My Neighbour Girl Ch. 03

Before I could actually fall asleep, I heard the sound of the bathroom door opening. She walked past the living area silently, or so I imagined without opening my eyes. I heard the sound of a chair moving from the kitchen. Next came the sound of plates falling and jiggling on the floor.

"You know I don't eat eggs," a sharp voice filled with anger and hate pierced my ears.

I had totally forgotten that but I wasn't sorry. I love those eggs. How dare she throw them? I could've eaten those. I didn't respond maybe because I was tired and just wanted to sleep in peace. Any response would just prolong the argument. It didn't work!

"How did you... Why did you come back?"

"To save your life, you're welcome." I couldn't just hold it in me. If I had just held it back for a little while, maybe she would have stopped.

"Why? How did you know?"

Her questions threw me into the flashback to the time I found out about it. The way I found out about it. How my sister was horrified and crying. My parents, I could only imagine, would have been shocked and humiliated. I sat up and looked at Neha. She was standing next to the dining table, no more than two meters away from me.

The moment I set my eyes upon her all that anger and frustration began to fade away. She was wrapped in a towel. It only spread from a little above her nipples to a few inches of her thighs. Her long legs were flaunting their excellence. Her dark hair was still damp from the bath and spread all around her shoulders. It was her face which was in total contrast to her body, red and furious. Regrettably, my eyes happened to venture upon it last and got stuck on it.

I realized my jaw was hanging, and my mouth was filled with saliva. I pulled myself together. "This is not the time, man up and fix the mess you are in right now." But before I could say anything...

"Did you plan all this so that I'd come with you? Did you inform him?"

That decaying anger was back on, only now it was mixed with lust. I did not need to clarify her allegation. I knew who she meant by 'him'.

"Since we are asking stupid questions to each other, of all the people in the world, why did you go to Jaya to help you book the tickets?" I stood up and walked towards her.

"So what? Do you think it was a clue I left for you so you could come running after me? Do you think it's some kind of love story going on here?"

It was a mistake trying to answer her question, "No, you blunt bitc......"

"It was a one-time mistake. Get over it you creep."

As she finished that last word, I lost it. I lurched forward towards her. Even my brain didn't know what I was doing. As I got closer to her she tried to stop me with her hands, but I grabbed them by the wrist and twisted them out of the way. She lost the balance and stepped backward. I slammed her against the wall behind, probably a little too hard. She was hurt. She didn't make a sound but her face spoke for her pain clearly. There was a familiar expression in her eyes I must have seen earlier, but I didn't care to remember or think about it.

"What are you doing?" she whispered while failing in an attempt to free her hands.

"One-time mistake you say, huh? Now, I am about to make a one-time mistake too," with that, I pressed my mouth on hers.

She resisted first, but then she started to kiss me back, or so I thought. She nibbled on my lower lip. I felt a current of pleasure in my spine, well at first at least. The next thing I felt was an acute pain and a warm taste of blood in my mouth. She bit my lips. I pulled myself back and watched her face in surprise. Her teeth and lips were red with my blood. I was even angrier and even more turned on.

She moved her hands to break free but I held her strongly. I tried to kiss her again, but she moved her head left and right. I buried my face in her neck. The towel she had wrapped around her breasts had fallen and she was totally naked. Her soft skin felt amazing on my face.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was thinking that this is sexy for her too, that she wants it and she is enjoying it. I didn't care to doubt that thought and kept nibbling her neck.

I had a full hard-on. I pressed my pelvis against hers. After a while, she stopped shaking her body and stood still. "At last, she was beginning to enjoy it," I thought. Her hands were loose and not struggling to break free. I released her wrists from my hold and moved my hands downwards along her neck to her perfect, 'D-sized' breasts. I caressed them hard and started kissing and nibbling on her nipples. She stood silently not making any sound. I was expecting a moaning sound or at least a gentle gasp. I kept massaging her breasts and kissing them.

