Adultery Priya Didi

[shailu4ever]

Scene: The Almost Apology
(Sunday Afternoon - The House That Watches)
 
The afternoon arrived without ceremony.
 
The lunch plates had been cleared. The kitchen smelled faintly of oil and warm rice. Outside, the city hummed lazily, Sunday sounds softened by heat: a distant horn, a vendor’s call stretched thin, a scooter passing and fading away.
 
Inside Flat 205, time slowed.
 
The clock on the wall ticked steadily, each second audible now, as if the house itself had decided to keep count.
 
Amit leaned back on the sofa, patting his stomach with contentment.
“Too much food,” he said, laughing lightly. “I’ll just lie down for a bit. Wake me in half an hour, haan?”
 
Priya nodded. “Okay.”
 
He stretched, yawned, and walked into the bedroom, already half-asleep, the door closing softly behind him.
 
Not locked.
But completely closed.
 

And just like that,
 
They were alone.
 
Not officially.
Not completely.
But alone in the way that mattered.
 
The silence changed.
 
It thickened, settling into corners, pressing gently but insistently against skin and thought. Ravi remained seated in the living room, a book open in his hands. He had been on the same page for a long time.
 
He hadn’t read a single word.
 
His posture was careful, shoulders slightly drawn in, legs placed deliberately, as if occupying less space might absolve him of something.
 
“Don’t look at her… don’t let yourself,” he told himself. “But I can’t… she’s… incredible.”
 
Priya stood at the kitchen counter, rinsing vegetables she had already cleaned. The water ran longer than necessary, pooling briefly in the sink before slipping away. She watched it go.
 
“As if it can carry something with it… as if it can take guilt down the drain,” she thought.
 
Her hands moved automatically. Familiar motions. Safe motions.
 
But her mind was not with her hands.
 
It hadn’t been since morning.
 
She had been replaying it all.
 
Not just last night.
Not just the message she sent.
 
But everything before that.
 
The theater.
The darkness.
The stillness where she could have moved, and didn’t.
 
She closed her eyes briefly.
 
“I didn’t protest,” she admitted to herself, “not even once.”
 
She remembered it clearly now, stripped of excuses.
 
She had felt his presence.
She had known what was happening.
And she had stayed.
 
Worse, she thought painfully,
 
“I leaned into it.”
 
Her fingers tightened around the vegetable in her hand.

.