Ex Factor

by Varsha Dixit

Ojas felt the softness of Gina’s hand through the thin material of his shirt. He felt his heart race and his body tightened. All his senses focused on the woman in front of him. His eyes grew hooded as he looked at Gina in the most intense way. There was no other place Ojas ever wanted to be. The fragrance of her slightly floral perfume washed over him. The dim light from the garden grazed Gina’s face, illuminating her most riveting feature—her almond shaped eyes. She had touched him on her own accord and even if it was a tiny mindless, impulsive and kind gesture on her part, it meant the world to Ojas. He wanted to clasp Gina to him. His mouth became dry, craving for a taste of her. Gina was so close. Too close!

  In that nano second, Ojas imagined a life with Gina. A perfect life he could have had with Gina by his side if he hadn’t desecrated her love and trust. She would have helped me heal. She would have made me someone others could love and respect.

  His throat closed as Ojas experienced bone-deep regret swarming his every pore.

  In spite of all inadequacies, Gina would have made my life beautiful.

  Ojas couldn’t stop himself from covering her hand with his. He briefly pressed it into his chest, hoping to burn her touch on him forever.

  What am I doing? I have no right to touch her or be so close to her.

  Ojas felt his control waver. Before he could do something stupid, Ojas used every ounce of effort he had and dragged Gina’s hand down and away from him.

  “Ojas!” His name slipped out of her lips. Gina was confused by her feelings for her ex-husband. Once she loved him then she hated him and then she felt she had made peace with him. However, right now Gina felt desire for Ojas. Desire that was making her heart race and skin tingle. She wanted to hurl herself in Ojas’s arms. When Ojas pulled her hand away, Gina wanted to protest.

  Ojas stepped back from her, his face aloof and as chilly as the breeze. “Try and get some sleep.” He turned around and started walking back to the house. His stick made click-clack sound on the floor.

  “Ojas!” Gina raised her hand.

  Ojas stopped but did not turn, a tall, broad-shouldered shadow in the dark.

  “The stick is really not a big deal.” Gina called out.

  Ojas did not pause or respond.

  Gina hid her disappointment when Ojas walked back in the house and closed the door with a definitive click. It sounded like something very final to Gina.

  Wrapping her hands around herself, Gina experienced a despondency she did not understand. The garden and the pool did not seem so appealing anymore. On her walk back to her room, the cool breeze and the beauty of the perfectly landscaped garden did nothing for her. I’m truly insane! I wanted Ojas. I was really horny for him. Gina hurried inside her room as if running from her feelings.

  Sometime later, lying on the bed with her phone after what seemed ages, Gina bought a historical romance book.

  Gina knew her Wallflowers would approve.

  Chapter 25

  Next day

  Gina walked into her father’s room. The room was empty, but the bathroom door was shut. She knocked on that door. “Papa, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Gina.” Her father’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Can you come back in fifteen minutes?”

  “But Papa—”

  “Gina,” She could hear her father gritting his teeth. “If you hear a human falling then come and break the door. But right now, just go.”

  Banished, Gina stood in the corridor outside her father’s room. To her right, the corridor opened to the dining room and the rest of the house.

  Gina could hear the morning activity in the kitchen but she saw no sign of Ojas or his mother. Should I just go in the kitchen and ask for breakfast? Gina fidgeted. A maid had woken Gina with coffee but there was no sign of food.

  Gina saw someone familiar coming her way. It was Ojas’s PA Vinay. Behind him was a maid wheeling food.

  “Morning, Miss Gina!” Vinay greeted her.

  “Morning!” Gina smiled. “The food smells good.”

  “Thank you. How is your father?” Vinay asked.

  “The pain has reduced. He is still uncomfortable with the cast on his foot.”

  “The guard who was with your father last night, he had to leave in the morning. We have arranged for a male helper from the hospital. He will stay with Mr. Bansal for the morning and then another one will come in the night.”

  “Oh, that is really nice of you. I can pay for the helper,” Gina offered.

  “Please, all that is taken care of,” Vinay replied.

