Chapter 3 Simi #2
“If Dr. Rai will be less of a problem if I don’t nanny for you . . . maybe . . .”
“Do you not want to babysit for us anymore, Simi?”
Gosh, want is such a complicated word. “I want nothing more than to spend time with TASha. You know how much I love them. But I can’t lose my job at the practice. I’ve worked really hard to get here.”
“I know. Let me talk to Karina. She’s not unreasonable. Also Preeti will kill me if you lose your job and have to leave the country.” He smiles kindly, oblivious of my racing thoughts.
I force myself to return his smile, and he heads back to the living room.
I don’t follow. I need a minute. I’ve never felt so alone in my life.
It’s been four years since I left home. Since I lost Rupi. One mistake, and I had destroyed everything. Ugly memories and the danger that awaits me if I ever go back spin around me.
“Simi?” Prem finds me. One look at my face, and he knows something is wrong.
“Please go back out, Prem. Already Preeti suspects something.”
“So? She’s going to find out in a few days anyway. What did John say?”
I can’t talk about it right now. I haven’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. I started the day with a four-hour night shift at the urgent care, then did twelve hours at the clinic, and then I’ve been here with the triplets.
These work hours aren’t a rarity for me. I’m lucky enough to love my work enough that my energy never falters, but right now I feel like I’ve been squeezed dry from the inside out. The exhaustion is paralyzing. My feelings are all over the place, and I don’t want to say something I’ll regret.
“Please, Prem. I can’t talk about it right now. Can you just go home and let me get the girls in bed? I promise we can talk about it tomorrow.”
His pause is barely a breath before he pulls me close and holds me tight. “Don’t ever forget how much I love you.” Before I can protest, he drops a kiss on my lips. “I’ll see you first thing tomorrow.” Then with another kiss that melts my knees and breaks my heart, he does as I asked and leaves.
After putting the girls to bed, I head home.
I love my apartment. As soon as I step inside, a sense of safety finds me.
It’s barely five hundred square feet, but it’s airy, and sunlight streams in through the windows in the morning.
And it’s mine. Something I’ve made for myself, by myself, without anyone’s help.
I’m surprised at how enormously important that is to me.
I make myself some turmeric milk and take it to my bedroom.
My little tropical garden of five planters in the corner seems to brighten at my presence, and I brighten in response.
A fern, a palm, a climbing money plant, a rubber plant, and one kadi patta plant that’s turned into a veritable tree.
I’ve named them after the five Pandavas from the epic Mahabharata.
Yudishthir, Bheem, Arjun, Nakul, and Sahadev.
Bheem, obviously, is the kadi patta, which explains why it has grown into a giant.
Names have power. Their power comes from their meaning.
Prem’s name means “love.” My sister Rupi’s means “beauty.” Both accurate. As for mine, Simi has no meaning in any Indian language as far as I know. I asked Rupi once why my name didn’t have a meaning. She’s the one who named me. Apparently, it sounded cute, and it just came out when she saw me.
One of Ma’s husbands once told me that traditionally it was short for Simran, and that meant “meditating upon the divine,” so there was nothing more meaningful than my name.
My sister scoffed (scoffing at our parade of stepdads was her favorite thing to do).
She said that having a name that had no meaning was like having no blueprint, no predestined purpose.
It meant I could be anyone I wanted to be.
Rupi is an artist. Even before she learned how to wield a tattoo gun, she was an artist. She doodled nonstop.
But it was her thoughts that were the real art, her own creations.
Most people, myself included, take other people’s thoughts and internalize them as our own, but my sister was always entirely nonderivative in her thinking.
Probably a result of having parented herself.
Rupi is my last thought before I fall asleep.
I wake up to my alarm and my doorbell ringing at the same time.
This makes me smile, because only one person knows that I have an alarm set for 6 a.m. every day. Then I remember my conversation with Dr. Johnson, and my smile disappears.
I love that Prem understands my tangled-up need for both space and connection. He’s respected my wish to sleep on it, and now I can bet my left kidney that he’s standing outside my door.
I push myself out of bed. I’m in my auntie-style block print nightie. Prem has never seen me like this, and I’m not ready for him to.
My phone rings.
“Hey. It’s me.”
“I know. My cell phone told me.”
I can hear his smile. “I meant at the door. The person at your door is me.”
“I know that too. I’m coming. But you have to close your eyes when you come in so I can change.”
I’m standing in front of my closed front door.
“That makes me very curious about what you’re wearing.” His voice is rough with longing, and I can hear it on my phone and outside my door at once—an echo that wraps around me like the sweetest hug.
“You’re going to be very disappointed.”
“Never.” I hear a bump and imagine him with his forehead against my door. “But I’ll close my eyes.”
I open the door only a crack. I’m hiding behind it. All he can see is a sliver of my face. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be just a minute.”
With that, I run into the bedroom and put myself together.
Brush my teeth, twist my waist-length hair into a bun, cleanse my face.
Then finish things up with some tinted moisturizer, a touch of kohl, a dab of lip gloss, and a simple but pretty white eyelet summer dress.
When I come out, I find coffee sitting on the kitchen counter.
He walks up to me and pulls me close. There are shadows under his usually bright eyes. It’s obvious he hasn’t slept well. Guilt grips me, and I squeeze tighter into him. “I’m sorry,” I whisper into the soft cotton of his shirt. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
He rests his chin on my head. “What happened yesterday? Was it Preeti being nosy? Or did John say something?”
