dekho Saree ka Dukaan, tumhare ko pehle bhi bola hain, zyadaa hindi nhi use karneka.. mera bouncer jata hain!"

Raghav had hit the wall by then, Pallavi was almost breathing on him by then, standing so close to him that he could smell the roses in her hair and the lavender perfume which was so heart breakingly familiar that it was making him lose his mind as usual. 

"Arre kis language mein samjhaun main tumhe! Kya bolun aur! Itna mehnat kiya fir bhi samajh nhi aaya tumhe! Ab kya shaadi ho jaegi meri galat insaaan se tab jaake akal thikane lagegi tumhaari Mr. Born-Smart-Rao!"

She almost screamed, the sprinkles of pain overt on her face for the first time. Raghav's brain caught onto the single syllable in that sentence and it banged like the proverbial gongs of fate in his brain making him feel slightly sick again. 

Wrong man... married to the wrong man...?

Pallavi suddenly clutched the collars of his white kurta and brought him down to her height with such a sharp tug that he almost lost his balance. 

"I worked so hard! Everyone worked so hard! Only so that you could finally realise what you want and come and bloody say it to me! Confess the feelings your eyes have screamed at me since that fateful day and which keeps saying all those unsaid things even now! Why don't you just say them Rao and get it over with!"

Raghav's throat had dried up by then and he felt her leaving his collars making his body revolt at the loss of contact so wrenchingly that he had to stagger and lean on the wall, almost sliding down to her height till his patella could hold him steady. 

Pallavi's grey eyes had started shedding the film of brightness it had gathered which was starkly visible in the decoration lighting on the outer walls of the hall. Agony coursed through him with an almighty tang of an overstretched bow as the tears mapped the length of Pallavi's beautiful face. 

"Why are you punishing me like this Raghav! What wrong have I done?"

"What are.. you even saying Pallavi... you said you ...l..loved him. I asked you... you said yes... what did you want me to do...? Cage you like a monster?"