October Heat: chapter 2

Angad thought this was the right time for him to just turn around and walk back to one of the paintings. Anything was better than the embarrassing silence. He remembered their first date, when he got her flowers and she just stood their for three seconds looking at them before accepting them. Those were really long three seconds.
She spoke at last, “Angad!! Oh my God! I can’t believe I’m seeing you here! How are you?!!” she said while giving him a warm hug. He felt his muscles loosening and his asphyxia going away. “I’ve been good Rajni. I can see you’ve been much better than me.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her smile. One of the first things which attracted him besides her beautiful big eyes, wavy hair and the perfect shape of her body. She hadn’t lost any of those.
“So what brings you here?”
“Your paintings of course!”
“I mean I never thought you would be interested in art”
“Well… frankly speaking, I never expected to be interested in art either. But then this is what I do now. I go to exhibitions see the paintings and then tear the artist’s ego apart in a really mean review”
“Ahh…So are you going to do the same to me?” she said with her standard sarcastic smile.
“Do I dare! These paintings are beautiful. I mean I can see that you know exactly what to put on a portrait. These brush strokes, the patterns! I mean I knew you were always an artist. But these designs look amazing,”
Angad kept talking, trying to ignore Rajni’s smile.
She continued looking at him trying to remember all the good time she had had with him in the past. Here was a guy she once thought she loved. The same socially awkward Angad she liked. It had been seven years since she had heard from him and this truly was a pleasant surprise.
While reminiscing those scenes from the past she kept smiling unknowingly.
“What are you smiling at?” he said trying to conceal his own.
“At you silly! Haven’t changed a bit have you Angad?”
“I think that applies for both of us”
Rajni kept giggling. Angad saw an opportunity and went for it.
“Hey I want to know what you have been doing all these years…in detail! How does dinner with a socially awkward blogger sound?”
“It sounds perfect,” she kept smiling.
“So when do you get free from here?”
“I have to vacate the gallery by 11:30 tonight. So I think we will close in an hour.”
“Alright then I’ll keep myself with your beautiful paintings till then while you entertain your guests,” he almost turned secretly wishing that she somehow call him back. She didn’t disappoint him.
“Wait… Angad I want you to meet someone,” she was pulling him by the elbow.
“Who?”
“Someone you haven’t met in a long time”
She kept walking towards a woman who was screaming at one of the waiters serving cocktails. Geez! some lady this is, he thought to himself.