The Scent of Love-2

Chapter 2

When the media campaign started rolling, many girls and boys who worked in the assignment rang up at the office and asked for more works, and some appeared in person. But Mili didn’t show up, even though she was well placed in the advertisements. Albert’s office didn’t have her number too, to call her in the pretext of giving appreciations for the team’s good work.

Albert remembered a Sunday; when he was in a shopping mall, he immediately had Mili’s thoughts. His eyes became wider, and his face assumed an alarming look, when a couple just passed him. The woman of the pair had a fragrance that appeared like the smell of the chewing gum. But, the girl wasn’t Mili. He suddenly saw her face in his imaginations, vividly, chewing all the while, and presenting an impish smile for him. He realized that he was falling in love with a girl, whom he had seen only once.

He accidentally met Mili on the street, some days after. She was walking against him, carrying a rainbow coloured umbrella in her hand, and an academicians’ bag on her shoulder. Her glasses were totally dark in the day light. 

Seeing him, she happily smiled. Though it was their first meeting since the ad shoot, he felt that they had been seeing each other for a long time. They spoke sans any apprehension, freely, as if they were friends since long.

“It is a very hot day. If you want, you may come under the shades”, she invited him.

When she came close to him and let him also enter beneath her umbrella, the intense smell of her chewing gum pierced his nostrils. 

“Do you eat chewing gum always?” He asked.

“I don’t! I just chew them”, smiling heartily, she said. Smile is a good match for her face, Albert thought.

“But, somehow I am addicted to it, if that’s what your question meant”, she added.

“It has a pleasant smell”, Albert mentioned.

“A sexy smell?” she asked naughtily.

“I don’t know if it is sexy. Why do you think so? ” Albert posed a question.

“It’s my friends’ opinion”, carelessly she said.

“Oh, you have so many friends to make such comments? ”, he remarked enviously. 

Standing below her umbrella, Albert noticed a pair of playfully smiling eyes through her specs. The smile on her eyes gradually spread towards her cheeks, making it all red and finally reached her mouth, letting her scarlet lips split apart. When her womanly smell – the smell of an excited woman – combined with the smell of her chewing gum stirred up him, his blood boiled. He wanted to simply put a kiss on her lips. When she noticed his eyes assuming a different color, she suddenly said,

“See, I have one more, if you want it”, pulling out a chewing gum from her bag she gave it him.

Albert smelt it. Unwrapping the cover, he put it in his mouth, and began to taste it as if he was chewing something which was very delicious. She laughed at the way he tasted it.

Albert reflected deeply about their initial love blooming days. He was introduced among her friend circle as her best friend. His profession as an ad film maker was acceptable among her scholarly friend circle. She was pursuing MPhil in Sociology. An MPhil graduate, who should belong to the cluster of intelligentsia, how got an interest in modeling? he wondered. 

“I don’t like to be trapped in the restrictions set by any profession,” that was her reason for that.

They both went to eateries on holidays. When they engaged in talks sitting opposite, his sinful eyes wandered unintentionally from her face to downwards, escaping the eye contact they had been maintaining. Albert had guessed that Mili was getting enough hints regarding his growing attraction for her, through some unintentional gestures of passion.

He day-dreamed Mili every now and then. In every such reveries, her luscious figure charmingly invited him to the pastures of pleasure with a gum in mouth, all the time jawing close to his lips, sensually. Every morning, he woke up imagining the smell of a woman’s sweat blended together with the smell of chewing gum.

(To be Continued)