SEAL THE DEAL

chapter 23

Abhishek chuckled and it sounded like smooth honey to manisha ears and she honestly felt like she was going to drown in it, "If that's what you really want to do," he bumped his shoulder with Manisha playfully as he strolled past her.

She shook her head as laughter shone in her eyes. Manisha watched him head into the curtains section, sprinting to catch up to him while she tried not to sink under the weight of her newfound change in feelings.

Other than her realisation that she had developed a big fat massive crush on abhishek at the most alarming speed, something else was different between the two of them since the engagement party. It was as if abhishek had started opening up to her even more than he had before.

And it only made Manisha fall for him even more too. She spent the next hour browsing through the store, looking for the things she knew she required (Abhishek didn't really know why she needed three wall shelves but he didn't complain when she shoved them into the trolley) and throwing in things she liked at first sight. He tried to be more helpful but it was hard because he didn't really see the difference between ivory and creme, neither did he know whether an oakwood dining table would be better than a pinewood one, and every time he opened his mouth, it just earned him looks of disbelief from manisha.

Mani:-"My feet are tired," she groaned when she walked away from the tables section after choosing a suitable coffee table. Abhishek raised his eyebrows at the statement, wondering whose fault that was.

The trolley was starting to get really full, and the items-to-get-delivered list in her hand was saturated and barely had any blank space left on it but she wanted to have a look at the chandeliers before she left.

On the way to the lights aisle, Manisha finally spotted the floor cushions that she'd been trying to find for the past two hours. They were on the shelf behind where Abhishek was standing and she rushed across the aisle to get to them, lightly brushing past him in the process.

Manisha suddenly felt a jerk and before she knew it, Abhishek's hand was wrapped around her wrist, preventing her from being able to move any further.

"One second," he said as he gently pulled her back towards him. Confusion, accompanied by a lovely rosy blush, coloured her face as she found herself standing directly in front of him, almost pressed flush against his broad chest.
Manishw looked up at him as she tried to find her voice, but he was looking down at something else.

Manisha followed his gaze and realised what had happened. The engagement ring that had grown accustomed to glittering on her ring finger was entangled in the fibres of Abhishek's woollen sweater and he was trying to untangle it from the mess it had gotten itself trapped in.

Manisha watched as his nimble fingers attempted to get the stuck ring loose with her heartbeat ringing out loud in her ears.

On the other hand, Abhishek chose to watch her. From the close proximity that the two of Them are in, he noticed just how long her eyelashes really were and he noticed the ever so light freckles dotted across her nose, he noticed the scent of vanilla and jasmine that embraced her and he noticed the loveliness of her painted lips.

She coughed once he had gotten she untangled from him and mumbled a quick 'thanks' before Manisha hurried off to check out the floor cushions. Abhishek ran a hand through his hair and smiled to himself, finding her embarrassment quite unnecessarily adorable.

---
Another hour and sixty eight purchased items later, the two of them decided to reward themselves by grabbing something to eat, much to Abhishek's joy and relief.

Manisha finished round one of furniture shopping about half an hour ago and he was already dreading the process of unloading the bags and setting everything up in the penthouse, more so dreading the fact that there were still several rounds of furniture shopping yet to be embarked on.

Like yeah, spending time with her was always enjoyable and she is quickly becoming a close friend to him (a bit too quickly actually, for his standards), but shopping for furniture with Manisha was the most tedious and tiresome thing ever because she is super particular and
thought really deeply about even the menial stuff, like the colour of the spatulas and the
opacity of the lamp shades.

Both of them almost done with their food  and a rare silence had engulfed their table.
The light and relaxed mood both of them had been floating in earlier had been replaced with a more serious and sombre one ever since they left the furniture store, Manisha  bright laughter and abhishek's amused grins no longer wafting in the air around her.
Abhishek glanced at manisha as she looked at her phone for what had to be the thirty sixth time in the past fifteen minutes. He could tell that she was trying to be subtle about it but he had been studying her carefully, and she'd been too absorbed in her phone and her thoughts to notice.

He'd picked up on how she only eaten half of her burger and he was perfectly aware by now that she definitely knew how to eat well. He continued watching manisha as she gnawed on Her bottom lip, an almost undetectable look of distress on her face as she stared at her phone screen.

Abhi:-"What's going on?" he finally asked, resting his face on the palm of his hands as his curiosity (but mostly his concern) got the better of him.

Her head whipped up, the unexpected question catching her by surprise. She locked her phone and put it face-down on the table in front of her, "What do you mean?" She feigned ignorance and picked on the potato fries in front of her, the slight rise in the pitch of her voice in the middle of the sentence totally betraying her.

She is a terrible liar and abhishek considered dropping the topic and pretending that it had never cropped up for a second. That's what he normally would have done if he'd been in this situation with anyone else; he'd done his part by asking and he wasn't the kind to press matters like this further. But this was her.

Abhi:-"Your phone's been blowing up for the past half an hour. Is everything okay?"
He wondered when he'd changed and when he'd started to care so much.
Her phone vibrated exactly at that instant and abhishek cocked his head towards it in case she tried to pretend like nothing was happening and her notifications weren't going crazy again.
Manisha averted her gaze, reaching for her phone and picking it up again when it buzzed once more. She looked down at it, the device suddenly feeling heavy in her hands as her resolve started to crumble. She momentarily hesitated, deliberating between telling the truth or letting a white lie slip past her lips.

Manisha looked up at Abhishek again, she looked at his tender eyes and the sweet reassurance shining in them, and in that moment, she knew that she had grown to trust him with all her heart.
Was it too fast? Yes. Was it foolish? Perhaps. Were she blinded by her feelings? Definitely.
Would she regret it? Maybe.
But she had always been quick to give her heart away, and that was something about her that hadn't changed. The thought of lying to Abhishek didn't sit well with she either, especially not when it was about something like this.

Mani:-"It's Ashish. I really don't know where he got my number from...I changed my number a year ago and blocked his number, but I guess he's got a new number too -"
Abhishek didn't need to listen to manisha defending herself, "What's he saying?" he asked, effectively interrupting her before she could carry on rambling, his jaw clenched at the mere mention of the stupid asshole who refused to let her live in peace.

Manisha rubbed the back of her neck, her lips twisting into a deep frown, "He's just talking shit," Abhishek raised his eyebrow at the vagueness of her answer. She couldn't bring herself to explain the barrage of texts that made up the one-sided conversation with her own mouth, so she sighed and unlocked her phone, tapping the messages icon and sliding it across to him.