The First Time (Love in No Time #1) (15 page)

He smacks me hard on my bum as he hauls himself out of bed and saunters to the kitchen butt naked.

Thank god the man has the best-looking ass in town and looked good sauntering.

Thank god for butt mercies.

Thank god, period.

I walk to the bathroom butt naked too but no one is watching me. But I feel and know I look good, at least this morning of all the other mornings since I came of age. I splash my face with cold water, instantly coming awake. I feel like a shower, feeling all hot and sticky and achy.

“Breakfast is ready, your highness!” He calls out.

Okay, no shower then. Breakfast is ready. I walk out the bathroom expecting to see two plates of somewhat together eggs and nothing else. No Indian man knows how to cook. He doesn’t either, I have assumed naturally.

I still.

On the side table, next to the bed, I see two plates of perfectly cooked omelets (!), two slices of braised tomato slices each (!), two perfectly browned toasts each, with cheese slices and butter on the side. There are two teas and two glasses of orange juice to round off a perfect offering. This is unreal. He couldn’t have. He didn’t. Did he?

“Did you order in?” He looks offended.

“Babe, ordering in would have taken at least thirty minutes. No, I didn’t order in. I know how to do eggs and the rest was just organizing and pouring and presentation. Voila!”

I feel frozen. I am unable to move or respond.

“Babe?” Still nothing.

“Babe!” This time I connect to his eyes. He looks concerned.

“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting a full spread. This is . . . nice. Thank you.” I choke out. He still looks concerned when he walks up the two steps separating us to tilt my face up to brush off a tear that has apparently fallen unbiddingly to my cheek. Damn! He takes the teardrop, looks at it like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world, and then looks at me as he licks it away into his mouth. I shudder. He pulls me in his arms before burying his head into the side of my neck. My eyes are closed, my body is again wound out, and I am not sure what movement means anymore.

He suddenly looks up to whisper “let’s eat” and we both squat on the bed with our plates. We dig in. What does a hunger-ravaged stomach want but a magical spread of everything you haven’t lifted a finger to make! I don’t even look up from my devouring. I know if I do I might freeze again. That would totally ruin my hunger and a plate of very good food would go wasted. That would indeed be a total shame. So I continue till the last morsel has settled into my stomach. Only then do I look up. There he is looking at me. His food only half-eaten. He is slowly sipping his orange juice. I feel like I am an object of contemplation and inquiry—like he is trying to figure me out or if he had, to solve another puzzle that I might have presented him with regarding the breakfast issue.

“What?” I decide to be rude to hide my nervousness.

“Nothing.”

“I know its not nothing. Why are you staring at me this way?”

“What way?” “I don’t know what way. You know what way because you are looking at me in that way.” He suddenly smiles.

“Come here, babe.”

“Why?”

“Come here, baby.”

“No.”

“I said, come . . .
here”

“Don’t need to.”

“Come here, baby, I need you to.”

I say nothing, stubbornly refusing to go to him. He sighs, sets his plate down, reaches an arm’s length, grabs my hand, and pulls me very easily to him. I kind of fall into his lap, quite inelegantly. I hate inelegance even in emotional skirmishes that are by definition inelegant.

“That was so ungentlemanly.” I scoff.

“Then you should have come to me when I asked you to.”

“I am not your pet poodle, you know, who jumps every time you ask it to.”

“Oh, baby, you are definitely my pet, not a poodle though. I hate poodles. They are ugly. You are too beautiful. There is no comparison.”

I am desperate to smile but too stubborn to let it show. So I bite it down.

“Ok, baby. Enough is enough. Let it go. This is just you and me. You have to let me in. You have to let me say things to you without you going into a huff and puff.”

“Huff and puff? What are we playing? Thomas the train?” I can’t help exclaiming and then I burst out laughing. It is a release and a relief to let it all out. I slowly become hysterical. I lie on my back laughing like I can’t stop. He is suddenly over me, trapping me with his hardness. I stop immediately. My breath sticks in my throat at the wild expression on his face. His kiss this time is not gentle at all. It is fierce. It is abrasive. It is rude. It hurts. It is meant to hurt. It hurts. When he is done expending his emotion on my innocent lips, he lifts his face ever so slightly and speaks.

