Going Back To You

01.

My eyes stared blankly at the pastel yellow wallpaper. My wife was a woman with a stellar taste, someone with dreams so alive and passionate. She had insisted on bright colored wallpapers across the house. Something I simply could never fathom. Over years, I had grown expectant that my love for her would eventually come. I loved her. I truly did. But it was never enough. Something was never found between words shared, touches shared, kisses shared and tasks shared. The whole process to me was a ritual. The expectations of monogamy, romance and sex weighing me down.

It was all over now. We were finally divorced.

I had dreamed on the most quiet Sunday mornings when I would wake up to the linear streak of bask streaming on my face that she could never make me warm, and that all I would desperately seek for would be to cease this arranged life of marriage and work. I just wanted to be on my own, to preclude myself from everyone else- my wife, my colleagues, my parents, my brothers. All I wanted was to be, at least on my own, when I knew that I could never be myself to anyone else- to anyone but Arin.

My wife- my ex-wife came over to me. Soft footsteps pressing gently against the wooden floor.

"Naksh?" She called out. I could see her painted toes from the way I was sat on the edge of the bed with my head cast downwards and my fingers intertwined.

"Yes?" I looked up to see her wear a sympathetic smile, she was hovering over me. She came closer and bent a little to bring her eyes parallel to mine. She cupped my face. She stared at me. Behind her amethyst eyes, her eyes that were a source of great comfort most times, her eyes that had seen me at my unfounded indifference, that had seen my occasional acts of protectionism, eyes that had seen nearly fifteen years of deceit, eyes that were now looking at me as if to say, "I understand".

I wish I had told her sooner. That I didn't like her. That I never could because the scales of measurement always stopped at Arin. No one else.

I gave into her embrace as I brought my hands around her plump waist and pressed myself more into her chest.

If only I had told her earlier. If only I did. Would she have understood?

These questions would now remain as answerless as they ever were. Because, what had happened had happened. The past is the past. Yet, even as she was leaving the room and up until I heard the main door lock, I continued to sit in silence, the bights of my mind were now mirroring incessant memories of Arin.

The day we first met.

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A/N: Remember, this is a collaboration between I and my co-writer, Merakioni. Please, go and support this story which is up on her profile as well!