Adil stepped out of the room in an underwear, pulling the door closed behind him with a soft click that seemed too loud in the quiet of the suite.
Monica and Madhuri were sitting on the plush sofa in the adjoining hall, both looking up the moment they heard the bedroom door open. Their eyes met his. A blush appeared on their faces seeing him.
For a brief moment, no one spoke. The silence was heavy with something Adil couldn't quite name. Neither Monica nor Madhuri looked surprised, they had clearly been there for some time. Long enough to understand what had taken place behind the closed door. Long enough to have made a choice to wait.
Adil stood there, suddenly acutely aware that he was wearing nothing but his underwear. He felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with his state of undress.
He cleared his throat. "When did you come back?"
Madhuri answered, her voice carefully neutral. "Nearly two hours ago." The words hung in the air. Two hours. They had been sitting here for two hours.
Another silence followed, this one even more uncomfortable than the first.
Adil lowered his eyes, letting out a slow breath. There was embarrassment on his face, but also something deeper uncertainty, maybe even fear. Without saying anything else, he walked over to the sofa and sat down between them, the way he had done countless times before. Except this time it felt different. Everything felt different.
For several seconds, none of them moved. Finally, Adil looked from Monica to Madhuri and back again.
"Are you angry?"
Neither woman answered immediately. Monica was looking at her hands, folded in her lap. Madhuri was looking at the window, at the rain that had started again outside.
"No," Monica said finally. Her voice was quiet, thoughtful. "I'm not angry."
"Neither am I," Madhuri added, though there was something in her tone that suggested the truth was more complicated than that simple statement.
Adil waited, knowing there was more.
Monica took a slow breath, as if trying to organize her thoughts. "We knew this would happen, One day." she said quietly. "Not like this... but we knew your and Aishwarya feelings for eachother." She glanced briefly at Madhuri before looking back at Adil. "We would be angry, if you had hide it, But from the start you remained, honest with each of us by introducing us to eachother. You knew this could damage our relationship but you still introduce us, Madhuri and I talked, We didn't object anything, We reminded ourselves that we had always said your heart wasn't something we wanted to cage. We told each other we'd accept it if you ever fell for someone else." She smiled faintly, though it carried a trace of vulnerability.
"But theory and reality are different things," Madhuri said softly, finishing the thought.
"Yes," Monica agreed. "Very different."
Adil felt something tighten in his chest. "I should have, I don't know. I should have handled this differently."
"How?" Madhuri asked, and there was no accusation in it, only genuine curiosity. "What would you have done differently?"
Adil didn't have an answer.
Madhhri shifted slightly, turning to face him more directly. "The thing is," she said, and her voice was steadier now, more like herself, "I thought I had made peace with this. With the idea of you being with Aishwarya and Monica or someone else. I've known about Aishwarya since the beginning. Since before we were together. You've never hidden how you felt about her."
"Neither have I," Monica said. "You've been transparent. About your history with her. About what she means to you. We've always known us."
"So why does it feel like this?" Adil asked quietly. The question was directed at them, but also at himself.
Monica was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, more vulnerable. "Because hearing it is different from knowing it," she said. "Sitting out here, listening to you with her, not intentionally, we weren't trying to eavesdrop, but the walls aren't that thick. It made it real in a way it wasn't before. And I realized that I had been thinking about this in the abstract. The idea of you being with someone else. But the reality of it, the actual sound of your voice saying things to her, the sound of her responding" She stopped, shaking her head slightly. "It brought up feelings I didn't expect to have."
"What kind of feelings?" Adil asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.
Monica considered this. "Jealousy," she said finally. "Which I hate admitting, because I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be possessive or small-minded. But it was there. This feeling of" She paused, searching for the right words. "Of being replaced. Which is irrational, I know. You being with her doesn't erase what you have with me. But feelings aren't rational."
Madhuri nodded slowly. "I felt it too," she said. "Not anger, exactly. But something uncomfortable. Like watching you cross a threshold into a space where we couldn't follow. Where we weren't invited." She looked at him then, her eyes dark and honest. "We've always shared you with each other. Monica and I. But we've been there together. We've been part of the same experience. This was different. This was you with someone else, in a way that excluded us completely."
