Sidharth kept looking at Shehnaaz as she looked into a world created by her head. Her saw how her expressions remained the same, yet her eyes changed their colors.
Finding her lost with no reaction for a moment he called her"Shehnaaz?", as he moved his hand towards her face, he was probably going to touch her face and talk, just the way he had done so many times.
But Oh! She did react, in an instant.
Shehnaaz was lost in that thought with her parents, those countless nights when she had been the elder, those countless nights, when her mother would simply dump her with all her trauma, those nights when her dad would question her integrity and character, just because he had seen her talk to anyone. It was then that she saw the hand move towards her. Lost in a world of her owm, she reacted, in a reflex and moved away.
The reaction was quick. "What the fuck, Shehnaaz!" Sidharth spoke as she did so. The way she reacted was as if he would hit her.
"Sorry, fuck!" Shehnaaz gasped, realizing her reaction. His words had pulled her out of her thoughts only to find Sidharth in front of her her.
The moment Siddharth saw a her react, he saw the fear on her face. And his heart broke, she could never trust him. He could never be trusted. He thought "I am sorry, I am sorry!" He spoke, moving away from her, while Shehnaaz looked at him, her eyes flooding, as she shook her head at him.
"I am sorry, sorry!" He repeated again, as he looked at her. She was as confused as him, neither knew the reaction to the situation.
"Sidharth!" Shehnaaz spoke, straightening herself, as she looked at him, her head trying to search the right words for him. "I didn't...." she was about to say more, when he spoke.
His hand in his hair, brushing along, "Yeah!. No! " he spoke arbitrary words, no conclusive sentence. "I have to go Shehnaaz, I have got some work!" He spoke moving ahead, as he picked up the phone and walked into her bathroom.
That was pretty quick and before Shehnaaz could process and react to anything, he had walked into the bathroom. Looking at the phone that was once again ringing with the same number at the display screen, she took a deep breath and walked out of the bed.
Shehnaaz and Siddharth were complicated people. They could not talk, at least not very easily around uneasy topics. Pulling the t shirt dress over her body, she walked to the kitchen, pouring herself some water. Taking the couch, she sat there looking blankly at the wall ahead of her, her heart racing, while the phone kept ringing in the bedroom. She was not going to answer that call, and Siddharth was going to walk out of her apartment and she wasn't going to explain anything to anyone, she knew all of that, and she knew she would not do a thing to change a thing. Not that she didn't want to, but very likely because she didn't know how, or even if she knew how, she didn't have the strength. In her words, if the world slipped away from her hands, she would let it.
Sidharth stood in front of the mirror, looking at himself. He could hear her phone ringing in the bedroom,while he held his own. " Sure!" He texted back to the person he was meeting later in evening, his therapist.
He could remember her words, the idea that he could be dangerous to Shehnaaz was originally a product of his own brain, but it had grown and everything around him had nutured the idea. His eyes kept looking at his reflection in the mirror, the tough rugged look, the chiseled muscles, the tall dense body and the brain continued to play the scene that had unfolded a few mintues back. The way she had moved back to his approaching hand, the way her face carried that petrified look, the way her expressions had frozen as their eyes had met that moment and that did not stop there, it went to the day he had threatened her, the day he had held her face in his hand and that was not a tender touch, it went to the day he had used his hand to hit his now estranged wife across her face, the day he had threatened dragged that woman up the staircase against her wish. All he could see in the mirror was a monster, he had been. Once he had walked that path, there was no going back. He would always be the same. And now with Shehnaaz, she would always fear him more than anything.
