Called you on the phone today
Just to ask you how you were
All I did was speak normally
And somehow I still struck a nerve

Manik

That night, I slept like a dead man. Partly because of my sunken eyes after letting those tears out, and partly because of how much I drank once I was home. After dropping the divorce papers to Nandini's house, of course.

I think I lost count after the fourth glass of whiskey, because I briefly remembered the bottle getting over before I broke it into tiny glass shards and opening the most expensive wine bottle in my cellar.

I was celebrating.

I was celebrating my wife moving on.

I was celebrating watching the woman I love perhaps slowly fall in love with someone else. I was watching her find her happiness elsewhere. And maybe they were assumptions but I couldn't decipher why my heart hurt that way when I was the one who wanted that in the first place.

So that might, I drank till my liver took it, till I didn't remember my own name and in the same disheveled hair and messed up and wet office clothes, I passed out in some corner of my huge house.

I think it was the sixth time my phone was ringing when I was asleep. The first few times, it felt like a faint buzz. The fourth time, I could make sense of it but the banging and stupid hangover in my head didn't let me move. The fifth time, I was convinced it was Cabir trying to ask if I'm coming to work, but I didn't give a flying fuck.

The world could burn, because mine already did.

When it rang for the sixth time, I groaned while opening my eyes. By the time I grasped a hold on reality, my Apple Watch showed me the time: 3:33 A.M. 

Then, I felt panic set into me.

By the time I managed to open my eyes completely and hastily fetch my phone fallen on the carpeted floor of my living room, the phone had stopped ringing.

Although my vision was blur, I could make out the name in a heart beat.

6 missed calls from Nandini.

Panic. Chest tightening. Cold midnight air rustled inside from open windows of my garden area, intensifying the chill in my bones.

When the phone rang for the seventh time, I wasted no time in picking it up.

"Hello..." I answered, panic clear in my tone, "Hello?"

"Manik..." Nandini breathed in return, her voice seeming distorted but perfectly fresh.

"Nandini.. are you.. are you okay?"

"Manik, it's raining..." She answered, "badly."

I took a deep breath trying to calm myself down. There was nothing wrong. She was okay. "I know...I know yes."

"Mia is at her friend's place, she's sleeping there but there's a storm outside. I feel giddy about leaving her there, Manik. I.. I feel anxious, like something's wrong." And now, her voice cracked like tears were filling into her eyes. "Manik, the girl's parents aren't picking up either. I'm... I'm telling you, it feels like something's wrong."

"Nandini..." I deep sighed, rubbing my free hand over my eyes as I stumbled onto the couch in the darkness. In all the years of our separation, Nandini had never called me except with work, and never out of time like this in the middle of the night. "Are you sure you don't just miss her?"

A part of my heart swelled knowing that she still thought of me in a time like this, not Aryamman. Whoever that man is to Nandini, he would never take my place in Mia's life.

I will always be Mia's father.

"Manik, I have lived without her before! Stop dismissing my worry as hormones." Nandini's voice suddenly got sharper.

"Okay. Okay. Um. I'll come. I'll come to your place and then I'll drive you to Mia's friends house and we can check on our daughter, okay?"

"You'll drive to me at this time?" She sounded surprised. "In all that rain?"

"You need me," I answered whilst picking up my car keys from between the broken bottle glass and getting up to go up and wash the alcohol from my breath and take a quick shower to look more presentable. "Of course I'll be there for you."

"One more thing.." Nandini added, sounding hesitant.

"Hm?"

"I'm not at my place..."

I felt my heart stop. For a whole moment, I paused. I stopped breathing. I stopped walking. I stopped listening to the frantic rustling of the leaves outside of feeling the cold air settle on my bare skin and give me goosebumps or cringing from the stench of alcohol in my breath. I stopped watching the world around me, and if there was any life left inside my soul, for that moment, it felt like I stopped living.

And then, I breathed indifferently. "Text me his address." Without giving her the change to reply, I disconnected.

~

The clock was a quarter passed four in the morning when I impatiently tapped my fingernails across the steering wheel of my tesla. I watched nonchalantly as thunder and lightning boomed overhead and the rain poured loudly as if planning to sink the city in one night.

I stood outside 11th Broadway Apartments, just outside the gate of the address my estranged wife texted me.

I loved Nandini too much, right since the day I met her. It wasn't love at first sight, it was love at familiarity. At meeting someone again and again and again till your heart recognises them as home. And I loved her strangely, almost in a way they only write about in books. And that was always the problem. If she wanted to dance, I would book the entire ball room for her. If she wanted to cook, I would let her burn down my kitchen. If she wanted to read, I'd open myself to her as a free book. I loved her enough to give her the power to write my ruins.

And in the end, I broke her heart.

It's more often that way than not. You don't hurt people you hate. You only hurt people you love.

Hurt is the cost of love. You always feel it, sooner or later.