After a while, I looked at her face, her eyes were closed. There was a strange expression on her face. I wondered if it was lust. My eyes fell on her pink lips, they were opened a little, I could see her front teeth between them. I kissed her lips, a little passionately this time. She didn't struggle but didn't kiss me back either. I licked her teeth and pressed my tongue further in. Her jaws weren't interactive, they were lifeless. I finally understood the expression on her face; it wasn't lust or anger, it was a disappointment. My hands were still on her breasts, my pelvis still rubbing on her thighs. She was not reacting to any of it. She just stood still like a lifeless piece of flesh and bones.

I suddenly pulled myself back and looked at her face. Her eyes were still closed, but now there were lines of tear dropping down across her cheeks. My hands suddenly lost their grip on her breasts and fell down. "What have I been doing?" I thought.

There was a pause for a few seconds. Then she opened her eyes and locked on mine. She spoke in a calm and gentle voice, but it was filled with derision, "Go ahead, it's not my first time being raped."

That last word hit me like a brick in the face. "Was I raping her?" I reviewed the last five minutes in my head and the answer was, "I was technically raping her. Whether I knew it or not was insignificant."

I stepped backward in shock and stepped on the plate lying on the floor and slipped. I landed on my back, but I didn't hurt as much as I should have. I opened my eyes, and everything was different.

I was lying under the coffee table. The couch I was sleeping on before was next to me. "Did I pass out?" My hand involuntarily moved to the back of my head to check if I was hit. My head was fine. Actually it was far from fine, but it didn't hurt is what I meant. I sat up. Neha was nowhere to be found.

"Ohh my God, what have I done," a silent gasp came out of my mouth. "Where did she go? I pushed her. How helpless she must be feeling?"

The weight of that guilt was enormous.

The bedroom door opened suddenly. There comes Neha out of it, totally calm and gentle. "Did you fall from the couch? You must have had a really bad dream," she said in a calm and soothing voice. She had a smile on her face.

I was shocked beyond my senses to respond. I looked at the dining table. It was clean. There were no plates on the floor or on the table.

"I'm sorry you are in this mess because of me," I heard her soft voice again. I looked toward Neha. The smile was gone. She looked composed but her voice was full of a strange despair and pain. It took me a while to even consider that all that happened in the last few minutes might be a dream, a nightmare I should say. "Could I actually do that, rape a girl." I never thought I was capable of such savagery, but the nightmare was so real, the anger, the lust and most of all the touch of her skin. I could still see it in front of my eyes like a recent memory. I was abashed. Even if it was a dream, I could not trust myself to be any better in real life.

Neha walked up to me and as she leaned to sit on the couch, I jumped away from her and hit my head on the coffee table. She was a bit startled by my reaction, but she did not understand what was happening. I rubbed my head for a while. She tried to help but I asked her to sit where she was; away and safe. There was a silence in the room.

"What was all that? Did you have a nightmare?" she asked after a few seconds.

"Worse than a nightmare," I replied. I realized after a moment that she was speaking to me. I tried to smile, probable to encourage her but failed badly.

"I'm so sorry about..."

"Ohh don't be..." I blabbed in my mouth, but she continued.

"...about yelling at you in the bathroom."

"What!" That was not a dream! Was any of it? "Ohh, did I? I'm sorry for that too. I just knocked on the door and it slammed open"

"It's just... I was very distracted after... I saw his face and all the horrors of the past came rushing back to me. I thought I would never be safe again."

So, she saw him. That's real.

"Then you slammed in and for a moment I thought it was him. I was terrified beyond any measure. Then I got angry, mostly at myself for being so paranoid and afraid. After that..." she paused.

"Hey, I understand." I wanted to assuage her, hold her hand or do something but I just couldn't. I started thinking, "Will I ever be able to touch her again, or any girl for that matter."

"So, what happened after that?" I inquired. Neha looked at me in confusion. "I mean after you yelled at me and said that I am a pervert and some more mean things along that line," I explained.

Neha tilted her head down and smiled in embarrassment. "I didn't mean those words. I was just in a bad place." She looked at me apologetically. "After that," she said, realizing she hadn't answered the question I asked. "When I came out of the bathroom, I found you sleeping on the couch. I didn't want to disturb you."

I gave a sigh of relief. "So, it wasn't her. It was my own insecurities, my own demons that manifested themselves as a dream." I was still worried about what happened whether it was real or dream, it didn't seem to matter much.

