Meet me on the roof

CHAPTER 4 - MATING

SAHIL

AGE: 16

It's my birthday but no one's present apart from Akriti. Her mother is out of town and her dead father is something I wish for myself. I pray to god that if my father dies of something, I will be better off with my equally non-present mother because at least she doesn't make me feel constricted.

"God, I hope my father was dead like yours," I whisper in her hair as we sit in my bedroom watching her new obsession with slime and house-organising ASMR videos.

She rests back against my chest, my hands move and down her arms. Her eyes still struck on the damn TV and watched everything with adoration and pure wonder.

She turns her head to me and kisses me very lightly before whispering, "Hush, don't say ominous things, Bunny. You will regret it."

"With what I know about my old man, I know I won't regret his death," I say more pointedly than I intended to.

She sighs and pauses the video behind her while locking her eyes with me. She just looks at me with her light brown eyes that shine when in the sun and brighten under our blue sky.

"I think deep down you are just afraid of what the actual reality might be. Look at me, Bunny. If there was one thing I would wish for is to see what my father was like. To know him and feel protected under his roof."

"I would want nothing more than to see you happy when you meet your father at the end of the world," I say smiling lightly at her then proceed to kiss her cheek. She giggles and turns around again then presses play. A huge smile on her face.

My heart at times goes into cardiac arrest seeing her so happy and that too because of me.

I lean down and kiss her hair then her cheeks. Until she turns as red as a tomato. My hands move on their own accord over her skin to cherish her, to feel how soft and alive she is under me. I would go to any strength just to protect her.

I would run away from the whole world and fight the whole universe if she were holding my hand.

My mouth moves down her lips and buries into her neck to place light kisses on it. She giggles more and tries to move my face away playfully.

"Stop, my tummy feels funny." She laughs and I laugh with her while also continuing to be what she calls 'a kiss monster'. She switches off the TV from the remote and turns around. I sit straighter. She sits back facing me her arms around my neck, her legs on either side of my thighs so that she sits on my lap, something she does before she is going to kill me with her kisses.

We have made out exactly 47 times in the last eight months of dating. Her birthday is going to be next week and like every one of her last few birthdays, she will kiss her mom, call her brother and my sister then tell them everything about how she misses them.

It's fascinating how much love she has in her heart.

All I can manage is to fit in is the love for her, my sister, her mother and her brother.

It is all that I can afford and the largest proportion of it goes to her.

"You are such a kiss monster, Bunny. What will the kids say?" she says and I choke on dead air.

Kids?  We haven't even touched each other on any of our reproductive parts.

"Excuse me?" I ask completely bewildered.

"I think I am pregnant, Bunny. The girls in the school were talking about how we can get pregnant if we kiss a boy."

"What?! That's not true, Aki. Don't listen to that shit." I think I am going to faint.