The bloody suitcase’s gimpy wheel broke off and the whole thing listed to one side. With a tiny scream of frustration, Vaani righted the now muddy suitcase and straightened. She took a deep breath as she stared at the house in front of her.
Her childhood home. The home she’d grown up in, the one where she’d learned to walk, to talk, to do pretty much everything including curling her eyelashes. It looked the same, exactly the same. A bougainvillea plant bloomed along the circumference of the compound wall, the pop of colour painfully bright in her current mood of gloom and doom.
The roof tiles seemed to have been recently replaced, she thought absently as her gaze took in the brick red tiles that gave a cottagey kind of look to the otherwise cream coloured bungalow.
She stood there, her useless suitcase by her side and stared at her past. Memories of banging doors and screaming ‘I’ll never set foot in this house again’ rose up in front of her practically taking on corporeal form.
“I hate you all,” she whispered the words she’d screamed years before. It was the last thing she’d shouted at her family before she’d stormed out of the house, dragging this same suitcase with her. She’d been so sure, so confident, so stupid…
A loud car horn had her startling and her suitcase fell over again. The lid flew open from impact and the overstuffed suitcase disgorged its contents. Vaani stared in dismay as her clothes littered the driveway of her parents otherwise neat-as-a-pin compound.
It was only as her gaze tracked her hot pink bra did she realise that it was draped over a perfectly polished black shoe. The car honking at her! Oh no, her bra was dangling off her father or brother’s shoe. Kill her now. A strike of lightning maybe? But nope, the clear blue skies meant that wasn’t an option.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she looked up at the man standing in front of her. Not her father or brother. Her heart soared in relief at the realisation before sinking like a stone at the sight of his forbidding expression. Angry glower, clenched jaw, nasty scar, and dramatic frown. Yes, whoever this was, he wasn’t impressed by Vaani. All six feet plus of taut muscles and frozen disapproval. Which was a new experience for her. Vaani usually had men falling at her feet in a haze of lust, not tapping an angry foot draped in a hot pink bra at her.
“Who the hell are you and what do you think you are doing here?” the man bit out.
“Who the hell are you?” Vaani tossed back, genuinely bewildered. Had her parents sold the house or something? Even if they had, Rahul Anna would have told her. He was the only family member who still kept in touch with her. Despite being in the Navy and off on a ship most of the time. Which said a lot for her estrangement from the rest of her family.
But that wasn’t a problem for now. Her problem for now looked to be the mountain of muscles who didn’t seem to realise he was wearing her bra on his foot.
“Aditya Khamankar,” he said grimly like that was supposed to mean something to her.
“Okay then Mr. Khamankar,” Vaani replied crouching and grabbing an armful of distressed jeans. “Don’t just stand there. Help me clear up the mess you made.”
“I made??”
“Yes, you!” She stuffed clothes back in her suitcase haphazardly. She would figure out how to fit everything later. “You honked at me and broke my suitcase.”
“I honked at you because you were standing in the middle of the driveway and staring into space. But how exactly do you manage to blame me for your suitcase disaster?”
She noticed he hadn’t moved an inch as she scrambled around on the ground collecting her fashion debris.
“May I have my bra please?” she asked politely, pointing at his shoe and hoping to shame him into being a gentleman.
He glanced down at his shoe, one eyebrow slowly rising at the sight of her bra still elegantly draped over its tip.
“Stop gaping and give it to me,” she ordered, losing patience with the whole drama. She had to still deal with family drama once she entered the house. She wasn’t interested in driveway drama with random strangers.
“You look familiar,” he said slowly, as he removed the bra from his shoe and held it out to her.
Oh God. Here they went again. Honestly, Vaani was so tired of the fans and their constant requests for selfies and autographs.
“Look, now is not the time, okay?” She made a vague shooing motion with her hand. “I’ll pose for a selfie some other day. Right now, I am here for quality time with my family and don’t want to be disturbed.”
Now, both his eyebrows shot up. She reached for the bra, but he tightened his grip on it and she found herself engaged in a weird tug of war with Muscle Man for her own underwear.
“You’re Shravan Uncle’s daughter.”
Yuck. He knew her father. If that didn’t put him on her shitlist, she didn’t know what would. She pulled at her bra again, but, again, he didn’t let go. He just kept staring at her with that frown on his stupid face.
Okay. It wasn’t a stupid face. It was actually a nice face. All manly and craggy and, she was pretty certain, it was a hundred percent natural. She was sure this man had never injected his face with anything or had any other work done on it. If he had, he would have first fixed that nasty scar on the right side of his face. It extended from his temple to halfway down his cheek, jagged and slightly raised.
She wondered how he’d got it. Maybe he’d held someone else’s lingerie hostage and she’d been attached enough to it to attack him with a knife. Vaani didn’t care quite that much about hers. But, it was the principle of the thing. It was her bra after all.
“Look.” She flashed her trademark pouty smile. “I realise keeping a celebrity’s personal stuff as a souvenir is a thing and I’m sure you’d love to keep this bra for, you know, private bedroom stuff, but-“
He dropped it like it had turned into a live flame in his hand. And then, to add insult to injury, he rubbed his hand on his pant like he was trying to rid himself of the feel of her bra.
Annoyed, Vaani opened her mouth to say something biting and sarcastic, she didn’t know what, but she knew she would think of something good. And then she heard his voice.
“Vaani?”
Of course, he would be the one to find her like this.
Two years ago, when he’d told her she brought nothing but shame and embarrassment to the family and the family name, she’d stormed out of the house vowing to never return until she proved him wrong.
And here she was, standing in his driveway, with a broken suitcase, nothing to her name but the clothes stuffed into it, and a pink bra in her hand in lieu of the white flag of surrender she should actually be waving.
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and turned to face the man who’d sired her and deserted her.
“Hi Appa. I’m home.”