I was still lost in my thoughts when the door to the passenger seat opened and Nandini hopped in after closing her umbrella, her short hair dripping water and her teeth clattered from the cold as she shut the door behind her.

I didn't look at her. I didn't want to meet her eye.

I felt hot after the burning shower I had taken, but I know she was cold. Sighing, I switched off the AC and switched on the heater instead.

Love was strange.

It was getting hurt by a person and then giving them more power to hurt you, over and over again.

She was in the same clothes as I had seen her in that café. She was with him.

"This place.. it's..."

I cut her off. "Do you know the directions to Mia's friend's house?"

My voice was more distant and cold than I wanted it to me and I watched her gulp from the corner of my eyes as she nodded before inserting the address into the GPS of the car.

An otherwise twenty minute route now showed a little over forty minutes.

Great. I was stuck with her in this car and the awkwardness for the remaining hour. Fuck my life.

Ten minutes of silence later, Nandini spoke up, "Thank you, for doing this."

I didn't reply. I just breathed. In and out. In and out. In and out. Fuck it. "Why didn't you ask him?"

She looked a little surprised, a little wounded and  a little tattered as her head snapped towards me, her eyes undoubtedly holding the question: how did you know?

And then, she looked away.

We didn't talk for the rest of the ride.

~

It was a few minutes past five in the morning when I parked my car outside my daughter's friend's house, wondering how this girl travels to and from school every day. The house was in the outskirts of the town. Rains were heavier, the otherwise perfectly good drainage of the city was becoming ineffective as water began filling the narrow streets and despite the sun being up, thick clouds and thunder still covered the sky.

However, it didn't seem like there was anything wrong inside the house.

"Now what?" I ask Nandini, my voice again colder than I wanted it to be. "We wait outside until somebody wakes up?"

"We drove all the way here just to wait outside?"

I knitted my eyebrows. "You want to go inside and wake them? At 5AM?"

"Obviously." There was no hesitance in her answer.

This woman was mad. "Go ahead then. I'll be here to bail you when those whites call the cops on you."

She glared at me, pouting like she always did, probably growing a little tired of my attitude. "Fine."

And with that, she opened the car and actually galloped outside without the umbrella, jogging towards the wrap around porch of their house.

I just started at her insanity with disbelief. She was mad.

And she drove me mad.

Turning off the engine of my car which was not made to survive such a weather, I f*cking got down behind her, letting the rain and chilled air soak me.

As I stood beside her on the porch, she didn't look at me but her face held the kind of smug smile that said I-knew-you'd-follow. Before either of us could say a single word, the door opened. I could guess Nandini had already rung the bell a million times.

A little shocked Mrs. Johnson stood on the other end, her hair looking like a bird's nest. "Mrs. Malhotra... and Mr. Malhotra... what a surprise. This early in the morning." Her voice was unwelcoming and borderline hostile.

"I'm sorry to barge in, Mrs. Johnson, we have a family emergency because of which we have to leave town. I was hoping I'd pick Mia up." Nandini lied with politeness, almost surprising me.

She was a far cry from the woman I once knew, who wouldn't lie even if she was at gun point.

"Of course." The other woman's smile was forced as she scanned us from head to toe, and how we were dripping rain water. "Why don't you both wait? I'll wake little Mia up."

"Thank you."

With that, Mrs. Johnson disappeared inside.

"She's pissed." I whispered to Nandini in a hushed tone.

"Jaanti hu," Nandini answered. "Mere liye meri beti ki safety is more important than iss gori ki beauty sleep."

"What are you doing?" My eyes widened. "Talk slowly."

She just shrugged. "As if unko samjhega mai kya bol rahi hu. Gaali bhi deke jaungi instead of a thanks toh nahi samjhega."

This. Woman. Had. Changed.

I had all the alcohol last night, and she was the one drunk.

Before I could process my shock, Mrs. Johnson re-appeared with a sleepy Mia on her tail, who looked fine from head to toe. However, all her sleep disappeared when she laid eyes on me.

"Papa? Mom? Together?"

I smiled at her as happiness and excitement covered her face and she ran towards us, hugging both of us together despite us being wet.

I laughed, picking my daughter in my arms and kissing her cheek, holding her close. She was getting bigger, and soon I wouldn't be able to lift her. I needed to cherish every moment with her while I still could.

I left Nandini to thank Mrs. Johnson as I took Mia back to the car and strapped her safely in the back seat, after which I and Nandini both sat in our places.

"Mia, sweetheart, did you have fun?" Nandini asked her as I pulled the car out of her friend's driveway, and I looked at my daughter in the rear view mirror, playing with the hem of her blue coloured pyjamas.

"Mh-hm." She buzzed, and then asked, "Why are you both together?"

"Can't mom and dad miss their princess together?" I answered, saving Nandini from the question.

"Mh-hm."

"Mama was worried for you, my love," Nandini tried again, "Are you doing alright?"