"By the way, that egg toast was really nice. Where did you learn to make those?"

"I don't remember. Probably in college," I replied.

"How long was I out?" I asked her after a moment of silence. I was beginning to differentiate the dream and reality a bit.

"You slept for like two and a half hours."

"Two and a half hours!" I shouted.

"Yeah, but you look like you can use some more sleep," she said gently with a hint of a smile on her face. She was beginning to sound normal again, still not there but certainly she sounded better than me. "Do you wanna take the bedroom now? I bet it's a bit more comfortable than the floor." I could tell she was trying to be funny but it just wasn't a good time for either of us.

"Yeah, maybe," I smiled. "I think I need a bath."

"Leave the door open, maybe we can get even," she said. Her lips stretched slightly into a subtle smile followed by an elusive glow in her eyes. I looked at her with a spontaneous grin on my face.

I wondered how resilient she was. "Even with so much gone wrong she is trying to make me laugh."

Within a few seconds her smile faded. She took her eyes off me and looked down. The horrors were back.

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A couple of days had passed. I kept calling my parents from time to time. I convinced them that I was staying at my friend's apartment who lived in Delhi, for a few days. Last night I had called Toto to thank him and I started telling him all the details about the events that had come to pass. We talked for hours about the situation we were in. He kept repeating "Dude, you are fucked." He was not at all happy with the decisions that I had made in the last few days. "Just get her some place safe and walk away from her as soon as possible. She is bad news," he said to me before hanging up. I knew I couldn't do that ever, not to Neha. I was aware that there was nothing for me in this, but it was one of those times when it didn't even matter.

Neha was mostly quiet. She talked to me about regular things like, "What were we going to eat this evening" and "Is it okay if I use the bathroom first?" But that was it. She would sometimes make a little joke to avoid a real conversation. We mostly ate and slept. She would cook something simple to eat, I tried to help but it only made it worse. We both wanted to eat something nice, but we couldn't order anything because that would draw too much attention. I would go out sometimes for supplies, but only after it was dark. Neha never left the room. The neighbours were already getting suspicious. A lady from the apartment knocked on the door the previous day. I opened the door halfway and tried to block it with my body as I looked at a middle-aged lady standing right in front of me.

"Yeah," I responded to the lady staring at me.

"Are you Mr. Sharma's son?" she asked with a cursory smile.

"No," I responded immediately and a little too loudly, surprised by the question. 'Calm down you idiot,' I said to myself and took a deep breath and released it through the mouth.

"No, I am his friend."

She stared at me for like half a minute, which made me a lot more nervous than I was before. "I'm Mr. Sharma's son's friend," I repeated myself.

"Are you with someone?" she asked with a treacherous smile like she already knew something. But how? We were so careful entering the apartment and Neha never came out of the apartment after that.

"Yeah, me and my friend are here for a job interview tomorrow." I thought it would be easier to lie if it was based on some truth. "He is in the bathroom right now."

"Ohh, it's a he! Cause I watched you come here with a girl I think." She smiled again.

I almost choked as I heard her say that. But this wasn't my first time getting interrogated. I cleared my throat and spoke, "When did you see us?" Meanwhile I retraced the event when we entered the building. We saw only the guard who did not mind anything once I told him that we were Mr. Sharma's relatives and we will be staying in his apartment. Apparently, Toto had already called him about that. On our way up, we saw nobody cross our path.

"I live in the apartment right in front of you," she pointed her finger toward the door in front.

"Ohh, through the peephole?" I clearly remembered that the door was closed. Her smile slowly turned into an expression of embarrassment.

"I was checking for the milkman; he usually delivers at that time." She sounded a bit defensive.

"It's the lens. It distorts everything".

"Yeah, that must be it." Now she was getting nervous. "Ohh, I left the tea on the gas. I hope it's not burned." She started walking away uncomfortably. "Would you like some?" she turned and asked.

"No, it's alright. I just had one."

She started walking away as quickly as possible.

"Have a nice tea, Aunty." I clearly was enjoying the situation a bit more than I should have.

"Thanks Beta(son), you too," she replied and disappeared behind the door.

