Dhaagey: The Ties that Bind Us [Tere Bin FF]

63. weddings & trips

Author's Note: Oh hello! This chapter got away from me, so the next chapter will be up soon since this one got to 43 pages. I guess I am feeling indulgent as I wrap up Dhaagey. See y'all on the other side! 

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Rumi had dreamed of this night for years.

Not the wedding, that was tomorrow, and it would be perfect in its own serene, traditional way, but the dholki, an almost Bollywood-style one, a sangeet in disguise. The one she'd choreographed in her head since she was sixteen and tragically in love with Shahid Kapoor in Chance Pe Dance.

There would be colour. Lights. Smoke machines. Seamless transitions. At least one dramatic skirt twirl to the bridge of a Shreya Ghosal song. And dancers. Her friends and family, but also proper ones. Paid, professional, unnervingly symmetrical people who understood what it meant to pop, lock, and twirl without losing their balance or their bangles.

And, against all odds, despite pushback, and a wardrobe malfunction involving a lehenga hook and a very traumatized tailor, she had pulled it off.

It was everything she wanted.

Almost.

"Ugh, I can't believe you're pregnant," she hissed at Meerab, who sat smugly in the front row, a glass of lemonade in one hand.

Meerab raised a brow. "You bet I was pregnant?"

"I know! But couldn't your uterus have had better timing? I had plans for you!"

Technically, a woman four months pregnant, with a healthy pregnancy and her doctor's approval, could dance. But dancing wasn't the problem. Murtasim Bhai was. Fighting with him, with his overzealous, overprotective, entirely unnecessary obsession with keeping her wrapped in metaphorical bubble wrap, was not something Rumi had the energy for. The man could turn a single shoulder roll into a federal emergency. Trying to perform under the watchful eye of someone who policed every move like she was made of glass? Not on the cards.

"I offered to do the slow dance..." Meerab muttered.

"No one cares about the slow part of the mashup! I needed you for the Bang Bang and Choli Ke Peeche segment!"

Meerab laughed, low and warm, one hand resting instinctively over her belly. Rumi was surprised that the outfit she had picked out for her miraculously wasn't tight. In fact, it hung a little loose, flowing softly around her frame and doing a decent job of concealing the four-month bump. But with the way her hand stayed protectively curved over her belly, and the way Murtasim Bhai hovered nearby like a bodyguard with a soft spot, everyone and their mother knew.

"I barely had the energy to get out of bed much less dance practice."

Rumi groaned. "You abandoned me."

"And yet," Meerab said sweetly, tilting her head toward the stage, "didn't someone agree to fill in?"

Rumi narrowed her eyes. "That was blackmail. And you know it."

Murtasim Khan had agreed to dance.

A man who once called dance numbers "overstimulating nonsense". A man who could barely handle clapping on beat, let alone a thumka.

He had agreed to a full-blown segment in her choreographed mashup.

Why?

Because Meerab couldn't. And then Meerab had tilted her head and sighed softly and said, "Rumi's really heartbroken about it."