Beautiful Girl

Thirty eight

She's forgetting something.
The feeling becomes more prominent when Sasha comes running to hug her legs.
It's two in the afternoon and She's done with her classes. Mama managed to convince the Resident in charge to let her have an off today from ward duties.
Suri is going for her first round of chemo today.
She picks up Sasha easily, it has become a habit now.  She has added an entire routine for her arms. She doesn't want to tire while she's holding him. If it takes an hour or so more in the gym, then so be it.
Sasha is a comfort against her skin. His needs outweighs hers. It's unhealthy to imprint on someone else's child to forget your own misery but she was never the picture of healthy coping mechanisms.
He talks mile a minute about Sponge Bob and she nods at all the right places. She did something last night that she needs to remember. She shakes her head to dispel the feeling of unease creeping slowly over her.
Maybe it's the dread of oncoming exams, of a very astute realization that one way or the other, her time with Sasha is going to get cut short.
God, she's so messed up. She needs therapy, not that she would ever make herself go and open up and be vulnerable in front of a stranger who is then gonna dissect her feelings and declare her a faulty specimen.
She laughs little at the thought as she walks.
She rounds the bend, lost in her morbid thoughts, hands steady around a squirming Sasha.
He wants to be freed, so that he can run ahead of her.
She doesn't wanna let go.
He keeps struggling and defeated, she sets him down.
"No running away from me, Sasha," she tells him somberly. She is on her knees and they're on eye level. She had read in one of those child psychology books that maintaining eye contact with kids while conversing with them helps in developing their confidence. And Khushi is very particular about Sasha hitting all the child development markers.
In these moments, she can pretend he is hers. That he is theirs.
Dear God, she's a basket case.
She lets him go at once, and like little bunny, he hops away with a giggle. He is going to start sprinting in three, two, one...
Yup.
The boy doesn't know how to slow down.
She gets off her knees and rushes after him.
This boy...she will hit her ideal weight goals if he continues his little Usain Bolt tendencies.
She rounds the corner, and he is already chatting with somebody.  This boy and his freaky social skills with people more than triple his age.
Khushi was never this bold when she was his age. She can't state this with certainty, but she was probably chewing on her thumb even she was his age, not holding conversations comprised of full sentences with strangers with absolute panache.
The man is on his haunches and he seems to be listening intently to whatever facts Sasha has chosen to enlighten him with.
She slows her pace and tries to listen to the ongoing conversation.
All she can see is the man's back. His white shirt is stretched taut across it.
It's a really nice back.
Fuck! She is now ogling a random dude's back. It doesn't help much that he has curls. She has hit a new low. She needs to fetch her child and probably get laid in near future.
Sasha is not HER child. She reminds herself sternly as she takes a deep breath to call him to her side.
Sasha beats her to it. The boy has some preternatural instinct when it comes to her. He finds her before she can even utter his name.
"Khushi!" He screams happily, and her lips curve into a smile. No one has ever been as happy to see her as him. He runs over, ignoring the man he was chatting up with.
"Slow down, buster. We are not rude, are we?"
He implores her with his big eyes,  his eyes, mouth in a pout. The days she immediately gave in to that face are thankfully a thing of immediate past. She has built a tolerance of a minute when he looks at her like that.
No child of hers is going to be a heathen.
Damn it, he is not her child.
She screams at herself internally,  but it seems her brain has not gotten the memo.
"I want skelly," He tells her in all seriousness his tiny self can muster. She somehow keeps her mouth from stretching in a smile.
He has named her skeleton. One of his most favorite things to do is to name all the bones that make up skelly. 
Her little imp is a prodigy.
He-
"Khushi?"
No. No. Nope.
She was doing better, wasn't she? She can't be hallucinating his voice right now.
She is not a basket case.
Even in the beginning when her grief had been fresh, and her tears always ready to escape her eyes, she had not hallucinated him. Dreamt of him? Yes. Had those dreams felt too real and she had not wanted to wake from them? Yes. But she had never been able to conjure him in her waking moments.  Her fucking brain had been too healthy for that shit.
So, why now?
She has Sasha now. She needs to be healthy for Sasha.

She can't be dreaming about a faithless man who gave her nothing but heartache.

"Khushi?"

She grabs Sasha's hand, turns and starts walking in the direction they came from. She will take Sasha back with her to the library. He can play with skelly later. Much later when she is not hallucinating his father.

The sound of someone coming after her is the loudest thing that her brain can register. She hastens her pace, almost dragging Sasha along. Do figments of imagination chase after you in sunny afternoons?

Someone grabs her arm from behind and she's startled enough to stumble.

Those hands...they pull her back. She remembers the strength of them, the kindness of those fingers when they rubbed at her scalp.

It's like the time that passed hasn't passed.

He still smells the same. The hint of lavender with undertones of pepper and a lot of different notes that she has no name for.

"Khushi?" he implores.

He can't make her turn. She can stand like this for as long as he holds her arm. He can't make her turn, can't make her see his face.

She doesn't want to see his face. Doesn't want to know how the time she spent without him has changed him. She had planned it all in her head, hadn't she? The next time when they would come face to face. She would be resplendent, mature and so casual about the shit that happened. She would be so radiant that his eyes would be blinded. She would have her life in order. She would be successful, in her career as well as her relationship and he would rue the day he hurt her.

She is in clothes that are two days old. Her hair is a sparrow's nest and her dark circles probably have dark circles.

She is thin, waif like creature and her clothes are probably hanging on her body like they do on hangers and not in a flattering way.

She's a mess and he's here.

He probably looks like a million bucks.

The broad shoulders that she had spied - dear god, they belong to him.

He has curls now.

"Khushi?"

Why is he saying her name like that?

Why has he come back? After everything that he did, now that the dust of it has settled and she has some sort of semblance of normality, he comes back to upend it all?

FUCK HIM!

FUCK HIM AND HIS CURLS AND HIS BROAD FUCKING SHOULDERS!

She opens her eyes to tell him as much, but then she sees him and the world disappears.

There's a five o'clock shadow that he sports and he is wearing glasses.

Arnav Singh Raizada.

Arnav...

"Khushi?" He whispers as if he's sharing some secret. He is trembling, and he...doesn't look like the man who broke her heart. He looks like the one with whom she shared memories that she keeps tucked away in the deepest, darkest parts of her heart to her all encompassing shame.

She remembers the rain and the gazebo. She remembers sitting across his thighs as he wiped her tears. She remembers that face smiling at her in his office.

She's not aware that she has gone down on her knees and that she's crying. That she's whimpering like animals do. That Sasha is sniffling.

All she can see is the man, no her husband who never was....

She doesn't even register that he kneels as well, that when he pulls her, she hides her face in the crook of his neck like she used to do. She sheds her tears on his skin like she used to. He lets go of her arm to hold her, his hand on her back, moving in circles like it used to...