“I don’t think Preeti was being nosy, but she definitely suspects something. And, Prem . . . well . . . I don’t think I want her to know yet.”
His body registers surprise. “I thought you were excited about making things official.”
No, he was the one excited about making things official. “Things are already official between the two of us. Aren’t they?”
“You know what I mean. We have to tell the family, Simi. I don’t want to sneak around anymore.
I love you. I want you at Mom’s Sunday lunches.
I don’t want to suffer those awful movies my family picks by myself.
” He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear.
“I feel lost at those family events without you. I feel lonely even when I’m surrounded by my family. I want to be with you all the time.”
“I want to be with you all the time too.” I pull away and pick up the coffee, hating how my hand trembles.
I hand him his cup and go to the cushions I’ve scattered on a rug in place of a couch. The sun streams in through the east-facing windows.
“How can we be together all the time if we don’t tell people? It’s a small town. I’m surprised one of the aunties or uncles hasn’t seen us somewhere and taken the news back to my family.”
It’s not that surprising, because I’ve made sure that we only meet at Preeti’s house while babysitting or here in my apartment.
The few times we’ve met anywhere else have been all the way in Nashville.
Even so, this past year I’ve felt like a bunny crossing the highway, in constant danger of getting hit.
“I work for Dr. Johnson, Prem.”
He joins me on the floor. This rug is where I lost my virginity to him. My cheeks warm at the memory.
He wraps an arm around me. I squeeze into him, but it’s not enough, so I crawl into his lap.
He strokes my hair. “What did John say?”
I fill him in on how my future hangs on the whims of Dr. Karina Rai.
“It’s just paperwork,” he says, not registering even a fraction of my panic.
“It’s not. They have to advertise the position and interview anyone who applies and provide justification for why they aren’t hiring that person.
” When I applied for the green card, I knew this was part of the process.
I just didn’t anticipate that one of my bosses would be pissed off about the other boss giving me a side gig as a nanny.
I certainly didn’t anticipate being in love with a close family member of said boss.
I get up off Prem’s lap and start pacing. “I already work for Dr. Johnson outside of the practice. When everyone finds out that I’m involved with you, the optics are going to be terrible. And Dr. Rai already hates me.”
“She does not. No one can hate you, Simi.”
Hah. If only that were true. He should have seen the loathing on the faces of our neighbors in Mumbai.
“You have to trust me. I’m not being paranoid about her dislike for me. How she feels has a direct impact on my future.” I stop in front of him. “I can’t go public with our relationship yet. I can’t risk everything I’ve worked so hard for.”
Disappointment drains the color from his face. He has eyes that have absolutely no defenses. Lifeboats in a storm. He’s destroyed by my words.
Rising up on his knees, he kneels in front of me. “I can’t live without you, Simi.”
I kneel in front of him, too, and frame his face with my hands. “I’m not breaking up with you, Prem. I can’t live without you either.” I throw a glance around my apartment. “Why can’t we go on like this? Just the two of us in our own world. It won’t be forever. Just until I have my green card.”
Suddenly his eyes light up.
“Or . . .” His hands squeeze mine. “Or we get married and you don’t need your job to get a green card. I’m a citizen. I was born here. You’ll get a green card when we get married.”
There’s so much hope on his face that for a moment my heart leaps with it too. I yank myself back to earth.
“I don’t want that to be the reason we get married. I don’t want personal gain to be something that taints the start of our marriage. Is that the kind of person you think I am?”
He tips my chin up so I’m looking directly into his eyes.
“I think you’re the kind of person who works three jobs to support herself.
I think you’re the kind of person who stays late when TASha are being extra fussy and need you, even when you’re so tired you can barely stand.
I think you’re the kind of person who could give up that job but won’t because those girls mean something to you, and because you know Preeti won’t trust anyone else.
I cannot imagine you ever taking anything from anyone without giving back tenfold. ”
“Thank you,” I whisper. What would he think if he knew how wrong he is?
“How can it taint our relationship if we were going to get married anyway?”
“Don’t you see all those things you just said, those are the reasons why I can’t marry you right now.
I can’t be dependent on you for my green card.
I have to do this on my own.” I know what it feels like to let someone else do everything for me, and I know how that ends up.
“I cannot turn our relationship into a transaction. That would destroy me.”
He cups my cheek, and there’s intense frustration in his eyes, but also pride and respect—two things I’ve hungered for all my life. “Is it so wrong to take the easy path? Does only struggle make you strong?”
“I don’t know. But loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I don’t want to turn it into a struggle.”
The way he looks at me feels like an anchor in a storm. “You’re not going to budge on this, are you?”
I hate how disappointed he is. I want us to have a relationship where we both get our way sometimes, and I know that means one of us will be disappointed sometimes.
“Can we wait a little bit? Let’s see how Dr. Rai reacts to this stage in the green card process.
I don’t want to give her more ammunition.
It’s just a matter of a few weeks. Then if all is well, we can tell your family. ”
He visibly relaxes. “So, we’re going to have to sneak around at the birthday party?” He pulls me close and pushes a kiss into the edge of my lips.
“Isn’t sneaking around at least a little fun?” Despite the worry gathered inside me, my body loosens and starts to warm.
He smiles against my lips, and it’s the most delicious feeling. “I like how much fun it is for you. Maybe you can make my sacrifices worth my while.”
“Are you bartering sacrifices for sexual favors?” I nip at his lush lower lip, which I love more than is rational.
“One hundred percent.” He stands, picks me up, and takes me to my room, and I realize that relief (and getting my way) really turns me on.