Old flames don't ask permission - Part 1
Drishti stared at the crimson gown for a long moment before she began to pack. It was the kind of red that demanded attention — gold embroidery catching the light like small flames. She told herself the flutter in her chest was excitement. It wasn't entirely a lie.
Arjun, her husband, had kissed her forehead that morning, distracted, already mentally back at his desk. I'll miss you, he'd said, in the way people say things they mean but don't quite feel. She'd smiled and zipped her suitcase and hadn't let herself think too hard about the relief that followed her out the door.
Alone. Just for a few days. That was all it was.
She drove with the radio too loud, filling the car with noise so her thoughts couldn't settle. Sakshi's wedding. Friends she hadn't seen in years. The predictable warmth of reunions. She could map the whole weekend in her mind — the laughter, the dancing, the careful navigation of so what are you doing now and you look amazing — and it all felt manageable.
She didn't let herself think about Hardik. Not really.
The venue hit her like a held breath released. Fairy lights strung everywhere, flowers banked against every surface, the low roar of a hundred conversations weaving together. Beautiful in the way that weddings always were — a little unreal, a little unbearable. Drishti moved through the crowd, smiling, embracing old friends, letting the celebration absorb her.
And then her eyes found him.
She felt it before she fully registered what she was seeing — a sudden stillness in her chest, like a step that found no ground. Hardik. Standing in a group across the room, dressed in black, laughing at something she couldn't hear. He looked exactly like himself. That was the worst part. She'd half-hoped time would have done something useful — aged him badly, made him a stranger. Instead he was simply, undeniably him.
Don't.
She was already moving.
"Hardik?"
Her voice came out smaller than she intended.
He turned. The laugh on his face faded into something more complicated — surprise, recognition, a warmth she hadn't prepared herself for. "Drishti." Not a question. More like he was testing the word, making sure it still fit.
"Hi." The word felt absurdly small for everything packed behind it.
They stood close enough that she could have reached out and touched his arm. She didn't. Around them, the wedding celebration roared on, indifferent.
She shouldn't have let him into her room. She knew that before she opened the door and found him standing there, hands in his pockets, that tentative half-smile she'd once loved unreasonably.
I knew you'd come, she said, and hated how true it was.
The room felt smaller with him in it. She settled into a chair; he settled across from her; and then they were simply two people in a quiet room while a wedding happened somewhere below them, and she couldn't decide if that was dangerous or terribly sad.
He looked at her the way he used to — like she was something worth studying.
You've become even more beautiful, he said. There's a different kind of radiance about you.
She laughed softly, deflecting. Was I not beautiful before?
But the compliment lodged somewhere under her ribs anyway, traitorous and warm. Arjun was generous with many things. With words like that, he was careful. Measured. She'd stopped noticing the absence until now.
They talked. Slowly at first, then faster — falling into the old rhythm of each other, the shorthand that years couldn't fully erode. The cafes. The movies. The late-night phone calls that had gone on until one of them fell asleep mid-sentence. She laughed at things she'd half-forgotten, and the laughter felt good and guilty in equal measure.
I remember how you used to lie to your family just to meet me, he said, and there it was again — that nostalgic smile that had always made her feel both seen and endangered.
I remember. Her voice dropped. It was exhilarating.
It had been. That was the honest truth she'd spent years carefully not examining. The lying had been part of it — the small thrill of choosing him against everyone's better judgment. She'd been someone different in those hours. Lighter. More herself and less who everyone needed her to be.
Those rooms were our little escape, he said softly. I still think about how we'd make love. How perfect it felt.
The room tilted slightly.
She shouldn't be here. She knew the shape of what this was, could see it clearly even as she stayed seated, even as she didn't stand up and move toward the door. Arjun's face surfaced in her mind — that distracted morning kiss — and guilt bloomed low in her stomach, sharp and unhelpful.
But Hardik had always known how to see her. Not just her body but the mess underneath — the fears she'd never said aloud, the insecurities she'd dragged into every room. He had loved all of it. She hadn't realized, until right now, sitting in this lamplit hotel room, how much she'd missed being known like that.
Do you ever think about those times? His fingers grazed her arm. Barely anything. A ghost of a touch.
All the time. The admission left her before she could stop it.
The guilt was not subtle. It had been gnawing since he walked through the door, and now it was a low roar she could no longer talk over. Every laugh felt borrowed. Every shared memory felt like a door she was opening without checking what was on the other side.
