Fling by Abhilash Gaur Read Free Book Online

Doors
    “Shut the door,” I
said when at last her lively tongue withdrew from my mouth. We had
forgotten about the door. She was sitting on the edge of my bed, my
head was on a pillow in her lap, and we had just made one long,
lingering kiss. Our first. I didn’t care about kissing her, but it
had to be done if I hoped to get any further. I had let her linger,
absorbing all the saltiness from her mouth.
    She was flushed and
breathless, and dazed. Her lips were swollen, her eyes were
slightly glazed, and she moved slowly, dreamily, rolling her small
hips deliberately as she walked four paces towards the wide open
white door of my room. She shut it noiselessly, drew the latch
softly and then knotted her curly hair in a bun before returning to
me with a wicked smile and hands thrust in the pockets of her grey
running shorts.
    It was noon and nobody
used the steps outside my door between morning and evening. We
could have left it wide open and made love stark naked without
being seen, but we would never have done that, of course.
    I had known her a
month. She was my colleague and lived down the block. We spent many
hours together everyday. We travelled by the same bus to office.
Evenings, no matter how late we returned, we lingered at the beach
where the bus stopped, and talked. We talked a lot. She told me
about her heartbreaks: a bad marriage and a messy divorce. I told
her imaginary tales about a faithless childhood sweetheart. We
talked about love, and cursed it. She said romantic love was
ridiculous, I said it was dangerous.
    She came to my room
often. In the mornings, she came to hurry me. In the evening, we
helped each other carry our groceries home. On weekends, we went
out to see the city together. There was so much to see, it was a
big city. She waited patiently when I shot pictures, I never
complained when she shopped for clothes and street jewellery. We
gossiped about office and told each other about our folks.
    When she came, I
always left the door open. It was my way of telling her I was a
good guy, I wouldn’t rape her. I made a great show of it. If she
made to shut it on her own, I told her aloud to leave it ajar. I
was advertising that I was not only a safe guy but also someone who
cared about her reputation, since we lived in the same block. I was
a man of honour, a perfect gentleman. I never touched her, not even
on the small double-seat that we shared on the bus. If her elbow
brushed mine, I promptly apologized and turned away a few degrees.
I was that safe.
    But she was always
patting my back or ruffling my hair or tapping my wrist or nudging
me “good-naturedly”, and I didn’t object to that. We were friends,
after all. Just good friends. We couldn’t have fallen in love.
Every evening we swore that we valued our independence more than
anything else. We could see someone for a while but lifelong
commitment was impossible. Better a one-night stand than a broken
heart. But this was something we had started saying only recently.
We were on the same wavelength.
    I had fallen ill in
office the previous night. We were working late on a project and I
had skipped lunch, then around 9pm I had popped an aspirin on an
empty stomach. And within minutes I had become terribly sick. My
stomach hurt excruciatingly, my head swam and I thought I would
pass out. She had called an auto and brought me home. She had held
my hand all the way. She had even offered to stay the night in my
room but I wouldn’t hear of it, and had sent her home. I had slept
after eating a couple of bananas, and woken up at her knock.
    She said she had
called thrice, the first time at 8 o’ clock. My room didn’t have a
doorbell and she had knocked, waited and gone back. She had been
ready to leave for office but had changed her mind. She came back
two hours later and I still didn’t hear her knock. That’s when she
had changed into her running shorts and vest. The third time I had
heard her and opened the door.
    She made me lie down.
The