There are so many things about being in a relationship that I couldn’t have imagined. No one tells you about these things. There are no songs, movies, plays or books about these things because there are no words…there is no language…that can capture them. It is only when you experience the feelings, the emotions that you realise that something like this exists.
Is it like this for everyone or have I been especially blessed? I think it is the latter.
******
I am thinking of how to welcome Betha back. Planning menus…planning clothes…planning surprises…planning catch-up time…planning down time…planning the movies we can see…maybe board games we can play…planning sex (okay, not as much planning this as imagining it).
I am wondering what she is doing right now. Trying to picture her face. She’ll be listening to someone giving a speech, her razor-sharp mind a few paces ahead of what is being discussed…or maybe she is seeing the demo of a new technology or invention and the creator is explaining it to her, but she has already grasped the whole thing and is thinking of ten more dimensions and facets to enhance it or thirty ways to improve it or fifty different way that it can be used more effectively than it has currently been conceptualised.
For all her quicksilver intelligence, Bethy is really a ball of mush…or is it just with me? She is the most caring human being on this planet. Also the most loving. Being with her has taught me how to care. How to love.
Wait! What??
Did I just think the ‘L’ word in connection with Bethany Swift?
I go back…rewind to examine my thought. Betha is the most loving person I know or have ever known…and she has taught me to love. So am I thinking ‘love’ as in loving the greater world or am I thinking ‘love’ in connection to one unique, specific individual?
Am I in love with her? Has it somehow crept up on me while I wasn’t looking?
I think about Beth and my heart fills. It soars. If I try to think about her not being there in my life, I feel choked. I know I can’t go on. I just know it. When I think of us my heart clenches with pure joy. When I think of her fucking me, I feel weak with want. When I think of all the times we share small, everyday things, I am filled with a sense of rightness…of peace…of home.
I plonk down on the sofa nonplussed.
I don’t know when it happened, but I am in love with her.
I don’t know about this ‘falling in love’ business and I don’t even subscribe to it. I don’t know how you can be ‘falling in love’…you either realise you are or you aren’t. Love doesn’t come in steps…it doesn’t unfold in chapters…it just leaps on to you. And it has happened to me.
I’m in love.
I try it on for size and say it aloud. Speaking it out fills me with incredible, indescribable joy and laughter bubbles out of me…a childlike laughter of pure unadulterated happiness.
I don’t need to explore my sexuality even passively or as an intellectual dissection anymore. I don’t need to think about it. I don’t need to wonder any more: “Am I gay?” “Am I bisexual?” “Am I gay just for Beth?”. I don’t need labels. I am in love. I realise what reaches me is love, irrespective of the gender.
I’m in love.
I’ve been married and I’ve been almost married, but I haven’t said these words to anyone yet. Ever.
******
Beth calls me late at night. She’s just reached her hotel room after a very long day filled with all sorts of exciting things for her. She is tired.
“…but princess, despite all the new developments, the new research being done…I couldn’t get fully involved even for a moment. I was missing you so bad that I couldn’t concentrate. I was there less than ten percent so I’m not sure whether I have even absorbed anything,” she confesses.
“I’m missing you something crazy, Betha,” I whisper back. “Can I come there and join you tomorrow? I’ll fly.”
“Tomorrow is much more intensive. Maya, the CTO of Translink was already scheduled to come and now Radhika and Reeth are also coming over because I told them there are some things that they should probably check out to know the directions in which things are moving,” she says regretfully. The CTO. Her direct reporting boss.
My heart clenches at knowing that she knew that her boss was gonna be there, yet my Betha offered to skip Sunday at the conference to be here for me. It floods with even more love for her.
“Come back to me soon, honey…I can’t function without you,” I say longingly.
“I’ll leave as soon as I can,” she promises before we hang up.
******
David comes over around eleven in the morning the next day. I had expected to feel a number of emotions – hurt, regret, anger, loathing. I had expected to want to hit him. Scrag him. (I am a passionate girl in every way). But what I wasn’t prepared for was – no emotion. Not even indifference. Zero emotion.
He is awkward but tries to be polite, to make small talk when I open the door. Without a word, I shove the box out with a foot and shut the door. He was probably still talking when I shut the door. He might even have stood outside for some time. Maybe. I don’t know and I don’t care. Ignorance and apathy. I have too much to do – like miss Beth – than waste a single moment of my life on him.
******
My doorbell rings at five in the evening. I’m surprised and don’t answer it thinking that it must be some salesman.
