Always and Forever

Prologue

Then

"Can I hold your hand now?"

Aman lifts his hand off from the gear. We round a bend in the road but before I can scream, he takes the turn smoothly. I look down at his still extended hand and I smile as I reach across and hold his hand in mine.

"I love you," he says simply.

My eyes get prickly for an instant and it takes me a few seconds to make my voice sound even.

"I love you too."

He lifts my hand and kisses it and then looks at me for the briefest of seconds and winks before concentrating on the winding road before us.

The heat rushes into my chest and it takes me a few seconds to still the thudding of my heart. Is this called happiness? I don't know, except that there is no place or time on earth that I would rather be in than right now.

I look down at our hands twined together. His engagement ring, a simple band of gold seems to have become a part of him, although we got engaged just last week.

Something vaguely unpleasant hovers at the back of my mind and my gaze settles on the huge diamond set in the centre of the thick gold ring which is on my finger. I think longingly of the simple ring he had chosen for me initially. I had insisted on getting it exchanged for a bigger one at the behest of my mother.

He had, as usual, not complained but obliged me, but I knew he had been slightly disappointed that I didn't like what he had chosen for me.

"What is troubling you love?" he asks.

"Well, I was thinking where to have dinner. Have you planned something?" I have always found that when you do not want to be drawn out into being completely honest, it is better to give a half-truth. He smiles, and the corner of his eyes crinkle. I stare at him.

I don't think I would ever get tired of looking at him from the side of his face. I want to tell him that but something holds me back. "Well, I haven't planned anything. Why don't you tell me where you want to go and we can go there?"

This is the only thing I do not like about him and I tell him so. "I am always having to call and make reservations. It is so tiresome," I complain.

He frowns and I stiffen, thinking he is going to get angry like my ex-boyfriend from college. But, all he does is shrug and explain how his mother and sister always plan and decide where to go so he always assumed that women like choosing but if that is a problem then he can call and decide but don't I love food and trying new restaurants?

I lean across and kiss him on the cheek. "Everything you say is true," I murmur and then decide on the new pan-asian restaurant in a five-star hotel that everyone is talking about. It is too expensive for my family right now, things being the way they are and I suddenly think of how much my sister would have loved it.

"I love everything about you," I say on impulse and he begins to laugh.

"Until our next fight perhaps."

I do not laugh back.

"I love our fights too, there comes a certain pleasure in fighting with you..." I cannot explain it but something in my heart twists painfully and we are both quiet for some time, the silent hum of the heater in the Mercedes the only sound breaking the silence.

"I love you, I am glad I exist," I say quietly, and then explain that it is a line from a poem by Wendy Cope. She is my favourite modern poet. "These are not original lines from me darling but I mean everything I say and cannot find better words to express what I feel."

Aman takes a long time to reply.

"I feel the same way," he whispers as we sweep into town.