  “Thank you.” Gina made a mental note to speak to Ojas about it. “Papa is in the bathroom and he basically asked me to leave him alone for a while.” She gave a wry smile.

  Vinay simply nodded.

  Gina moved her hands behind her back. “I hear a lot of activity in the kitchen.”

  Vinay glanced in the direction of the kitchen. “Mrs. Purohit is having some people over for dinner.” He paused and lowered his voice. “I think she is trying to find a match for Boss.”

  Gina felt her heart knock against her ribs. “Oh! That’s great.” She glared at her sneakers and then looked up. “That’s amazing news. Good luck! I guess he deserves. . .” Gina somehow could not finish the sentence. She turned around and rapped her knuckles loudly on the door. “Papa, are you ready?”

  Satinder asked her to come in. Gina found him sitting on his bed, awkwardly balancing his injured leg. His face reflected effects of a sleepless night and discomfort.

  Gina helped her father eat his breakfast and then gave him painkillers. Her father and Vinay’s stilted conversation washed over her. Soon after, Vinay left.

  “You didn’t sleep well either?” Satinder asked Gina as he rested on his pillows.

  “No, I slept fine.” Gina said as she arranged the medicines on the nightstand.

  “How soon can we get out of his house? I don’t want favors from him.” Satinder did not have to specify whose favor he was referring to.

  “I have asked the travel agent to look for the earliest available tickets to Amritsar for any price,” Gina assured while walking to the food trolley. She did not feel the urge to eat anymore so she made a cup of coffee and walked back to the sofa.

  “Why tickets? You are coming with me, Ginu?”

  “Of course, you’re not flying in this condition alone.” Gina said, sipping her coffee. It was good and sweet.

  “Absolutely not! You have a new job. Don’t take days off on my behalf,” Satinder said, his mouth grimacing in pain as he shifted his leg on the pillow.

  Gina rose to help him, but he gestured her to stay. She sat down watching him steadily.

  Satinder stared at his cast, a strange expression on his face. “It must have been very hard for him.”

  “Hard for who, Papa?”

  “For Ojas. Hurting his leg the way he did, for the rest of his life.”

  Gina put her cup down very slowly lest she drop it because of the shock her father had just delivered with his words.

  Satinder glanced at her, his eyes dull and flat. “Last night, I couldn’t sleep very well, and I was thinking. I was thinking about many things.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “The cast is making me so uncomfortable. I’m disliking having to depend on others even though I know that my situation is temporary.” He looked up at Gina. “But Ojas, his injury was permanent. The sense of loss and pain he must have experienced…” Satinder paused and shifted his back on the pillow to a more comfortable position. “We men are a proud race, especially our army men. He would have felt incomplete, insignificant, contingent on others. He must have hated what he had become. Useless—”

  Gina clucked her tongue impatiently. “He is not useless.” The vigor in her tone surprised her. Her father’s stiff shoulders revealed his surprise too. Gina tried a different tact. “What I mean is that a disability does not render anyone useless. It’s the imagined feeling of inferiority that makes one feel useless.” She leaned forward. “Papa, there are so
many amazing things challenged people are doing because they are fighters who rose above physical and mental limitations.” Gina sat back. “Look at all this. This place was just one room Ojas built a house around it. Puru was telling me that Ojas has grown the family business by manifolds and he didn’t even step out of this house once. And now he has improved so much by getting the right kind of help.”

  “You sound impressed,” Satinder said. His words held no sting.

  Gina picked up the cup and took her time answering, taking sips of her now lukewarm coffee. “I have seen a worse Ojas. So have you. Remember, five years ago?”

  Satinder traced the side of his nose with his fingers. “That was a very unhappy time for all of us, especially you.”

  The image of Ojas sitting at his desk holding a gun came to her mind. Gina shuddered. What if I hadn’t come when I did? She finished the coffee in one go and put it down. “It’s all in the past. Now all that matters is getting you back on your feet, Papa, and as soon as possible.”

  “You used to call me Daddu? Why did you stop?”