I am literally physically aching with missing Beth. My world is topsy-turvy. There are too many things…too many feelings…too many realisations that I am still grappling with.
The bell rings again with more purpose. I am annoyed. I am prepared to tell off the person who presumed to ring my bell repeatedly without an invitation.
It is Beth.
At the sight of her, my world suddenly sets itself right.
She looks fatigued but literally lights up when she sees me. I screech – I actually screech like a twelve-year old girl – and jump on her wrapping myself around her as tight as I can. I rain kisses on her upturned face and she chuckles.
“Looks like you’re happy to see me,” she smiles.
“I’ve missed you so much,” I say and kiss her all over her beautiful face some more before it registers on me that she is ready to drop and that I am making a spectacle in my doorway in broad daylight.
I get off her, drag her in and shut the door behind her. I wrap my arms around her shoulders.
She pulls me close by my waist and looks into my eyes. Her sparkling brown eyes draw me in.
“Hey you,” she says with a soft smile before bending down just as I rise to my tiptoes and we kiss.
The kiss is all missing, longing, hello and home. The kiss is soft and sensational. It is a promise. It is staggering.
“Hi,” I say when we break apart. My hands are in her hair. I run the backs of my fingers down the side of her face. “What brings you back early?”
“You,” she smiles. “I left as soon as we broke for lunch.”
“Bethy!” I scold, “You shouldn’t have done that. Won’t that give a bad impression to your boss?” I am concerned.
“Nah…she could see I was practically collapsing. In fact, she asked me to leave.”
“Rough days?”
“More like a rough night. I couldn’t sleep at all…I was missing you so bad.” Her voice is soft. Sincere.
My heart is ready to burst with love for her.
She touches her forehead to mine, “Kat, I need to…need to…be with you every day. I need to know that I am going to see you in a few hours. Without that I am completely out of my mind,” she says softly, voice quavering with the weight of emotion.
Thank God! I thought only I was feeling that. I thought that I was being unreasonably needy. I shut my eyes in gratitude to the universe.
“Thank God you said that Betha. That is exactly what I feel. I need you every single day, honey. I literally do not know what to do with myself when there are hours and hours stretching ah
ead of me without you,” I tell her and feel her arms circle me and draw me closer in response.
We hug…simply hug…for an eternity. The hug is like a confession and a commitment. The hug is not sexual. It is a physical expression of all our emotions. It is the communication between our souls of the feelings that do not have the luxury of words. There aren’t any words invented yet for our deepest feelings. For our simplest emotions which are so complex at the same time. So we hug, our fingers caressing each other.
Finally, I lean back. “I was just about to make dinner for us…anything that you fancy?” I ask her.
“I fancy you, Kitty Kat,” she grins back at me, “but can we go to mine tonight? Got an early morning meeting with the boss tomorrow. We need to discuss all the things that we have seen in the conference and plan whether any of that impacts our R&D and whether we need to make any changes to our focus and plans in the near future.”
It is then that it occurs to me that I haven’t seen Beth’s place. She lives downtown in one of those super-expensive, super-prestigious buildings that are practically mythical creatures. She’s pointed it out to me when we have passed it but I’ve never been inside. I wonder why.
******
Beth’s house is phenomenal. First, as soon as the gate open in the archway of the building there is an almost park-size vista of greenery. The building has an actual concierge. The lift can only be operated on entering personalised codes.
Her house is the penthouse.
The first sight is a sprawling living room. I mean, really it’s huge.
Three steps off one side of the living room lead down to a generous-sized kitchen. Since this is one of those high-end fancy places, the kitchen is not open plan but kinda tucked away.
There are three bedrooms, a den and an entertainment room which has a humongous TV that takes up three-fourths of the wall.
It is evident that the place has been done up by an interior designer or some skill and repute.
Most unbelievably, there is a tiny attached servant’s ‘quarter’ which is a decent sized one-bedroom apartment. And – get this – there is a couple that lives there! The lady is a housekeeper-cum-cook and the husband is the butler-cum-driver.
I am trying to wrap my head around all this. “Wow! You’re loaded!” I exclaim, kinda hushed.
“No, Kitty Kat…the company I work for is loaded. This is a company flat and the servants come with it,” she shrugs one shoulder.
And I get why I’ve never been here. Beth doesn’t think or feel that this is her home. Or that this is hers.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Six years. Three years after I joined Translink I developed sets of workflows that rocketed off. Today every single organisation in the top hundred thousand in the world are using those workflows. So besides a massive bonus, they gave this house to me as a part of my employment benefit…rent-free accommodation. When I first saw it, even I was shocked,” she admits.