"Mh-hm." She continued playing with the hem of her pyjamas while she sat with her feet crossed on the back seat of my car, Nandini's eyes turned to me with worry.

This woman was not only mad, but also paranoid.

"She's just sleepy," I mumbled back to Nandini, but she didn't seem convinced. I didn't use that as an excuse to talk to her further. We both knew I was avoiding conversation.

Until my car started slowing down ten minutes later no matter how hard I tried to press the accelerator.

And then five minutes after that, it broke down.

My f*cking expensive car broke down in the middle of the road.

That is how I found myself pissed out of my head trying to call Cabir for the sixth time in the same minute.

What is the point of being rich if you have to end up stranded on the side of a road when the city drowned in f*cking water?

"Manik, he's probably asleep. If he didn't pick up on the sixth try, I donot think there's any chance you can wake him on the seventh one." Nandini softly mumbled, and I left my phone aside to glare at her.

This was all happening because of her any way.

"Do you have another idea, genius?" I snapped.

She didn't seem hurt or even affected. "Actually, I do." I followed her gaze to a motel that happened to conveniently be at the end of the road. It looked three stars, four at best, half the lighting in the billboard of it's name flickering because of the rain outside showing a half-assed: '..Cking Motel.'

Fucking motel?

"Striking Motel." Nandini mumbled, as if reading my mind.

I let out an exasperated sigh, switching off my car with irritation. "It's not like we have much choice. Let's go."

~

There was something wrong with me daughter. The girl who didn't often shut up said nothing at all as she clung to my jacket with all her strength, burying her head in my neck under the umbrella as we walked into the motel.

I didn't bother saying a word to the blonde receptionist dreamily batter her lashes at me.

"Two rooms." Nandini asked instead of me.

She seemed a little disappointed I wasn't the one doing the talking, but she licked her lips over her bright red lipstick before indistinctly tapping onto the keyboard of her computer. A moment later, she looked up. "We're out of all the standard rooms. We have just presidential suites left, and they're really expensive."

I finally spoke up, "I need two."

"Didn't you hear me bro? I said they're mad expensive."

"How much?"

"Three hundred a night."

I battered my lashes back at her. "I thought you said they were expensive."

"Ouch. Okay." She typed away at her keyboard, and Nandini left out a disappointed shake of head. "Sorry bro," She looked up again. "We're all out. Just one left."

"You mean to say this shitty hotel is all out at three hundred dollars a night?"

"It's romantic weather, bro." She shrugged.

I took a deep breath. "Clear one room out for me. Ask those guests to go somewhere else."

She chuckled. "What are you, the president? It does NOT work that way."

"Yeah, I'm not the president but I'll pay you thrice times the price for a night."

"Hard pass."

"Five times."

She looked impressed. Almost impressed. "You can do better."

"Six times." I tell her.

"No." Nandini cut in between, "We'll take the one room. Thanks." Nandini glared at me and I just snuggled closer into my daughter.

"Bummer." The receptionist said, throwing they key card on the desk. "This was just getting fun. I love powerful men."

"Yeah, if you love your job, keep your love for powerful men to yourself." Nandini shot daggers at her, grabbing the card and marched in herself.

I wondered if she even knew where she was supposed to go. I followed her nonetheless. Surprisingly, she found her way to the room we were supposed to stay in till the rain dies out, a suite on the last floor of the motel. It was surprisingly big, opening into a separate area containing a television, and a couch with a mini fridge, leading into a bigger room containing one king sized bed and a bathroom that looked decent enough from the half open door. The best part was the small balcony, overlooking a decent view.

It wasn't good. But it was decent.

"Come sweetheart, let me give you a shower and change you into fresh clothes before you catch a cold." Nandini cooed Mia and the little girl jumped from my arms to hers in a second without saying a word.

Traitor.

I removed my jacket too, leaving it to dry on the couch. Thankfully, my t-shirt inside was still dry. I threw myself on the couch besides it, my head spinning in hangover.

This was the first time I was sharing the space as my wife and daughter in years. And for some reason, it didn't feel different the way I thought it would. It still seemed warm and fuzzy and familiar. Almost like home should.

Sitting on the couch, I couldn't not look at Nandini's phone lying on the table, and Aryamman's name flashing on it as it silently vibrated. I couldn't ignore the pain in my heart or the want to throw up all over again.

After years, I wondered why I was beginning to feel again. Why was the fear of losing her so strong when she hasn't been mine for a long time now?

Why had I started being attracted to her presence again, like a lost wanderer coming home?

Why was she home, again?

That was a weird feeling to house, especially when there were divorce papers waiting for Nandini at home when we returned from this little adventure.

I just wondered why I didn't have the guts to tell her that. Was it because I was beginning to realise I didn't want the divorce, or that she inevitably wanted it?

It's always
one step forward
and
three steps back

Do you love me,
want me,
hate me?
Boy, I don't understand.