Enough

11

If Abhi had known that encouraging Aakash and Rachna's marriage would result in him having to watch that double-battery-single-power lambu make eyes at his wife, he would've just taken them to a registry office and been done with it.

Ok, maybe it wasn't exactly fair to call it making eyes. To do the lanky loser justice, he didn't seem to be flirting with Pragya exactly.

But they just kept smiling at each other as they talked, and Abhi couldn't stand it.

He was sitting right there in his own living room, steps away from his wife, and she was ignoring him in favour of discussing floral arrangements with her "friend."

The same "friend" she had once thought was interested in her.

Every time they smiled at each other, a spike of agitation lanced through Abhi's chest.

He was going to develop a heart condition if this went on much longer.

He continued watching them broodingly, thinking about how Pragya was obviously more comfortable with that Double Battery than with him. Pragya did smile at him sometimes, but never so easily or so much.

Every time she smiled at him, it felt like winning a gold trophy. Like he'd earned one real thing in his wretched life, because he'd managed to bring lightness to her face.

He closed his eyes for a second, unable to believe how irrational he was being.

Never in his life had he gotten this hung up over a woman.

And the woman in question was already his wife.

Why was he becoming obsessed with her?

"Suniye?"

His eyes popped open. He sat up straight, meeting Pragya's gaze.

"It's ok if we have the ceremony here, right?" she asked. "In private, with Daadi's pandit?"

"Sure," he said, nodding, but he didn't really care. Whatever she thought best was fine by him.

His agreement to this earned him a fleeting smile, and just like that his stupid dopey heart kicked into overdrive again.

What was this girl doing to him?

He looked around the room for something, anything to do. He realized Raj Bhaiyya wasn't there, so he pulled out his phone and texted him about arranging the pandit.

Then he saw that he had new unread messages, and he swiped them open. He frowned, studying an unfamiliar area code and phone number that wasn't saved in his contacts. His gaze drifted to the new messages.

"Hey baby, are you feeling better?

Give me a call when you're up to it.

Miss you, xoxo"

Abhi blinked, unable to believe the words on the screen. Who the fuck was sending him flirty messages? His wife was sitting right in front of him, her phone face-down on the coffee table. Pragya could not have sent the texts.

He flicked through the rest of the conversation, and his heart sank. He had been messaging this person before his accident. There were no messages while he had been in the hospital, but before that there were messages about arranging times to do video calls and asking how the other person's travel had gone.

None of the messages from his side were romantic, but he hadn't discouraged this person from messaging him. This was someone he knew, someone he cared enough about to keep up a conversation with.

Someone who cared enough about him to call him 'baby' and send hugs and kisses.

He felt his cheeks burning in guilt, even though he was sure he had done nothing wrong. He definitely had not invited these messages, he didn't even know who they were from!