How Simi Got Her Groom Back

Chapter 1 Simi

One

Simi

My boyfriend drops down on one knee next to the cascading indoor waterfall at Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland, and panic grips me.

I’ve known Prem for just one year, but I’ve loved him for the entirety of that year and maybe even before that. It’s like the idea of him always lived inside me, and when we met, he simply stepped into the love-shaped void waiting there for him.

My palms press into my cheeks, a pose I’ve seen countless times in movies when a heroine is being proposed to and she’s utterly overwhelmed.

The expansive glass roof bathes us in evening light.

A couple strolling hand in hand over an idyllic bridge stops to stare.

A group of women drinking brightly colored cocktails looks on from the redbrick terrace of a bar. One of them points at us.

Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.

Prem picks something off the cobbled floor and looks up at my flaming face.

My hands are still frozen against my cheeks. Great, now I just look like a moron who finds the sight of him kneeling to pick things up off the floor overwhelming . . . or like I thought he was going to propose.

Can a person die of embarrassment?

His eyes twinkle with amusement as he stands up.

“Simi?” My name does a teasing dance on his tongue.

Instead of leaning into my mortification, he takes my hand and pushes a shiny dime into my palm. “My dad says never pass a fountain without throwing in a coin to make a wish.”

Prem’s voice always warms in a particular way when he talks about his family and his childhood. It’s the thing that most separates us. I have to work hard never to think about my family and childhood because it’s too painful.

“You know how lucky this is, right?” A dimple dips into his left cheek as he smiles. “Finding a coin near a fountain means the wish is definitely going to come true.”

“Very logical,” I say, unable to not smile up at him.

“Go ahead, make a wish.” He turns to the fountain excitedly.

“Me? But you’re the one who found the coin.”

He squeezes my hand, eyes blazing with love. “I’d only ever wish for you to get what you want anyway.”

I know it’s a corny line, but my insides turn warm and gooey. I hold up the coin. “Why don’t we do it together.”

He wraps his hand over mine, and we close our eyes and make our wish before tossing the coin into the clear fountain water, where it lands on top of the blanket of wishes already twinkling there.

I look up at him, and he grins down at me, and for one moment what I wished for feels like it’s already mine.

Fear prickles in response to my hope, but I shove it away.

“So . . .” he says, studying my face.

I press a finger to his lips. “You can’t ask what someone wished for. That makes it not come true.”

He gasps, eyes crinkling with laughter. “Tell me my logical Simi isn’t superstitious.”

“It is logical to hedge my bets. If we’re doing the wishing, we might as well up the odds of it coming true.”

Prem drops a kiss on my forehead, takes my hand, and starts walking. He’s trying not to smile. “That’s the plan.”

Did I really think Prem was going to propose? He did bring me back to the place we came to for our first date. And we’ve already talked several times about wanting to spend our lives together. We’ve operated from that place from the very beginning: that this thing between us is forever.

Even so, a proposal would be missing several steps, which must explain the terror I felt, seeing him down on one knee. That’s all it was. He hasn’t introduced me to his family yet. Maybe that’s what he wants to talk about.

“What are you up to, Prem?”

He slides me a glance. “Is it okay if I wait until dinner to tell you? I had this whole thing planned out. Humor me?”

“Of course.” If Prem is anything, he’s intentional. He takes his own feelings seriously. He also takes my feelings and those of everyone around him seriously. “But if you’re planning on breaking up with me, know that I’m fully capable of dumping wine on you and creating a frightful scene.”

“So, you’re saying wait until after the wine to break up?”

“Definitely. Especially if you like the wine.”

He squeezes my hand. “You know I can’t imagine life without you, right? I would do anything for you. This is forever, Simi.” His eyes glitter with sincerity.

“So, you’re saying we can order the good wine.”

That makes him grin his wide, eyes-disappearing-into-crescents smile, and my heart fills with an almost unbearable joy.

When I ran away from Mumbai four years ago, at best I’d hoped to find peace and safety.

Finding love was a dream I never dared to dream.

My past is a poison dart wedged deep inside my chest. It’s run with me no matter how hard I’ve run from it.

A year of being loved by Prem, and I’ve started to feel like I might be able to extract it, to finally be free.

