Rian couldn’t meet her eyes.
“If you argued, just make it up to her and apologise.”
He glanced away, stubbornly silent.
Kaya turned to her husband, gesturing towards the inside. Understanding that she wanted a minute alone, he stood up.
“I’m going to go try to figure out Rian’s coffee machine,” Arjun announced, bending down to swipe a kiss on his wife’s cheek. “Or break it. I haven’t decided.”
Rian noticed the silly, lovestruck smile on Kaya’s face as she watched her husband walk away, and it only made him miss Aditi more. She would have made him smile like that as well.
Unable to help himself, he pulled out his phone and unlocked it to reveal a picture of the two of them making silly faces. He sighed, catching Kaya watching him with an exasperated look.
“What?” he asked defensively.
“What’s the problem?” She turned sideways and sat with one leg folded under her, the other on the ground. “Explain it to me so I can understand, because Arjun offered to punch you on Aditi’s behalf and I am tempted to let him.”
“You’re supposed to be my friend, not Aditi’s.”
“And that is the only reason why I am giving you a chance to explain why you are trying to run from a woman who loves you.”
“I’m not,” he insisted, indignation rising.
“Then why are you sulking?”
“She brought up some things that I am trying to figure out the answer to, without much success.”
“Like?”
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. He had thought about Aditi’s parting words constantly over the last couple days. But having to explain it felt like a Herculean task. At least Hercules had a road map for what he was required to do. Rian felt like a shipwrecked sailor floating in choppy Pacific waters, trying to grasp pieces of driftwood to stay alive.
“I don’t know where to begin. She found out I loved you once.”
Kaya’s brows met in the middle, her lips twisting as she contemplated that.
“Okay,” she drawled. “That’s an easy fix. Did you tell her that we’re like family? It was never really serious between us.”
“I never got that far. I don’t know how to fix this fucking mess that I’ve created.” He pressed two fingers into his temple as he felt the slow indications of a migraine coming on once again. The existing strain between Aditi and him had kept him in the doldrums. Sure, she hadn’t yelled and tried to guilt him for days on end, but her silence disturbed him even more. He would rather face her anger than feel like she was shutting him out.
Her teary accusations troubled him. To have his words make her feel ridiculed for who she was, when it was her beautiful personality that had drawn him to her in the first place, felt like a cruel prank. He rubbed his lips absentmindedly, the ghost of their last kiss taunting him, her dispiritedness hindering his own ability to function normally.
“Maybe I should let her go, for her sake,” he supposed, his gaze pinned upon the moving cars on the bridge. “She deserves someone who knows what the fuck he’s doing.”
“That might be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“I don’t know. I’m not cut out for love and relationships. I didn’t like the heartache that came with it the first time around either. I didn’t get over you for a long time and I didn’t want to put myself through that again. But here I am. Making that same mistake. And it feels like hell.”
Instead of sympathy, Rian received a smack with the pillow Kaya held.
“The hell?” he griped, rubbing the back of his head where she’d landed her hit.
Unapologetic about her actions, Kaya defiantly lifted her chin. "In Arjun’s words, that's a flaming pile of bullshit.”
“What?”
“Oh, come on!” she scoffed, throwing the pillow across from them at the empty loveseat. “You stopped having romantic feelings for me eons ago.”
“That’s not patronising at all.”