“Babe, I am giving you this straight. I am into you. I am so into you that I can’t see straight sometimes. I have bided my time with you. I have waited, patiently. Now that I know that you are indeed what I fantasized you to be, I want more. Hell, I want everything. I want us to be exclusive. I don’t want you dating anyone, not even think about anyone else. I am yours and you are mine. This is how it is going to be for some time to come. We’ll take it minute-by-minute, day-by-day. We’ll take it slow but not too slow, ok? You feel the need to speed it up, we will. You want me to tone it down, I could do that, for you. Anything for you, babe. Anything. I am not sure how this all happened but we are here now. I am all in, if you are. I sincerely hope that you are. I really want to give us a bloody good start and see where we end up, finally. I will tell you this now. I cannot predict the future. I cannot predict what might or might not happen. But then I never imagined this would happen—you and me. But it did and here we are in your bed, me kissing you senseless and you accepting it like you didn’t care for anything else but my lips. I want us to learn each other—to know each other’s bodies, what pleases us, what doesn’t, what times of the day, what times of the night, what positions, what combination of positions, what words, what food, and the list is endless. But I want to know baby. You have talk to me, let me in, tell me what you need every step of the way. I cannot read your mind. And neither can you read mine. So we have to share what we are thinking. No holding back. If we are to be happy, we have to communicate. The rest will fall into place. Are you with me?”

I am speechless. I think I can feel a lump growing in my throat.

“Are you with me, sweetheart?” he repeats, softly this time.

I nod.

“Okay.” He lets out a huge sigh—as if he was holding it all in for the longest while. He smiles—it is all dazzling and all consuming.

I smile back but tears have gathered in my eyes so he is all hazy and blurry.

“Don’t, baby. I hate to see you cry. I am sorry to have laid it all out so thick and so quick on you. But I needed to get it all out before I left here today. I needed you to know so you had the chance to decide for or against us. It was a chance I had to take and I am so happy that you want this as much as I do. This is going to be so good, babe. You and I will have the best time of our lives. Like I said, minute-by-minute, day-by-day. Ok?”

Before I could agree, the house phone rang. Neither he nor I moved. It was all so anti-climatic. Finally, on the fourth ring, I pushed at him to get off me so I could go see who it was. He just rolled to the side, put his hands behind his head and watched me pick up the phone. I gave him my back as I said hello.

“Hello, Bitsi? Bitsi, please if
he
is there give him the phone. Its an emergency.”

It was his brother! How did he get this number? Did he know we were together? He said it was an emergency. Okay, all the other questions could wait.

“Hey, its your brother. He says its an emergency.”

He is on his feet and at the phone in a nanosecond. I step away from him to give him his privacy. I go sit on the sofa in the living room as he finishes his call. Instead of walking up to me, he returns to the bedroom and starts packing his stuff. I am concerned. I walk to him.

“Hey, what happened?”

“I need to get home. I need to take care of something like now.” His lover persona has disappeared. He is all business.

“You don’t want to say?”

“No.”

That’s it. He is on a different autopilot now. He is ready in ten minutes. He kisses me on the forehead and leaves. I am standing in the middle of the room, not understanding what happened in the space of fifteen minutes. How did we go from love confessions to emergencies? Life had turned on a dime. I wasn’t even sure which side the dime would fall, if it did at all. It didn’t look good.

There was no temporal gap between him expressing himself and the call. How could that be a good sign? The universe reacted so antithetically. I hadn’t made sense of the first offering when the second was presented so unexpectedly. It was not a good sign. I forced myself to move. I needed to do something. I could hardly wait for him to call me. God knows how long that would take or if at all he would do so.

