Chapter 22 #2
Swear words are so funny coming from her mouth. “Why don’t you read it to me, Sahiba,” he suggests, leaning his good shoulder against the bookcase. “In your sexy, monotone voice.”
Simran rolls her eyes and throws the book at his chest. He catches it with a grin, then reshelves it. As Simran moves on, he pauses at the other book she had so quickly shelved when he came by. “Why are you interested in—Mathematics in Cryptography?”
“School.”
Rajan might’ve accepted this normally, but there’s something about her perfectly neutral tone that has him opening the book up. Hell no.
“Code breaking?” Suddenly, he knows exactly what this is about. “Don’t tell me you’re stuck on that note in the Aces’ ledger. That was weeks ago.”
Her eyes dart away. “I still haven’t figured it out.”
“And nobody is asking you to.” He almost face-palms. This is so typical of her. “Leave it alone or they’ll—”
He stops because of footsteps behind him.
Simran’s eyes flick over his shoulder and widen.
When Rajan turns, there’s a brown guy their age approaching.
Bright eyes, scruffy jaw, one of those modern-style turbans, a gym bag slung over his shoulder.
Rajan dismissively turns back to Simran, but then she says, “Hi, Jassa,” in the most fake peppy voice he’s ever heard.
And the guy responds, “Hey, Simran.”
Wait. Wait. Rajan unwillingly glances back. Jassa is looking only at Simran.
Rajan doesn’t need math skills to add it up. This is the guy who stood her up. The one she’s into. Rajan side-eyes him as he comes closer, his dismay growing. Not only is this guy jacked, but he looks like a Vogue India model.
“I was on my way out and saw you,” the guy says. “What’s up?”
Simran twirls her kara around her wrist. “I’m actually volunteering right now. This is my mentee at Hillway House.” She nods to Rajan. “Rajan, this is Jassa Singh. A friend...from school.” Her smile is big and wavering and...dammit, she so desperately wants this to go well.
Rajan pastes a bullshit smile on his mouth. Simran owes him big-time for this. “Hey.”
Jassa nods at him. “Nice to meet you.”
The dude has said his hello. It’s time for him to get lost, but he doesn’t.
Instead, Simran strikes up a conversation with him about some school thing.
Feigning boredom, Rajan flips through the book in his hands without reading a word.
From the conversation, he gathers several things: Jassa’s involved in all kinds of committees, like her, and goes to the gurdwara, like her, and apparently plays a mean tabla, and is also really smart.
They start talking biochemistry at one point and his brain melts—Is this the kind of talk Simran actually enjoys?
Does she consider her conversations with Rajan mind-numbing in comparison?
Finally, Jassa says, “I should probably get going.”
“Where to?” Why does she care?
“My martial arts club.”
“Martial arts?” Pause. “That explains a lot.”
Jassa laughs lowly. “Does it?”
Rajan’s this close to banging his head against the bookshelf. Simran mutters, “I’ve only ever seen that stuff on TV.”
“You could come watch, if you want. Fridays are fight nights. We could have another crack at your cousin’s code, too.”
What code? Another crack at it? Rajan turns just in time to see Simran stiffen. She never told him she met up with Jassa again. And...Jassa couldn’t be talking about the Ace code. Surely Simran’s not going around giving randos information out of a gang ledger. Surely.
Simran doesn’t return Rajan’s pointed stare, which confirms she is. “Maybe. I’ll text you later.” She speaks to Rajan without looking at him. “We should go wrap up.”
Rajan snaps the book shut. “Yeah, you really should wrap this shit up.”
Jassa glances at him again, this time somewhat warily, but doesn’t comment.
He accompanies them down the stairs, even hanging around while Simran hands in the darts basket to Neetu and signs them out. It’s only at the exit doors that he nods at Rajan again. “Nice to meet you. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
Preferably when Rajan’s bludgeoning him with a baseball bat. “Maybe.”
He disappears, and Simran looks ready to escape to the parking lot. Rajan catches up. “He knows about the Ace code.”
She doesn’t deny it. “I thought he’d be able to help.”
“What if he figured it out? What if the message was creepy and illegal?”
“I would’ve come up with an explanation.”
He stares at her as they enter the parking garage. Coming from a person whose logic he once implicitly trusted, this is really something. “Dude, you’re obsessed. You have to stop before you get hurt.” He definitely needs to get the Lions their new accountant. Fast.
Simran’s lips flatten, a telltale sign of her annoyance. “Are you upset I told him or upset I met with him?”
Oh, she went there. “Both. Didn’t he stand you up?”
“He had a family emergency.”
“So? He could’ve at least answered his fucking phone.”
She unlocks her truck as they approach it. “Rajan, it’s fine. You don’t need to act like some kind of overprotective relative. I have enough of those already.”
A relative? Relative? Rajan actually stops walking for a second. Is that how she sees him now? Evidently even Simran thinks she went too far, because she stops, too. “That’s not what I meant.”
