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That evening, at home, Abhika was on the dining table with her book open and a pencil in her hand doing her home work. Trying to do rather.

Ritika was with Abhika, helping her with it. But her mind was restless. She couldn't understand why she had felt jealous earlier today. Abhiram had been just hanging out with his colleagues. It had to be because she wasn't invited into their cozy group. Abhiram had arrived from the hospital some time back but she hadn't talked to him yet.

Should she ask him why he hadn't thought of calling her? Would she sound too possessive? How would Abhiram react?

"Ma, I don't want home work." Abhika announced and hid the pencil under the chair.

Ritika was snapped out of her thoughts.

"Abhika, baby you shouldn't tell that. You have to do it. Won't your teacher scold you tomorrow if you don't?," Ritika picked her up positioned Abhika on her lap.

"No, I don't want to do," she started crying.

"Abhi, you shouldn't throw a tantrum. Listen to ma," Ritika tried to pacify her.

Abhiram walked into the dining room. He was in his white T shirt and black shorts. He had just taken a shower after coming back from the hospital. As soon as Abhika saw Abhiram, she jumped down from Ritika's lap and sprinted towards her dad.

"Papa, I don't want to write." Abhika pouted. Abhiram picked her up and planted a kiss on her cheeks. Abhika returned the gesture,

"Don't force her to write," Abhiram looked at Ritika sternly.

What the heck? Ritika thought. With great difficulty,she had made her daughter write half a page and here comes her dad, ruining all her efforts.

A phone started ringing. It was Abhiram's.

"Hello, Sara?" He spoke into the phone.

Meanwhile, Abhika started reciting a loud song making it difficult for Abhiram to listen to what Sara was saying. He moved into the living room.

Ritika rolled her eyes. Abhiram came back in a few minutes after he had finished talking to Sara.

"You have just come back from work. Still you keep getting work calls. You don't know where to draw the line, Ram."

"It was not a work call. Sara wanted access to my online journal subscription."

Did he just share his password with her? Ritika could not help feeling annoyed.

"Papa,can I go and play?" Abhika asked her dad.

"Of course you can," Abhiram told her and flashed his hundred watt smile for his daughter. Abhika rushed off to play. Ritika could only stare at her husband who was now smirking.

"What?" he asked Ritika.

"You pamper her so much, Ram. She would have finished the homework if you had told her to." Ritika steamed.

"Kids have to play," Abhiram replied nonchalantly and that infuriated her even more.

"Oh yeah, says someone who doesn't even know what they teach his daughter at school. You are spoiling her rotten." Ritika slammed the book she was holding on the dining table.

Abhiram just stood there in silence. Ritika's eyes spotted a tiny muscle flicker in his jaw. What was he thinking? He was the one mollycoddling his daughter and sharing passwords with colleagues at work. She was now unsure what bothered her more, him pampering Abhika or giving out passwords.

"She doesn't even listen to me nowadays, because of you. If I ask her to come back to study, she is going to quote what you told just now," Ritika continued.

Abhiram took a step closer to her and she could feel the heat from his body. She had to tilt up her head to look into his eyes. His lip curled at one corner.

"Don't teach me how to raise my kid, alright? I will pamper her if I want to. End of the story."

Abhiram's words pierced her like small daggers.

"Your kid? Right. From today, you take care of her school stuff while I go and have fun with my friends." Ritika face was flushed. "Wait a sec , I didn't know you shared passwords with Sara."

Abhiram's mom was at the door and they hadn't noticed her during their heated argument. When Abhiram realised that his mom had been a witness to their fight, he glared at Ritika and stormed off.

"Are you okay?" Sunita asked Ritika.

"Yeah, amma, it's nothing. You don't worry."

"Sorry I wasn't eavesdropping. But it looked like your argument was far from over." Sunita replied.

"Of course you were not eavesdropping." She gave Sunita a warm hug.

Abhiram was in his room. Fuming.

Abhiram hated arguing with Ritika in front of his parents. His mom had been diagnosed with anxiety and he didn't want her to worry when there was absolutely no reason.On a previous occasion, he ad warned Ritika not to pick a fight with him when they were not in their room.

 Abhiram and Ritika used the entire first floor while their parents stayed at the ground floor. It was quite an old house but had been renovated a couple of years back. Apart from the existing two bedrooms,two more rooms were added in the first floor itself, one for Abhika and the other as a guest room. Abhiram's sister Adhira and her husband visited them time and again and they usually used the guest room. There was also a spare bed room at the ground floor.