After that moment, I was worried about what I would say if she knocks again. 'By now the whole building would have been informed about us. Maybe it's not safe to stay here for long.' It was two o'clock in the afternoon and we had our boring lunch when I shared my insecurities with Neha. She agreed that it wasn't safe to stay here. "I am bored out of my mind," she added.

"But we don't know what's waiting out there? Maybe it's even more dangerous. I mean how are we going to leave, by bus or train? What if they are still looking for us? I mean for you?" I immediately corrected myself for no reason. Neha gave me a serious nod and cupped her cheeks in her palms. I wish she spoke something. She was obviously thinking about the whole situation. "Don't worry, we will find a way," I tried to assuage her. She looked at me with her big, beautiful eyes.

"Are you sure?" she asked with a smile.

"Not really." I smiled too. "We are fucked!" We both broke into laughter.

She extended her hand to... perhaps pat my knee or something, but I instinctively moved away from her hand. It was that damned dream. I was so terrified to even get close to her. I stood up and walked away towards the window.

"It's the bathroom incident, isn't it?" She must have noticed it by now. She only knew half of it. I didn't respond. She let out a sigh. I turned to look at her after a moment and noticed she was cupping her whole face in her palms. I didn't know if things were going to change for better or worse.

The air was tense in the room. I was standing by the window looking at the cars passing by the road, and Neha was still sitting on the chair when the phone rang. I walked back to the table and checked the phone; it was Toto.

"Hey, how are you?" I tried to sound normal.

"So, Mrs. Gupta called." I heard a sarcastic voice from the other side.

"Mrs. Gupta who? Who are you talking to man? It's me, Mohit."

"The neighbour you were flirting with yesterday, you dumbass."

"That bitch!" The only response that I could come up with at that instance.

"You were lucky that I had this number. If my father had picked up the call, I would be dead and it would be a lot worse for you I guess," Toto sounded really serious which was a bit strange because he was never serious.

"What did you tell her?"

"Well, whatever I told her she didn't buy it. She wanted to talk to my father, so I told her that he is out of town. Then she kept asking for his number."

"That crazy lady, what does she want?" Now I was totally freaked out. I know that sometimes neighbours can be a bit annoying, but this woman was way past the line.

"Nothing good. You need to get out of there," Toto replied.

"We were thinking about that too, but how? I mean I can't trust the buses or trains." I was hoping Toto might have some good ideas.

"Who do you think this man is? It has been three days already. He would have given up by now." Toto sounded a bit annoyed with my reservations.

"Maybe you are right, but I can't take that chance. And I don't think this man is known for letting things go." As I was saying this, I saw Neha walk up to me. "Who are you talking to?" she mouthed the words. 'Ohh god! Her face glazed up like a pearl with the light falling from the window. How am I ever gonna get over that?' As she was mouthing the words, I found myself looking at her face like a hypnotized dog. My jaw was literally hanging loose.

"Who are you talking to?" she whispered this time as she waved her hand in front of my face.

I covered the speaker of the phone and said, "It's Toto." She nodded.

"So, what are you gonna do? You can't stay there, that's for sure," Toto spoke on the phone.

"Yeah, don't worry. We will leave the apartment by tomorrow morning," I replied.

"How?" Neha mouthed without any sound.

"We will book a cab or something to get out of the city." Neha gave me a puzzled look.

"Where would you go?" Toto asked.

"I don't know! It's not like I got everything planned here."

"Dude, you have no fucking clue about what you are doing. I told you to stay out of it," he sounded angry.

"Yeah, you are right. I have no fucking idea what I am doing. What do you want me to do? I'm not gonna leave her in the middle of all this," I shouted in frustration. Neha looked at me with a candid face, our eyes met and stayed locked for a while then I looked away.

"Would you just calm the fuck down?" Toto replied to me gently. "I think I have an idea." He took a long pause.

"What idea?" I felt a smidge of hope was still left.

"Ohh man, I can't believe I'm doing this," Toto replied in a voice like he was in so much pain but laughing at the same time. I knew this voice.

"Doing what, Toto?" I had no idea where he was going with this. Neha was looking at me all confused.