Discordance

Chapter Eleven

Abhimanyu groaned as he looked over at his disarrayed bed, but the grin refused to leave his face. Every night he had come home to a crumpled bed and as much as he told himself he hated it, he knew he was lying to himself. Somehow her little pranks gave him comfort. When he had gotten married he had assumed that he would be doing all the avoiding, coming home late, using emergencies as an excuse but somehow she had beat him at his own game and here he was as usual waiting for her to show up so he could sleep.

It could be labeled as concern, but he scoffed the label off immediately. No, he was just worried for her safety. She was out at all odd hours, and he just wanted to make sure she was ok, she seemed so young, tiny and frail most of the times. He had manipulated his way into his mother's head and forced her to ask Akshara to take one of their numerous cars when she went out god knows where. His mother had told him that she had put up a long fight not wanting to use their car and Manjari had blamed him saying it was probably something he said which made her think she had no right to use their cars. She was right but he wasn't going to admit it in front of her and get an ass whooping, now was he. No he didn't care about Akshara as a person, he just cared about her as a woman alone at night!

He groaned as he tossed and turned knowing that sleep would elude him until she showed up, like always when he had time to kill his brain would conjure up the image of him swiping the smear of chocolate from her lips and try as he might the feel of her soft lips, the seemingly innocent stare of hers after and the taste of that chocolate that somehow tasted way more delicious than anything he ever had, played on a loop in his brain. If someone pointed a gun to his head and asked him what had possessed him to do it, he would've been speechless. He hated her dammit! But his protests seemed futile and held no real value to it, even he had to admit it to himself after a point.

When she had stumbled and fallen on him, he knew his heart had wanted to beat itself out of his chest and that had been the wake up call he needed. He didn't like her like that, he had other priorities in life and that is why he had been avoiding her but it seemed like the little monkey seemed to be doing the exact same thing. His mother had asked him if him and Akshara were spending time together and he had to lie through his teeth but thankfully Anisha had piped up and changed the direction of his mother's questioning. He had no plans to spend time with her, especially after that night in his room a few weeks back.

When Abhimanyu heard the car pull up in the driveway early in the morning, he quickly switched on the lights and made sure to fill a glass of water and keep it next to the plate of food he had left for her before running back to the bed and jumping under the covers trying to calm his breathing so she wouldn't realize that he was up. To her credit she tried to be as quiet as possible, hurriedly showering and changing before Abhimanyu heard the sounds of her quiet chewing. At least she was eating even if her schedule was way off! She always whispered a soft thank you in his direction whenever she was late and he kept food out for her and that thank you churned deep in his gut, breaking the walls one brick at a time.

She wasn't like what he had imagined at all but it was so hard to place her into one single package that it threw him for a loop and maybe that is why he was this torn and kept osciallting between being the meanest monster like she called him to this cut up about her not eating enough and taking care of her health. He had tried to be sneaky and ask his mom where she was gallivanting off to at night but surprisingly his mother who loved him the most in this world, seemed to be as tightlipped about it as her telling him it was his duty as a husband to find out. Manjari had gone as far as to twist his ear one day and tell him that she was extremely disappointed in him and the way he was handling his marriage but then Anisha had interfered and his mother had just rolled her eyes at them calling them idiots and left angrily.