I don't know if this conversation is right, she said, and her voice betrayed her — trembling at the edges, pulled in two directions with equal force.
She looked at his hand on her arm and felt the full impossible weight of it: her marriage on one side, this unfinished thing on the other, and herself suspended between them.
Do you want me to stop?
She shook her head. She hated herself a little for it.
The kiss was almost inevitable by then, which didn't make it better.
It was tender first, then urgent — the kind of kiss that had memory built into it, muscle memory, something the body keeps after the mind has done its dutiful work of moving on. She felt herself lean in and simultaneously felt herself watching from across the room, horrified and helpless.
When she pulled back, her chest was tight.
Hardik. We're both married.
Something moved across his face — not guilt, exactly. Something more like resignation, like a man admitting to something he'd already long accepted about himself. I don't care, he said. I imagine you when I'm with my wife. You've never really left my mind.
The words should have thrilled her. Instead they landed like a stone.
I've imagined you too, she heard herself say. During intimate moments with Arjun.
It was the truest and most terrible thing she'd said in years.
She stopped his hands with a gentleness that cost her something.
Go to your room, Hardik. Her voice steadier now. A decision made quietly, in some chamber of herself that still knew who she was. Let's forget if anything happened.
He left. She sat in the silence he'd vacated and pressed her hands flat against her knees and breathed.
Below, the wedding music played on.
The blue gown that evening was a kind of armor.
She'd chosen it deliberately — something new, nothing he'd seen before, nothing that carried history. She watched Hardik across the function hall in his matching blue tuxedo and felt the absurd, aching irony of it. Even trying to be separate from him, she'd matched him.
He couldn't stop looking at her. She pretended not to notice, which required more concentration than anything else she did that evening.
When he finally found a moment alone with her — you look so kissable right now — she raised an eyebrow and said, in Hindi, Touch me and see if you don't get slapped.
It was bravado. Mostly.
The alleyway was dark and quiet, and she heard him behind her before she saw him.
When he pulled her against the wall and kissed her, her first instinct was to push him away. She tried. She genuinely tried. And then the kiss found its footing and her resistance came apart — not from weakness, she told herself later, but from the accumulated weight of everything the evening had cost her, every carefully maintained wall, every not-quite-lie.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, he grinned. Challenge completed.
Something snapped.
The fury came from somewhere deep and old — not the kiss, not tonight, not even this whole reckless weekend. It came from years before. I'll break your face, she said, in Hindi, her voice shaking — and she wasn't smiling.
Hardik blinked. Why are you so furious?
The tears came without her permission, which made her even angrier.
Where were those guts, she said, her voice fracturing, when you had to ask my father for me? Each word felt like pressing on a bruise she'd carried so long she'd forgotten it was there. Where was this courage when I needed you to stand by me? Why didn't you fight for us, Hardik?
The question she'd never let herself ask. The one that had been waiting, patient and poisonous, through every year of her marriage, every moment she'd convinced herself she was over it.
Why weren't you there?
He had no answer. She hadn't expected one. He just held her — the way he used to, when holding her had been enough — and she let him, because she was tired, and because some comforts are worth the cost you'll pay for them later.
The corridor back to her room was very quiet.
He talked. She listened. I thought it was the best for everyone. So many complications. So many expectations. The words were careful and probably true and did almost nothing for the ache in her chest. She recognized the shape of his reasoning — she'd used the same reasoning herself, in different configurations, about different choices. It wasn't comfort. It was just the way people explained the things they'd been too afraid to do.
At her door, he asked to hug goodbye.
No, she said. I don't think that's a good idea.
He hugged her anyway.
She meant to stay rigid. She meant to keep herself separate and intact. But his arms were familiar in the way that only years can make something familiar, and after a moment she stopped fighting it and rested her head on his shoulder and let herself have just that — one moment of being held by someone who had known her before she became who she was now.
Can I stay tonight?
She laughed softly. Go to your room, Hardik.
She watched him walk away down the corridor and stood in the doorway long after he'd gone, her hand on the door frame, her heart doing something she couldn't name. Inside the room was quiet. Inside the room was her phone, with probably a message from Arjun. Inside the room she would have to be herself again — the version of herself that had a life arranged around different choices.
She stepped inside and closed the door gently, as though afraid to wake something.
TO BE CONTINUED.....