Adil felt the weight of their words settling over him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think. I mean, I thought about whether it was okay with you both, and you said it was, but I didn't think about how it would actually feel. For any of us."
"Neither did we," Monica said. "That's the problem. We all thought we had figured this out. We thought we were evolved enough, mature enough, to handle this kind of complexity. But it turns out that knowing something intellectually and experiencing it emotionally are two entirely different things."
"So what do we do?" Adil asked. "Do we need to, I don't know. Do we need to establish different boundaries? Rules about this kind of thing?"
Madhuri shook her head. "I don't think rules are the answer," she said. "Rules are what you make when you don't trust people to navigate things with care. And I do trust you. We both do. This isn't about trust."
"Then what is it about?" Adil asked.
Monica was quiet for a moment, thinking. "Presence," she said finally. "It's about presence. About being seen. About mattering." She looked at him directly. "When you're with us, we feel like we matter to you. Like we're not interchangeable. Like what we have together is specific and irreplaceable. But tonight, sitting out here, for the first time, I wondered if that was true. If maybe what you have with her is more real than what you have with us. If maybe we've been fooling ourselves about what this is."
"That's not true," Adil said immediately. "What I have with you, with both of you, it's not less real. It's not less important."
Monica nodded slowly, processing this. "I understand that," she said. "I do. And I'm not asking you to apologize for it. I'm not asking you to feel guilty. But I am asking you to understand that it's complicated for us. That we need time to process what this means. For us. For our relationship."
"Of course," Adil said. "Whatever you need."
"I don't think we need anything specific," Madhuri said. "I think we just need to sit with this. To let ourselves feel what we're feeling without trying to fix it or explain it away."
They sat in silence for a while, the three of them, listening to the rain against the windows and the distant sounds of the city below.
Finally, Monica spoke again. "I want you to know," she said, "that I'm glad you had this. With her. I'm glad you finally got to tell her how you feel. I'm glad she feels the same way. I don't want my complicated feelings about it to take away from that."
"Neither do I," Madhuri added. "Your happiness matters to us. Even when it's complicated."
Adil felt something loosen in his chest, some tension he hadn't fully realized he was carrying. "Thank you," he said quietly. "For being honest. For telling me how you really feel instead of pretending everything is fine."
"We're not pretending," Monica said. "We're just figuring it out as we go. Like we always do."
"Like we always do," Madhuri echoed.
They sat there together for a while longer, not talking, just being present with each other and with the complexity of what they were all feeling. Outside, Paris continued its quiet nighttime existence, indifferent to the small human dramas unfolding in its hotel rooms.
Eventually, Madhuri reached over and took Adil's hand. Monica did the same on his other side. They sat like that, connected, working through something that had no easy answers, only the commitment to keep trying.
Adil spent a long time with them sitting there. Before both Monica and Aishwarya Rai ask him to go back to the Room to accompany Aishwarya. When Adil returned yo the roam Aishwarya was already awake, She had already listened to their conversation outside. But She didn't question Adil. When Adil return back. She cane and just gave him a hug.
It was Monica who finally broke their stillness. She glanced toward the bedroom door, then back at him, something gentler settling into her expression. "Go on," she said. "We'll be all right."
Adil hesitated, as if needing permission a second time, but Madhuri only squeezed his hand once and let it go. He rose slowly from the sofa and crossed the hall.
He didn't know that the moment the bedroom door had clicked shut behind him earlier when he left, Aishwarya had woken up. Due to poor soundproofing, The conversation reached her naturally. When Adil entered inside He looked tired, When he found her awoke, He wanted to explain at,
"Aishwarya.."
Aishwarya shook her head once, gently, before he could finish, stopped him. Nothing needed explaining.
She pushed the sheet aside, Still naked, she crossed the room on bare feet, and stepped into him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, her face fitting into the curve of his neck. She held him simply, without needing to say anything at all.
Adil felt the weight of the night ease out of him under her hands.
"It's ok" she said.
That night passed like that.