  Gina opened her mouth and then closed it without saying anything. She was taken back. “I don’t know.” She rubbed her nape. “I guess it just seems childish. I don’t know. . .” She shrugged.

  Satinder nodded and looked around.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A pen. Isn’t that what you youngsters do? Sign the cast.”

  Gina grinned. “Yes, that is exactly what we youngsters live for.”

  Satinder leaned to the side to open the nightstand drawer. “Found one!” He held up a pen.

  “Don’t move so much. Your foot is fractured.” Gina walked and took the pen from her father and uncapped it. She carefully sat next to him and signed on the plaster covering his knee. “Signed and sealed.”

  Satinder leaned forward. “What did you write?” He read what Gina had written over his cast. “Get well soon Daddu.” He sat back a smile on his face. “Good! Very good.”

  Gina got up and hugged her father. “Does that sound okay?”

  Satinder ruffled her hair. “Sure.”

  “More coffee?” Gina asked him.

  “Yes, please. Your mother does not let me drink a second cup of coffee. She says it’s too much caffeine for my age.”

  “I won’t tell.” Gina grinned and made her father and herself their second cups.

  “I was thinking about you too,” Satinder said, taking his cup.

  So much thinking, Dad. No wonder you couldn’t sleep! Gina said something quite different. “You were thinking about me?”

  “I was thinking I must have really confused you when you were in college. First, I said I really liked Ojas and his family. Then I changed my mind and said you cannot marry him. Even threatened to take you out of college—”

  “What are you saying?” Gina sputtered. Her father had taken the wind out of her sail. She wiped her mouth.

  Satinder tilted his head to the side. “Did I say something wrong?”

  What the hell did the doctors give you? Again, Gina did not say what she was thinking. “Why are you thinking all these things?”

  “It is the truth, isn’t it? I did confuse you. Don’t look at your old man like he is on methamphetamines.”

  “No one really says methamphetamines anymore. It’s just meth!” Gina muttered under her breath.

  “What, Ginu?”

  “Nothing, dad!” Gina shook her head.

  “This is not something I simply realized last night. All those years when you were not with us, I found myself thinking often that Gina was never the kind to hurt anyone, especially the ones she loved. Then why would she do something like that? One day, it struck me. The order of how things had happened. I realized that initially, we had introduced you to Ojas. You met him because we wanted you to marry him. Right?”

  Okay, what is happening here?

  Gina could only stare at her father, her jaw slack.

  Did I wake up in a parallel universe?

  She cleared her throat for her father was looking at her expectantly for an answer. Gina could not think of anything else to say. Her mind had too much processing to do, so she simply repeated herself. “It’s all in the past. I’m just glad we are all back together.”

  Satinder gave his daughter the most loving smile he could manage. “You should know something, Ginu. Whatever you decide in life and whoever you decide to be with, we will support you. I will support you. As long as it is not a criminal or an idiot.”

  Gina swallowed the lump in her throat and gave a small laugh. She could not meet her father’s eyes and her cheeks felt hot. “I’m okay single, Papa.”

  “Fine!” Satinder shrugged. His eyes were skittish. He was never the kind of a father who talked to children about their love lives. Hell, the less he knew the better. But today, talking to Gina was important. She had to know how deep his acceptance and love for his youngest child was. He had let her down in a way no father should. “You have my blessings always! And a girl like you deserves a nice family of her own.”

  “You are going to force me to call you Daddu one way or the other, aren’t you?”

  Satinder looked up to see Gina smiling, her face lowered as she poked the side of her eyes.

  “Yes, that is exactly what I’m doing!” Satinder cleared his throat. “Why don’t you try calling the agent again?”

  “Sure!” Gina stopped by his bed and gave her father an impulsive hug and then went to her room to get her cell. A fuzzy feeling bathed her like she had soaked for a day in a warm spring geyser.

  Gina called the travel agent and informed him that they needed only one ticket. Then she called up her mother and talked to her for a bit. Malti wanted to talk to her husband, so Gina carried the cell to her father’s room and stopped.