His mom had seen him arguing with Ritika. Yes, it was natural for couples to argue and fight all the time but his mother had become too touchy of late.  He had tried explaining to his mom in the past that she shouldn't be stressed out so often but in vain.

He took deep breaths to fill his lungs and calm himself down. After sitting at the edge of the bed, he leaned forward and rested his head on his joined hands. Two minutes later, Ritika walked into the room. He raised his head and let his eyes follow her as she stood before the mirror and started removing her ear-rings. Abhiram got up from the bed and walked towards her. He caught her elbow and turned her around, so that she faced him. The ear-ring in her hand fell on the floor.

"Ram, my ear-ring." Ritika tried to ease out of Abhiram's grip to search for the lost piece of jewellery but he held her in place.

"You had to pick up a fight right in the dining room, right?" Abhiram seethed. Ritika was now wedged between the wall and her husband.

She hadn't intentionally needled him. She was so irritated when he told her that he gave Sara his password.

"You do over-indulge Abhika and you know that. I was merely pointing out a fact. You had started shouting, Ram."

"You had slammed the book on the table and I got furious. What else did you expect?"

Ritika knew she was at fault too. But she had had other things on her mind too. She stared at him for some time.

"Why is your anger always directed at me? I have not seen you getting so annoyed with anyone else," she shot back at him.

"Really? You can ask my team, Rohan and Sara," Abhiram countered.

"I don't have to ask your stupid team about my husband, "Ritika rolled her eyes so much that it would hurt her, he thought. "You don't get so angry at your Amma, do you? You never got angry with your ex-flame too."

Abhiram felt his head would explode. His vein on his forehead popped out. This was not the first time Ritika had mentioned his ex-girl friend, Rupa. Ritika occasionally made fun of him regarding Rupa and he absolutely  despised it. It made him sad and angry.It had been a brief relationship but he had vested out too much energy and love into it. Retrospectively when he thought about it, he had never happy at that time.

"How do you assume I had'nt gotten angry with her?" Abhiram questioned her, his arms now caging her against the wall.

"She had nicely wrapped you around her little finger, if I remember correctly. You were an over- indulgent boyfriend too." Ritika answered.

Abhiram's patience had snapped long back but today Ritika somehow had managed to take it to a newer low. He had never realised she still had this bitterness in her. Why was she jealous at his past? Not that he had forgotten how Rupa had tried to cause a rift between Ritika and himself. But that didn't mean Ritika could bring up his past whenever she found it amusing.

"You know nothing about my relationship with Rupa," he snickered at her. This conversation was heading to uncharted waters and he was not to be blamed for, he thought.

She had brought it up and he had lost the filters.

Ritika's face fell. "May be you should have just married her." Ritika broke the eye –contact with him and tried to push him aside. He let her free.

"That had been my intention all along. It was Rupa who ended up things, not me." Abhiram immediately regretted the choice of words. It sounded cruel, even to his own ears. 

"I remember the circumstances of our marriage very well, Ram. It's a bit too late now. Only if you had gone back to her when she apologized to you." Ritika's eyes glimmered with tears.The sadness on her face broke his heart. Before he could say anything, she left the room.

Rupa had called Abhiram hoping for reconciliation after she came to know the truth about Abhiram and Ritika. Abhiram and Ritika had always been friends but a nasty rumor made rounds in their college campus and that had been perpetrated by a rogue doctor in their medical college hospital. He had rivalry against Abhiram and had cooked up some objectionable tales about Abhiram and Ritika. Rupa believed those rumors. She never trusted him. By the time she realised the truth, it had been late. Abhiram made it clear to Rupa that he would get married to Ritika.

"Damn you, Ritu," he whispered to himself and punched against the wall.

It had looked like their usual, harmless fight in the beginning. He remembered that she had mentioned Sara's name. The password, he remembered. But why was she so upset about that?

She had dragged Rupa's topic and things just spiraled out of control. What Ritika told him earlier about him was partly true. He always expressed his anger easily at her. But that was because he felt comfortable around her, loved her. He could be himself with her. Had he started taking her for granted? He hoped not.

He could swear on his life that he had never felt this connection with his ex or with anyone else.

Ritika was his life, how could she be so stupid? How could she think otherwise? Why did he behave like an ogre? The pain he had seen in her eyes was like a slap to his face.

He had crossed some imaginary line today.

He needed to put reigns on his anger.

He bent down and searched for the lost ear-ring. It was near the door. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.

***