But each time I try to take the next step, the fear wins.

Mumbai is a long way from Hochkinsville, Kentucky, where I’m a pediatric nurse.

The doctor I work for is married to Prem’s sister, which is how we met a year ago.

So, technically, I have met his family. They just don’t know we’re together.

Suddenly I feel queasy with nervousness.

Given that I work for them, the stakes are too high if something goes wrong.

Not only is Prem’s brother-in-law my boss, but I also moonlight as a nanny for his sister and Dr. Johnson’s triplets.

The girls are utterly precious, much like their uncle.

Who wouldn’t fall in love with a man who can hold his three sleeping nieces on his person while sitting cross-legged without moving for two hours so his exhausted postpartum sister could catch a nap?

Prem and I met on my first day on the job. He’d dropped by his sister’s house with the biggest pizza box in existence. I answered the door with a spit-up-soaked burp cloth on my shoulder and a dirty diaper in my hand. We’d just stood there, unable to move at the sight of each other.

Then all three babies had started to cry at once, and we’d jumped into action to rescue their distraught mother.

Pizza in the kitchen, diaper in the bin, burp cloth in the laundry.

Babies picked up, swaddled, soothed, fed.

We’d fought the battle of babies together and won before we even knew each other’s names.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure I was already in love with him by the time he introduced himself.

I didn’t learn until much later that Prem used to rearrange his entire schedule (he manages his family’s chain of twelve pizza franchises across southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee) so he could volunteer to help me babysit his nieces.

His family didn’t suspect a thing, because no one thinks about it twice when Prem Gupta does something nice for them.

The first time he told me he loved me, we’d just managed to get the triplets to sleep. It had taken two hours of singing, swaddling, rocking, and walking. Prem and I had promptly followed suit and dropped into a bone-tired sleep on the floor of the nursery without even realizing it.

When I opened my eyes, Prem was lying on his side, watching me, our faces inches from each other, the pale-pink Berber carpet pressed into our cheeks.

My first thought had been God, I hope I’m not drooling.

My second thought had been God, he looks hot lying down.

My third thought had been God, this silence! It’s so beautiful, please don’t let the babies wake up.

That’s when he’d said it. “I love you.”

It was the barest whisper.

Instead of saying it back, I threw a panicked look at the sleeping girls, without even lifting my head. “You’ll wake them,” I whispered with true terror.

An entire universe of emotions swirled in his eyes. Heartbreaking disappointment that I’d left his words hanging. Worshipful admiration that I’d thought of the babies first. Abject terror that his screaming nieces might wake up.

The flecks of gold in his eyes brightened and dimmed like a movie screen, and my heart ebbed and flowed with each passing emotion. I scooted close and kissed him.

Everything about us has been backward and upside down, and yet nothing in my life has ever felt so right side up. And easy. The one thing I’ve learned about life is that easy is the hardest thing to come by.

The kiss didn’t come out of the blue. We’d circled each other like delighted larks filled with pheromones for six months.

Or like exhausted babysitters seeking out the torture of wrangling three screaming infants just to be with each other because we were so smitten.

But it wasn’t until four months ago that Prem and I first went on a date.

Between working at Dr. Johnson’s practice, and at the hospital, and spending four hours every day helping with the triplets, finding time to go on dates was yet another dream I was not delusional enough to dream.

Then one day when the triplets were eight months old, Prem had intercepted me as I left the clinic and informed me that I had the evening off because Preeti, his mother, and his brother’s wife were going to spend a girls’ night with the babies.

Then he’d driven me to Nashville to the Gaylord Opryland for the kind of meal I had only seen actors eat in movies.

I found out later that Prem was the one who’d set up the entire girls’ night for the women in his family so we could have our first real date.

Now, with the girls a few weeks away from turning one, our love is also about to turn one. And here we are, back at the Gaylord, and something about it feels special.

“Family is the most important thing in my life,” Prem says as we settle into our table. For months now, he’s been eager to introduce me to his family as his girlfriend. Especially since his family keeps trying to set him up with eligible women so he can settle down.

I wish I could tell him how very different the way we feel about family is. I wish I could tell him how terrifying the idea of meeting his family is to me.