Chapter 24 #3
I step closer. Close enough that the hem of my kurta brushes against his.
Close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off him in the evening air, that familiar, citrus-and-clean heat that I have memorized from a thousand small proximities.
I reach out and take the glass from his hand, gently, and set it on the garden wall behind him.
Then I take both of his hands. His surgeon's hands, narrow and henna-traced, resting in my big, blunt ones.
“Dance with me, Arjun. Please.”
“I do not dance. I have never danced at a family festival. I have attended these events since childhood and I have never once set foot on that dance floor.”
“Then this is long overdue.”
“Casey, I am a neurosurgeon. I have a reputation. There are local politicians present. There are members of my extended family with smartphones and a direct line to the WhatsApp group. If I dance, Sunita will have video evidence within seconds. She has been documenting this trip with the dedication of a wartime correspondent. I will not give her more ammunition.”
“Good. Let her.”
He looks at me. I look at him. I’m holding both his hands and standing so close that our chests are nearly touching and the lanterns are flickering light across his face, and the jasmine is sweet and the night is warm and there are hundreds of people around us and none of them matter because right now, in this moment, there are only his green eyes and my hands around his and a question that I’m asking with my whole body: let me hold you, please.
I’m always waiting for this man. And he is always, eventually, reaching back.
He takes a breath, sharp and definite, the kind of breath he takes before a first incision. His fingers tighten around mine.
“One dance,” he says.
“One dance,” I agree, and I know, and he knows, that there won’t be just one.
I pull him into the crowd. The music is something I don't recognize, a melody that winds and climbs and falls like water over stone, and I don't know the steps, and he doesn't know the steps, and neither of us cares.
I slide my hand from his fingers to his waist, pulling him close, and his hand comes up to my shoulder, and then we are chest to chest, my arm wrapped around him, his body pressed against mine in a way that is not pre-meditated and is not performed and is simply, completely, the two of us holding each other dancing in the middle of a festival because we want to.
He’s stiff at first. Rigid. His spine is a military-grade structural column and his hand on my shoulder is gripping hard enough to leave marks.
But the music is patient, and I’m patient, and slowly, slowly, I feel him give.
His spine softens. His grip eases. His body remembers what his brain has spent thirty-three years trying to override, which is that it feels good to move, and it feels better to move with someone, and it feels best of all to move with someone whose arm is wrapped around your waist and whose heartbeat you can feel through the thin cotton.
He leans into me. His forehead comes to rest against my collarbone, the way it does in sleep, except this time his eyes are open and the choice is conscious and he is, for the first time in his life, letting someone hold him in public.
His hand slides from my shoulder to the back of my neck, his fingers curling into the hair at my nape, and the touch is light and intimate and sends a shiver down my spine that has nothing to do with the evening air.
I tighten my arm around his waist, and press my cheek against his hair. He smells like the warm, specific, irreplaceable scent that is just Arjun, and I breathe him in, and we sway, barely moving, just two bodies occupying the same space in the amber light.
Then he lifts his head. He looks up at me, his eyes luminous in the lantern light, and his fingers tighten at the back of my neck, and he pulls me down, gently, and kisses me.
In front of everyone. In the middle of a festival, surrounded by lanterns and music and his entire family, Arjun Kapoor kisses me.
It is soft and slow and tastes like lime and the particular, specific courage of a man who has been terrified of being seen for his entire life and is choosing, right now, in this moment, to be seen completely.
We sway. We don’t spin or step or do anything that could technically be called dancing. We just hold each other and move, gently, and the music wraps around us.
Somewhere in the crowd, Priya is likely watching holding back the tears in her eyes. Karan is probably grinning like his favourite team just won the cup.
I’m sure Yash is leaning against a pillar with his arms crossed and a quiet, proud, deeply satisfied smile on his face. The smile of a younger brother who sent an oversized Canadian to find his older brother and is watching the results with the certainty that he knew what would happen.
Daadi taps her cane once on the stone path. The sound carries, small and sharp and final, through the warm Rajasthani night.
One tap. Approval.
For Arjun. For me. For this.
I hold him tighter. He lets me.
The festival glows around us like a living thing, and the music plays, and the stars come out, enormous and close and bright, and I am dancing badly with the man I love under the biggest sky I have ever seen.
It is, without question, without reservation, without a single clinical term or strategic assessment or leather notebook to contain it, the happiest moment of my life.