Adultery Priya Didi

[shailu4ever]

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He picked up the phone at last, unlocked it, and opened the chat. Her last message sat there, untouched, unanswered. Ravi’s fingers hovered over the keyboard.
 
He typed.
 
“I’m sorry, Didi.”
 
He stared at the words. They felt too small, too empty, like a shortcut through something that demanded explanation. He deleted them.
 
Typed again.
 
“I never wanted to disrespect you. Please believe me.”
 
Deleted.
 
Again.
 
“I don’t know what came over me.”
 
Deleted.
 
Each sentence sounded wrong, either defensive or hollow. None of them captured what churned inside him.
 
“How do I apologize for something I don’t fully understand?”
“How do I explain that I thought I was being careful?”
 
He had asked.
He had waited.
He had watched her face, her hands, her silence, and read permission where there was none.
 
Or so she said now.
 
His hands fell into his lap. The phone remained open, accusing in its stillness.
 
“Anything I say now will sound like an excuse,” he realized.
“And excuses will only prove her right.”
 
Ravi leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. Images of Priya Didi surfaced unbidden, not of confrontation, but of everything before it.
 
Her gentle smile when she offered him tea.
The way she asked if he had eaten.
The ease with which she spoke to him, unguarded, trusting.
 
“I thought that trust meant understanding,” his mind whispered.
“I thought closeness meant consent.”
 
His chest tightened.
 
“I didn’t think I was breaking anything.”
 
For the first time that night, his eyes burned. He blinked hard, refusing to let tears fall. Crying felt undeserved, as if confusion did not earn the right to release.
 
In the other room, Amit slept peacefully, unaware, untouched by the quiet damage Ravi had caused. The thought brought a fresh wave of unease.
 
Amit trusts me.
She trusted me.
 
And now,
 
Now there was a wall.
Invisible. Solid. Unexplained.
 
Ravi stood and walked to the small window, pulling the curtain aside just enough to let in the faint orange glow of a streetlight.
The building across stood silent. Somewhere behind one of those dark windows, Priya Didi might be awake too, staring at her ceiling, replaying the same moment from a very different place.
 
The thought both comforted and unsettled him.
 
“She must think I knew better,” he thought.
“She must think I chose to cross that line.”
 
Or worse,
 
“She thinks I didn’t care.”
 
Anger could be argued with.
Misunderstanding could be explained.
But disappointment, disappointment hardened into distance.
 
He rested his forehead against the cool glass, letting the chill steady him. For the first time, he grasped the true cost of what had happened.
 
Not scandal.
Not confrontation.
 
But separation.
 
A distance born not from malice, but from a failure to understand where one person ended and the other began.
 
Returning to the bed, Ravi lay on his side, facing the wall. He pulled the thin blanket around himself, though he wasn’t cold. It was instinctive, a childlike attempt at protection.
 
“Tomorrow,” he told himself quietly.
“Maybe tomorrow she’ll explain.”
“Or maybe she won’t.”
 
Both possibilities unsettled him equally.
 
The fan continued its slow rotation. The clock ticked forward, indifferent. Minutes stretched into hours.
 
Ravi did not sleep.
 
He lay suspended between certainty and doubt, between the man who believed he had done everything right and the man now facing the consequences of being wrong, punished not by anger, but by the silence he could not argue with, explain away, or undo.

-- oOo --

 

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