It had started with an ‘unintentional’ ping.
Okay, shit I can’t get my lenses out of my eye.
And shortly after..
Oh sorry, that wasn’t for you.
The oldest trick in the book. Establishing contact without appearing needy or desperate. Hmm.
Are you okay?
She had just gotten home from a party at my place. Having smuggled vodka into her drink without her parents’ knowledge (and on her request) I figured it was my responsibility to enure to make sure she was fine. Or so I told myself.
To this day I remember panicking when after the 4th refill I couldn’t find her anywhere. Her parents were quite oblivious of their daughter’s absence, and perhaps that was an indication that I had been a good host.
And like a good host, without letting anyone know that anything was wrong, I went about doing a quick search of my house. I checked the balcony, the washrooms, the kitchen.. Nothing.
On the way to the terrace I heard a giggling from my daughter’s bed room. She was supposed to be alone. I peeped into find my six year old daughter introducing Shagun to her dolls and stuffed toys.
I stood at the doorway, watching my little daughter, who preferred to be by herself, chattering away with a girl almost 15 years older like they were best friends.
Suddenly Shagun looked up. A wink. A smile.
I smiled at her, and hurriedly left before my mind wandered into unchartered territories.
An hour after she left, an innocent text. An innocent reply. A chain of texts that never stopped except when we slept.
I had moved to a different city since then, and the vision of her engrossed in my daughter’s baby talk, was all I had of her.
My wife and our daughter stayed behind. Work, take-away food. and two phone calls a day to my family did not fill my day. The empty hours took the mind into a solitary adventure of discovering myself, and Shagun.
There was never an opportunity for guilt. There was no cheating. There was no romance so to speak. Just a young woman stepping into her prime, sharing a fresh view of the world I had already lived 35 years in. And I making her days a little easier with a little wisdom.
“No that guy doesn’t sound right for you.”
“Yes, that’s a brilliant book.”
“No, marriage isn’t all that bad.”
I wondered what it was that she thought of me. Was I an elder brother, a father figure? Or was she too discovering herself through me.
A strange relationship. From behind our phones, we opened our minds and hearts, spilling out dark secrets that we wouldn’t have ventured into in a normal conversation.
Our ambitions. Our fears. Our lives.
Without boundaries. Without obligations. Without judgements.
(To be continued..)