Rajan wrenches her truck door open for her. At this rate he wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to tie a rakhri on him. “Never mind. If you wanna see him again, fine, he’s clearly into you. Just...don’t bring the Lions into it, all right?”
“Okay,” she whispers. God, she really is going to see him again. Probably when he’s in a boxing ring because she’s oh so interested in martial arts..
While he’s wrestling these incredibly stupid thoughts back, he almost—almost—misses the shadow crossing her face.
“What? What’s wrong? You don’t like him anymore?”
Simran slowly buckles herself into her seat. Her truck is high enough off the ground that they’re at eye level. “How do you know he’s into me?”
“I know what people look like when they’re into someone.” And thank god Simran doesn’t.
She bites her lip. “I don’t know how to do any of this.”
Rajan’s every sense is suddenly on high alert. “Any of what?”
“Well, everything.” She swallows. “Like...what if he kisses me?”
Jesus. Christ. Rajan takes his cap off to run a hand through his hair. “What about it?” he says, moodily. Imagining Simran kissing that dickhead has him wanting to go back upstairs to the library just so he can throw himself down. “If you like him, go for it.”
“I don’t know how to kiss. I’ve never done it.” Her words are whispered. He can’t be sure, but she seems embarrassed.
Slowly, Rajan puts his cap back on. This conversation is literal torture, but it isn’t about him. It’s about her. The fact that she’s asking him for advice shows she really has no one else.
So he says, as evenly as possible, “That’s okay. It’s usually a little awkward at first.”
“I don’t want it to be awkward. I want to do this right. Can you even kiss with glasses on?”
He barks out a laugh. Yet another mental image he didn’t need. Simran, taking off her glasses to kiss someone. Someone else kissing her back. Someone else touching her.
Simran fiddles with her braid. “Never mind, I—”
Rajan takes a long, slow, deep breath. “You can kiss with glasses. But if you’re having a full make-out session, you should probably take them off.”
“I don’t know how to do that either.”
She sounds troubled by the fact. It’s kind of funny. “You can’t be perfect at everything from the start, dude. I’m sure you had to work on your singing skills, too.”
“Well, yes,” she bursts, “but with singing I practice before I perform.”
Their eyes meet. In that moment, Rajan swears everything else fades into the background.
She’s in the driver’s seat half facing him, one hand dangling from the wheel, the breeze coming into the parking garage stirring her hair loose from its braid.
Those long-lashed eyes, huge behind her glasses. Her half-parted, half-parched lips.
Rajan is sure the same thought passes through her head as through his.
He never, ever allows his brain to go there.
Never. If it starts sliding that way, he thinks about the least sexy things he can think of.
Gunshot wounds. Socks with Crocs. Nick’s goatee.
But she’s sitting there now, and it’s too late, because the thought has seeded in his mind, a possibility of kissing her with no consequences, only to help—and it’s all his brain needs to slide there all at once.
He’d put his hand under the base of her braid and gently tug her in.
He’d press his lips to hers—chastely at first, to get a feel of her, to let her get used to him.
Once her body relaxed, he’d go for it. He has a feeling she’d like that.
That she would sigh and reach for him, too.
He’d unbuckle the seat belt at her hip to pull her right to the edge of her seat and into his arms. She would say his name.
He’d kiss her until that was the only thing she could remember—
His phone buzzes in his pocket. He blinks back to reality. Simran is still gazing at him with an indecipherable expression. With Herculean effort, he steps back. “Stop worrying. You’ll figure it out.”
He didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she exhales, sticking her key in the ignition. Her hand is shaking. “Right. See you later, then.”
“Later, Sahiba,” he whispers. Closes her door gently. He remains standing there as she drives off.
Rajan knows Simran wanted him to kiss her.
It killed him not to. Problem is, it might just be practice for her, but for him, it’d be like someone put a line of coke in front of him.
He can’t have only one. He’d keep going; he would tell himself he could stop, but he wouldn’t.
The consequences wouldn’t matter. He would devour her until there was nothing left, and even then, he would be craving her for the rest of his life.
And she never asked for that—she just asked for one kiss.
He shakes his head and checks his phone for the text he got. Probably Yash, pestering him for Oreos again—
It’s not Yash. Rajan stares. This has to be some kind of cosmic joke.
The message is from that hard-ass social worker at Kat’s office. It has an attachment, and it reads: I will have to send this to your PO. I am giving you a heads-up as a courtesy. I recommend that you attend that appointment, as another breach will not do you any favours.
Rajan clicks on the attachment. It’s a photo—of himself.
Blurry, but unmistakably his black hoodie, unmistakably him at Manny Khullar’s mansion last night, unmistakably with a white line in front of him that even now, he has trouble tearing his eyes away from.
The angle is from a corner of the room. Rajan doesn’t even remember this moment or who would’ve been there to witness it.
But he knows that it happened. And now Kat will, too.