Chapter 8 #2
“He is appallingly private,” Meera corrects, and for the first time, I hear something in her voice that’s not strategic.
It’s tired. It’s the quiet, worn frustration of a mother who has spent years reaching for a son who keeps retreating further behind glass.
“He tells me nothing. He works. He operates. He calls once a week and discusses the weather and his surgical schedule and absolutely nothing of substance. I learned about his last relationship from his university Facebook account in Cambridge. He was twenty-two.”
Arjun's jaw clenches so hard I can hear his teeth grinding.
“Arjun,” I say, and I put my hand on his knee.
It's not strategic or rehearsed. It's the instinct I've had since the moment I met him, the bone-deep, unthinking impulse to put myself between this man and whatever or whomever is hurting him.
My hand settles on his knee, warm and steady, and I feel the tension in his leg like a live wire, humming and taut and barely contained.
He looks down at my hand. He looks up at me. His green eyes are wide, and in them I can see the war: the part of him that wants to pull away because this is too real, too close, too much, too soon, and the part of him that wants to lean in so badly it's making him shake.
He doesn't pull away.
Meera watches my hand on her son's knee. Her expression doesn’t change. But something behind her eyes moves, something deep and careful.
“Well,” she says, and her voice has gone soft in a way that does not match any translation in the dossier. “It seems you know my son better than I expected.”
She sets her teacup down with a quiet clink. The sound is decisive.
“Now,” she says, and the warmth evaporates like dew in the Rajasthani sun, replaced by something bright and sharp and entirely businesslike.
“Let us discuss the practical matters. The engagement dinner is Friday evening.
There will be seventy-two guests. I have arranged for Tarun, our family's designer, to take your measurements. The ceremony will follow traditional Roka protocols, adapted for a same-sex partnership, which I personally negotiated with Pandit-ji over three rather spirited phone calls.” She pauses, the smallest flicker of what might be pride crossing her face.
“I am nothing if not progressive when it suits the occasion.”
“That's really thoughtful, Meera,” I say, and I mean it. Whatever guerilla warfare she's waging, the woman reorganized a traditional ceremony for her gay son, and that’s not nothing.
“Additionally,” she continues, as if I haven't spoken, “I will need your exact birth time, date, and location for the astrological compatibility assessment.”
“3:47 a.m., March 12th, 1993, Huntsville General Hospital.”
She blinks. It's the first time I've seen her blink at something I've said, and the satisfaction is profound.
“You have your birth time memorized.”
“My mom tells the story every birthday. Ten pounds, two ounces. They thought she was having twins. She wasn't. It was just me.”
“Ten pounds,” Meera repeats, and her eyes travel from my shoulders to my hands to the general, unavoidable enormity of me with an expression that suggests she’s beginning to understand the physics of the situation.
“He was a large baby,” Arjun says quietly, and I glance at him, startled, because Arjun voluntarily contributing information to this conversation is as expected as a sudden solar eclipse.
“Evidently,” Meera says. She picks up her teacup again.
“I will pass the details to Pandit-ji. I expect the preliminary chart analysis by tomorrow afternoon.” Her eyes find mine over the rim, and there's something there, something sharp and measuring and not entirely hostile.
“I hope the stars are favourable, Casey. For everyone's sake.”
She stands. The movement is fluid, unhurried, the trained grace of an aristocrat who has never made an awkward exit.
“Dinner is at eight. Priya will show you to the guest suite.
I've had it prepared with fresh linens and additional pillows.” Her gaze travels between me and Arjun with a precision that misses absolutely nothing.
“I assumed you'd be comfortable sharing.”
She leaves. The silk of her sari whispers against the marble floor as she goes, and the sound of her footsteps fades down the corridor with the measured, purposeful rhythm of a general who has completed her reconnaissance and is now returning to her war room to plan the next phase.
The drawing room is quiet. The fountain murmurs outside. A bird, something bright and tropical that I can’t name, calls once from the garden and goes silent.
I exhale. It’s the first full exhale I’ve allowed myself since I sat down, and it comes out of me like something that’s been held underwater for twenty minutes.
“So,” I say. “That went well.”
Arjun turns his head and looks at me with an expression of such disbelief that I want to frame it.
“Well?” he repeats. “She just performed a comprehensive socioeconomic evaluation of your entire life, cross-referenced your birth time for astrological ammunition, and implied that your medical specialization is insufficient for her son. In what diagnostic framework does that constitute 'well'?”
“She didn't hate me.”
“She never hates on the first meeting. She gathers intelligence on the first meeting. The hating comes later, after she has identified all the structural weaknesses.”
“Arjun.” I turn to face him on the settee.
His hands are still clenched in his lap, his knuckles white, his shoulders carrying enough tension to power a small turbine.
“Your mom is tough. I get it. She's smart, she's strategic, and she loves you in a way that's gotten extremely tangled up in control.
But she didn't throw me out. She asked me real questions, and she listened to genuine answers, and when I put my hand on your knee, she didn't look angry. She looked...”
“What?”
“Surprised. Like she wasn't expecting you to have someone who touches you like that.”
Arjun's mouth opens. Then closes. His eyes search my face, and I can see him trying to process what I've said, trying to run it through his internal filters and categorize it and file it away in a labelled drawer, and failing, because some things can’t be filtered.
Some things are just true and warm and too big for a drawer.
“You're reading too much into a facial expression,” he says, but his voice has lost its edge.
“I'm excellent at reading facial expressions. It's literally my job.”
“Your job is emergency paediatric medicine.”
“Which involves reading the facial expressions of humans who can’t verbally articulate their symptoms. It's the same skill set, Doc. Your mom is a tough cookie, but she's not unreadable.”
From the divan by the window, Priya unfolds herself and stands with the languid grace of a cat who has been watching two mice negotiate a maze.
“He's not wrong,” she says, looking at Arjun with an expression that is equal parts affection and exasperation.
“Mother was expecting to hate him, and instead she's recalibrating. That's the best possible outcome from a first engagement.” She turns to me, and her sharp eyes study my face with an intensity that’s pure Kapoor.
“You're either very genuine or very good, Casey. I haven't decided which.”
“Can't I be both?” I ask.
She smiles. It’s a small, dangerous Kapoor smile, and it’s the first moment I understand, with clarity, that Priya isn’t exactly an ally.
Not yet. She’s an independent intelligence agency with her own agenda, and that agenda is the protection of her brother.
Until she’s satisfied that I’m not a threat to him, she’ll be watching me with exactly the same relentless attention that her mother brings to dinner parties.
“Both would be ideal,” she says. “Come now. I'll show you to the suite. You look like you need a shower and a very large drink. Dinner is in three hours, so you’ll have time for both before then.”
She leads us out of the drawing room and through a corridor that’s longer than my entire apartment building. The walls are lined with portraits: generations of Kapoors in formal dress, staring down at us with the collective disapproval of people who probably had opinions about everything.
I glance at Arjun. He’s walking beside me with his hands clasped behind his back, his face composed, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
But as we pass a small alcove where an ornate antique vase sits on a carved table, his hand drops from behind his back, and for two steps, maybe three, the backs of his fingers brush against mine.
Deliberate yet brief. Gone before Priya, walking ahead of us, can see.
I don't look at him. I don't react. I just let my hand stay exactly where it is, open and oh so very available, in the space between us.
The jasmine smells sweet and heavy in the warm corridor air, and somewhere in this palace, Meera Kapoor is probably pouring herself another cup of tea and planning her next move.
At the same time, I’m walking through the ancestral home of the man I love, and his fingers are brushing mine, and I’m not pretending.
Not even a little bit.