The First Glance
The brochure work had picked up at a feverish pace; all the articles for the brochure were final and Justin and Sushmita were working on the layout of the same. Stealing the time from other essentials, they were devoting many hours to this work to meet the deadline. That morning, Sushmita reached early as usual to prepare some snacks for Justin and herself, as that would sustain them until the evening. Frequently, Justin would also have to go to the office of the lithographer, who was developing film of negative-screens in CMYK that were needed to make metal plates for colour printing.
When Justin reached the church office, Sushmita was standing in the small kitchen area preparing cold coffee and some kind of quick snack. Attired in a light grey belted sleeveless tunic she was expertly balancing herself on stiletto heels.
Her hair was tied up carelessly in a bun with a few strands of them dangling mischievously on her round face. Despite the absence of makeup, her face glowed with radiance. She had beautiful and very expressive eyes and when she smiled, one could see the sparkly row of pearly, white teeth. The snugly fitting tunic showed off the contours of her beautiful figure.
‘What’s happening to me?’ Justin thought aloud, feeling disturbed by his own reaction. For quite some time, he had not reacted like this towards any other person of the fair sex. He was quite content with his marriage and, during the course of time, had strengthened himself against such feelings of lasciviousness. However, today, he repeatedly had an urge to steal a glance at Sushmita.
Together, they sat for coffee and light snack and in order to get himself out of this frame of mind, Justin finished his snacks quickly and left the small dining area. Sitting down at the coffee table that was in the office area, he picked up the stack of edited papers and started going through them. Soon, he realised that his mind was not with him and though he was intently looking at the papers, still he was not able to make anything out of them. Within a few minutes, Sushmita joined him at the table and sat opposite him. It was an effort on Justin’s part to avoid looking at her. After some time, Sushmita got up from her chair, picked up some papers and came and knelt beside him, propping herself up with her arms resting on the table. Justin, seated on the chair, peered down at her, when his eyes caught sight of her breasts that were bared by the cloth of her tunic, which had folded forward, exposing her flesh to his sight. In his vulnerable state, that was the last thing Justin could have endured that day. Numbed, he did not know how long he held his gaze in that direction until he heard the nudging ‘Hey’ of Sushmita that snapped him out of his stupor.
‘What happened?’ she asked, with her eyebrows arched up and a puzzled expression in her eyes.
‘N…nothing’, stammered Justin, he could not take this anymore and, in a huff, stepped out of the office leaving behind a perplexed Sushmita.
Outside, the temperatures were soaring high and within a few minutes, he had to make a hasty retreat to the cool interior of the office.
Meanwhile, Sushmita had seated herself on the sofa and was sipping her cold coffee with a confused and sullen expression. Justin sat down quietly at an angle to her and tried to pull some papers out of the stack with the purpose of working on them when, suddenly, Sushmita swiftly slapped his hand, saying, ‘Don’t touch that’.
Now it was Justin’s turn to be surprised by her action, ‘What happened?’
‘Why did you walk out of the room?’
‘Just like that’.
‘No, and you know it’, her voice was emphatic.
‘I was feeling overwhelmed by the heat’.
‘Overwhelmed, yes you were overwhelmed, but not by the heat. You are overwhelmed by my presence’, replied Sushmita in a matter of fact tone.
‘Why would I be overwhelmed by you? You are here every day’.
‘Are you scared of me?’ Sushmita asked as if throwing a challenge at him.
‘Why would I be scared of you, what are you inferring by all this?’ Justin asked, now genuinely baffled by the turn of events.
Getting up from her chair, travelling those few steps with confidence, Sushmita came and sat down on the coffee table directly in front of Justin.
‘Am I kissable?’ she questioned, at which Justin nearly fell off his chair.
‘I don’t understand what are you getting at?’ Justin said in an alarmed voice.
‘A simple and straightforward question and I expect to hear a simple and straightforward answer from a man like you. Am I kissable?’ Sushmita continued her query in a very assertive way. All this talk was taking a toll on Justin. He was fighting within himself, trying hard to suppress his base instincts that by now were trying to get the better of him.
‘How would I know?’ Justin said with a confused expression on his face.
Sushmita was now sitting so close to him that he could feel the heat radiate from her body. Her face was close in a very titillating way; her lips, soft and parted.
‘H-How would I know?’ he stammered again in a whisper.
‘Find out for yourself’, Sushmita sounded as if from a distance.
Everything got blurred in the sight of Justin, except the beautiful face in front of him. Very softly, he leaned forward and put his lips very lightly on her beautiful lips; he stayed there for two or three seconds and then parted from them very gently. This was the first time Justin held her beauty so closely; with her eyes closed, she looked devastatingly beautiful. He noticed that her eyebrows curved up like the wings of an eagle, as if soaring in the sky. Her eyelashes turned upwards like the ‘wave’ of the tumultuous sea, a wave that races towards the shore, where, in the end, it curves up and back before it shatters into thousands of very fine droplets, each giving rise to its own rainbow. In between this sky and the sea, Justin could distinctly make out the blue veins on her closed eyelids branching out as if tributaries of a river.
Justin could not hold himself back any longer. He bent down once again and this time, softly put his lips on her closed eyelids as if to quench his thirst from those tributaries. Slowly, Sushmita raised her arms and put them around his neck. Justin gently responded by drawing her towards him with his arms around her waist, and again softly kissed her parted lips. There was no active response from her to his kiss and he was in the process of pulling himself away when she locked his lips down with her own, and they exchanged a long, drawn out, gentle kiss. When they parted, Justin held her face between his hands looking deep into her big eyes and covered it with sweet kisses. They held each other in that stance for a long time until Justin firmly pushed himself away from her. Breathing heavily now, they both sat down for some time trying to hold their composure. At last, they both opened their mouths stammering simultaneously, ‘I love you’.
The weight of the moment was too much for either of them to bear, and as if in a trance, they departed to their homes. Justin could not understand his own actions and once at home, he tried to keep to himself, though with Pearl and the boys around, it was rather impossible. That night, Justin could not sleep properly. Lying on one side of the bed and facing the wall on the far end, he kept reliving those moments repeatedly.
The next day morning, he got ready with a new sense of excitement that made his body shiver a little. With the same hyped up feeling, he reached the church office only to find that it was still closed and Sushmita had not come as per her routine. He kept pacing up and down the office area. At the slightest noise from the street, he would peek out repeatedly by slightly parting the curtain on the window, only to drop it back with disappointment in his heart. Sushmita did not show up that day, and there was no way for Justin to make out the reason.