  “Oh!”

  There was a burly middle-aged man helping her father to the bathroom. What was ludicrous was the color of this man’s uniform—baby pink.

  “Gina, this is Murli. He is helping me,” Satinder said, disappearing in the bathroom along with Murli.

  “Ma, Papa is busy with Murli.” Gina said to her mother. There was a knock on the door. Gina’s heart leapt in her mouth.

  Is it him?

  Gina smoothed her hair and ran a quick tongue over her lips. What am I doing? Taking a deep breath, she opened the door. “Oh, hi!”

  “Ms. Gina, is Murli able to help your father? Is your father satisfied with him?” It was Vinay.

  Gina hid her disappointment as she shook her head and pursed her mouth, thinking of an appropriate response. “Umm right now Dad is in the bathroom. He seems okay. Can I tell you once I talk to my father?”

  “Yes, of course.” Vinay nodded and walked away.

  Gina shut the door, her features tightening.

  Of course, it wouldn’t be Ojas! He’s probably prepping for his new bride.

  Chapter 26

  “I’m cooking Thai food for dinner tonight. The girl used to work in Hong Kong for a few years,” Kamla Purohit said.

  “Very nice!” Ojas remarked, busy writing some notes on the pad in front of him.

  “Wear something nice, Jassi. The girl is a fashion designer.”

  His pen stilled. Ojas looked up and his lips lifted at one side. “Dress up? Maybe a sherwani or a tux? What do you think?”

  Kamla rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean!”

  “I always wear something nice. It is your other son who is a slob.”

  “He is! But he has gotten better.” Kamla was quick to add. “Tell me something, do you really want to meet this girl or are you just doing this to humor me?”

  Ojas put down his pen. I have a shot at being happy again. Promise me you won’t spoil it for me this time. Promise me, Ojas!

  He blinked. “I’m doing this with all the seriousness it deserves, but I will tell the guests the truth about my past. There will be no polishing of my vices.”

  “But—”

  Ojas’s jaw became s
et. “Please! No polishing, so sugar coating. Everything as it is.”

  Before Kamla could say anything there was a knock on the door. Vinay came in.

  “I just spoke with Ms. Gina. Murli is assisting Mr. Bansal.”

  “Good. Just keep checking on them and take care of what they need.” Ojas said. He curled and uncurled his fingers. It was like his will power was being tested. Gina was in his house and he had to stay away from her. She is all that matters, yet I have to keep my distance. Last night, when she had called out ‘The stick is not really a big deal,’ Ojas had hurriedly closed the door before he could walk right out and pull Gina in his arms. I want her. She is the only woman I will ever want!

  Yesterday, Ojas hadn’t slept much. He had remembered and re-lived every moment he had spent with Gina. From the first time he had seen her in a fancy traditional dress to the time he had said goodbye to Gina before flying to the posting that would turn out to be his last.

  His arms twitched at his side. They were aching to hold Gina, feel her softness as she melted in his embrace.

  “How long are Gina and her father going to be here?” Kamla asked.

  Ojas shook his head. “As long as they need. Actually, you should ask them to join us for dinner tonight.”

  “What? Why?” Kamla shook her head. “I don’t think that is a good idea.”

  Understanding her discomfiture, Ojas gave his mother a slow smile, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “I think that is the best idea I’ve had in the longest time.”

  Kamla snorted.

  Ojas went back to reading the papers in front of him. “If you feel hesitant in asking them, I can ask Vinay to invite them, but I think it would be nicer if the lady of the house extends the invitation.”

  “Fine, I will do it.” Kamla got to her feet, her expression resigned. “I don’t enjoy being the lady of your house. It’s high time you got married.”

  Ojas waited till he heard his mother shut the office door behind her. Putting his pen down, Ojas swiveled his chair around and looked out at the green expanse.

  If Gina hadn’t come back, I would have continued my debauched ways. Kept hurting my family and lost all that makes one human. Did she really mean it when she said that my walking stick is not a big deal? Was Malvika right? Am I really trying to make my way back to Gina?