“Beth, this is beautiful,” I draw the last word out. “I mean it’s really gorgeous.”
“True.”
“And it is close to everything. How far is your office from here?”
“Six blocks away,” she smiles.
“Mine is four blocks from here,” I inform her unnecessarily. She already knows. “The best theatres, pubs, clubs, bars…all action is in a radius of maybe a mile, a mile-and-a-half?”
“But princess, this is still not mine. I cannot feel differently.”
So Beth needs to know something is hers…that it belongs to her to be completely at home with it. To feel a sense of right and comfort. Interesting. This is an important piece of the Beth jigsaw for me.
It is in small conversations like these, random fly-away comments that the intricacies of a person dwell. Paying attention to these statements really build the complete picture of a person.
It’s not like someone is actually going to think that sharing something like this is important…hell! they may not even be completely aware of these details about themselves.
If you care for someone, you need to pluck these colours of the person out and paint their picture.
And I care about Betha. I more than care about her. I want to…need to…know everything about her so that I can give her exactly what she needs. So that I can love her in the ways that she needs the most and in the ways that reach her the most. So that I can love her such that she feels loved.
That’s the other thing about loving that I have learnt from loving Bethy. We all have our own expression of love. But there are certain things that make a person feel loved.
I feel loved by her frequent messages during the day that tell me she’s thinking of me. I feel loved by the massages she gives me. I feel loved by her unceasing appetite for me.
These are just a few of the many, many ways in which she makes me feel loved.
She feels loved when I ask her about her work and make sure I understand what she is telling me by asking her multiple questions till I completely grasp the concept. She feels loved when I run a bath for her at the end of the day and keep fresh towels and clothes ready for her. She feels loved when she finds me wet and willing for her all the time.
Just like learning about what makes a person feel loved, these remarks also share important information about what is important to your partner, what their complexes are and importantly, what their vulnerabilities are.
Learning that Betha needs to feel that she owns something to be perfectly comfortable with it is important because it tells me that though she will never show it but have some sort of hesitancy about us till she is aware of my deep, deep commitment to her and to us. She needs that.
“So what do you say, I just ask Anita to cook something for us?” she asks.
Anita is the housekeeper-cum-cook. Enthralled by the concept of live-in help, I acquiesce. Rather excitedly, I may add.
She rings a discreet buzzer and a rotund Indian lady bustles in all smiles.
“Welcome back, Beth,” she says.
“Good to see you Anita…how are you? And Ravi?”
“Very well, miss.”
“Radhika and Reeth said hello to both of you,” Beth says and though I would’ve thought it wasn’t possible, Anita’s smile grows wider. “They are wonderful,” she says feelingly.
I am struck by the fervour that Radhika and Reeth seem to inspire. I have seen the same awe and loyalty in Betha…especially for Radhika.
“Anita, this is Katrina…Kat. She’s a very, very, very special guest and I want to wow her with your cooking. What shall we make for her?” Their easy interaction is so sweet.
Anita smiles a “Welcome Miss,” to me and they have a very serious discussion. The seriousness with which they approach the subject of what to feed me could well have been used for a discussion to bring about world peace.
They ask me for inputs on what I would like frequently, but I demur saying that I don’t really know many of the things that they are talking about. Finally they decide on a menu of spinach soup, papaya salad, mac-and-cheese and caramel custard.
******
Beth goes for a bath while I wander around her living room. One whole wall is glass and the view is extraordinary.
I go to the entertainment room and look at her huge eclectic collection of books. The books range from serious science non-fiction to children’s action-fantasy. There as a disproportionate number of teen and young adult books and I grin with affection at this unexpected interest of hers.
I wander into her bedroom just as she is coming out of the bathroom wrapped in an oversized maroon towel.
A towel clad Beth is one of my favourite fantasies come to life. She sees me gobbling her up and blushes.
I go to her and kiss her hard. I am already beginning to get wet.
My kiss becomes more demanding and lustful, and she responds in kind. I push her towards the bed as she unbuttons my blouse and slips off my skirt.
By the time we reach the bed, I am in m
y underwear. I open the knot of her towel and she takes off my bra.
I gently push her on the bed, pause to remove my panties and am on top of her kissing her and grinding into her. She groans which is a huge reward for me because she is mostly silent in bed. It sets me off even more and I am so, so wet.
Begin Again Page 5