I switched on the TV. I needed noise in the house. I needed voices. It was too quiet for my liking. Lata’s singing brought some calm. It distracted me. Suddenly, there was a news flash, “Bomb explodes in downtown Lajpat Nagar. 20 dead and many others injured.” Oh! Shit. Another one of those random bombings. This is crazy. I watch the carnage on the screen. I couldn’t after a minute. So I switched off the TV. No point in changing the channel since every channel was reporting the same thing.

I got busy with laundry, cooking, cleaning. I gave myself no freedom to think about what had happened some hours ago. At around 6 p.m. I decided to call my mom. She was happy to hear from me. We chatted about inane family matters when she said, “Have you heard?”

“Heard what?” “His sister is missing. She ran away, I believe.”

“What? How? When?”

“I don’t know the details. But she left a note, I hear, blaming her brother for her leaving the house and asking everyone to not look for her.”

“Oh my god.”
That
was his emergency. His sister left a note. And she blamed him for everything! What the fuck is going on here?

I call him but he doesn’t answer. I haven’t heard from him since our evening. Not a word. No phone call. No letter. No news. No ad. Nothing. Like he had disappeared off the face of the earth like his sister.

August, 1996—Chanakyapuri, Delhi

He has said his goodbye without taking off his helmet. He had appeared out of oblivion to say goodbye. No explanation, no reasons, nothing. I was dying. I see him after days of not hearing from him only to say what seemed like a permanent goodbye. That evening between us was real only by his presence today and was unreal in the way he left without a show of face or a word of explanation. We were undone by some twist of fate . . .

Postscript

August 30, 1998—Austin, Texas.

From: [email protected]

Date: 30 August, 1998, 12:05:34 am CDT

To: [email protected]

Subject: None

Dear Bitsi

How are you? Sorry. I found you online and couldn’t help myself. But as I write, I struggle for words. I write and I delete. This has been happening at least for the past three hours now. I don’t expect you to write back. Hell, I don’t even know what to expect. But if you do write back, and I hope you will, I would sincerely request the opportunity to explain. I am probably on your “to-kill” list. Here is me—giving you the opportunity to do what you need to—kill, maim, obliterate. Anything. Anything you want . . . babe. In bated anticipation. ” Yours—AD.

P.S: ‘Have attached a photo of me. ‘Should explain some things, if not all.

I opened the attachment. It took about twenty seconds for the image to struggle onto the screen.

And then I screamed . . .

*              *              *

End of
The First Time
(Part 1: Love in No Time)

You just read “The First Time”
(Part I of
Love in No Time
Series) by first time author, Bitsi Shar

He was her brother’s best friend. She was his next-door neighbor. Neither one was particularly interested in finding an Indian romantic partner.

Yet despite their differences in background, thought, and ambition, they come together in a moment of passion that ultimately sparks a cycle of frenzied desire and ruthless breakups that lasts for years.

Through it all, it is the quiet moments they share together that slowly build the fire that keeps their desire continuously burning. From riding his scooter on a rainy day and picking up pizza on the way home, to dancing at a club and eating cake at her brother’s birthday party, these ordinary events construct an intricate dance that eventually leads to an explosive climax, which will change their lives forever.

Set in Delhi, India,
The First Time
fans the flames of the city’s heritage of historical love stories with this fresh, fiery, and effervescent romance.

About the author

Bitsi Shar has been an avid and faithful fan of Mills and Boons romances since she was sixteen years old. As her pile of beloved, well-worn books grew, so did her curiosity about what makes a story good. This, and her passion for the city of Delhi, eventually inspired her to write her debut romance novel,
The First Time
.

Next in the
Love in No Time
Series: “The Second Time” (set in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Toronto, Canada; and Austin, Texas (December 2014). Desire, regret, and love build to a meteoric climax that consummates their attraction—and reveals a secret that alters their lives forever!

For your comments, words of encouragement, criticism (gentle, please!), or just a quick chat, please write to Bitsy Shar at
[email protected]
.

Thank you for reading a piece of my heart.