SEAL THE DEAL

chapter 28

Would this ever be more than just an arranged marriage for him?

When the two of them sat down on the rocks and faced the sea, Abhishek noticed that she grown very quiet next to him, and her vacant gaze and slightly scrunched up eyebrows provided testimony of the fact that she was lost in her own world.

Abhi:-"Penny for your thoughts?" he asked, nudging his shoulder lightly against hers in an effort to bring her attention back to him.
She looked up at the sound of Abhishek's voice and then she glanced at her hand that was still linked with his, and all of a sudden, she found herself doubting whether she even knew him at all.

She welcomed him into her life with so much ease, she stripped out of her layers and shown him everything that made she who she is. She shared her past as well as her present with him but he was still a complete enigma to her.

It startled Manisha when she realised that mostly everything she knew about him was either basic or superficial. Most of what she knew about him were things she made the effort to learn herself, either through observation or questions that she had taken the initiative to ask. It struck her that he had let her into the front garden...but he hadn't let her into his home.

She didn't know what came over her when she decided to be honest and steered the
conversion into uncomfortable waters.

Mani:-"There's so much I don't know about you," she breathed out, insecurity and uncertainty swimming around in her eyes.
The smile slid off abhishek's face. They just finished meeting with the wedding planners
and he thought that she answer in true characteristic style and say that she was thinking about whether she wanted white roses or white tulips for the wedding, or whether she wanted embellished creme tablecloths or glittering silver ones.
He definitely was not expecting to receive...that as an answer.

Abhi:-"What do you mean?" he asked a few seconds later once her words had sunk in.
She immediately regretted letting those words slip past her lips as she took in Abhishek's somewhat flustered reaction and the newfound hesitation that lined his body language.

Mani:-"I just...you know, the stuff that's shaped you into who you are, your past, your fondest memories, your most terrible ones...things like that. I feel like I know nothing about you sometimes,"

She lowkey wanted the ground to open up then and there to swallow her up.
She knew she prematurely crossed a boundary she probably shouldn't have; her feelings were blinding her and she momentarily forgotten that Abhishek had never been obligated to tell her anything at all.

She forgotten that this marriage wasn't real.

Mani:-"I understand if you don't want to share, I don't know why I even asked. I'm sorry, just...ignore this entire conversation," she rambled, wanting to smack her forehead against one of the rocks.

An awkward silence enveloped the two of them and she cursed her tongue for racing ahead before her mind could catch up.
Abhishek looked down at the surface of the rock he was sitting on, faintly tracing the jagged rough edges with the index finger of his free hand. He wondered whether he had been unfair to her by holding himself back when she always gone ahead and given everything her all. He had always been on the back foot while she had always been on the front one, she always given and he'd always taken, and he wondered if the difference had really upset her that much; and the thought of her being upset, especially because of him, was one that he
really didn't like.

She had been sharing little pieces of herself with him here and there throughout the past month and a half; heck, she agreed to spend the rest of her life with him. Both of those were solid reasons for why she didn't deserve to feel like she did.

So Abhishek pulled together the courage to revisit his own wounds, just like she had, and decided to undress them in front of her.

Abhi:-"My dad's not my real dad,"
He winced at the bluntness of his own words as they tumbled out of his mouth.
Manisha slowly looked up when she registered what he'd said. She hadn't even expected him to actually listen to her. Her heart sank under the weight of the sudden revelation and her grip on his hand tightened as she shook her head rapidly.

Mani:-"No, Abhishek, wait, that's not what I meant! You don't have to -"
Abhishek ignored her. It had been hard enough to make this decision because voicing out his reality just made it feel ten times more real and he didn't think he had it in him to make the same decision again.

And he really didn't like the fact that she felt like she was in the dark when she always made sure he was standing in the light with her.

Abhi:-"I'm not his biological son...I don't...I don't actually know who my real dad is. My mother was pregnant with me when she married Dad...
," he said, a bitter taste in his mouth as he verbalised the even more bitter truth about his existence out loud.
He wasn't born out of love or happiness or anything that was real. He was nothing but a mistake...a drunken accident that wasn't supposed to happen.

Abhi:- "Dad was one of my mother's best friends, and he'd always been in love with her so he stepped up to take responsibility for something he hadn't even done...even if it meant getting disowned by his own family," he continued, feeling more and more vulnerable with every
sentence that he divulged; until he paused and stole a glance at her.

Manisha hadn't said anything yet, choosing to patiently listen instead. He saw the compassion overflowing in her eyes and he saw her lower lip quivering out of hurt for him, he felt her supportive hold on his hand and the silent comfort she was trying her best to offer, and he didn't even know why he'd hesitated to let her in through the locked and bolted gates around his heart.

Once he'd got the ball rolling, it was easier to lay the burdens that had always tied him down in front of her, "I saw you looking at the photo frames back at my house and I figured you were probably wondering where my mother was,"

Manisha was in awe of how he had managed to learn how to read her so well because she consciously made an effort to not be obvious about what she'd been thinking that day.

Abhi:-"I've not heard from her since I was 11. She left us when she fell in love...she left my dad for some guy she met while she was working at a book store. She'd been seeing him for a while behind my dad's back. My dad hadn't gotten his big break yet and we were slightly struggling to make ends meet...and she'd always dreamed of a life of wealth and comfort," he said,
chuckling darkly at the sheer irony of how fate had played its cards, "This new guy could give her that immediately, he promised he'd give her everything she'd ever wanted and I guess that meant more to her than we did. He didn't mind that she'd been married before but he didn't want her to bring her 9 year old kid along,"

He would never understand how his mother had been able to bring herself to leave the man who had given her literally everything he had, he would never understand how a person could be so ungrateful and so selfish and so cruel.

Mani:-"And your dad let her go?" She asked sadly, absentmindedly playing around with the fingers that were intertwined with hers, her heart breaking as she learned about how abhishek's family had broken.

He nodded slowly, relishing her soothing touch that left nothing but warmth in its wake, "He'd do anything for her. He loved her and all he wanted was for her to be happy. And he knew that she'd never been able to love him the way he loved her,"
He wondered how his father had even done it. His father had sacrificed everything for the woman he loved, he'd given her his heart and his life on a silver platter and then he'd let her walk all over it because that's where her stupid happiness lied.

Abhishek had always believed that his mother had never deserved his father; his father had always been far too good for her.

Mani:-"It must have been really hard...you were so young," she said softly, looking up at the boy she had quickly fallen in love with. Her respect and admiration for him increased tenfold because she couldn't even begin to imagine herself in his shoes; she couldn't imagine not receiving the love she so desperately craved from one of her parents, not knowing who she really was, not being able to do anything as she watched her family fall apart in front of her eyes.