Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
M ore matches followed…and more disappointments.
There was Harshita, a pug-nosed lawyer whom Sarita deemed “unacceptable” because of her honking, goose-like laugh.
There was Anu, slight and soft-spoken, who seemed to enjoy the company of her seven cats more than she had Arjun’s.
There was Aditi, who, when they were alone, had asked Arjun whether he was open to wearing a wolf costume in the bedroom (he was not).
There were Priya, Neha, Daksha, Arya, Meena, Sandhya, and Trisha, all of whom were perfectly nice (and some of whom even warranted a second or even third meeting) but ultimately were not a fit because of personality differences, a lack of chemistry—or, in Meena’s case, a mother just as intractable as Sarita.
And then there was Nisha Nandan.
Three months passed quickly between work and matchmaking. Arjun was away from San Francisco on most weekends—a sales pitch in Tulsa, a client presentation in Kansas City, meetings with matches all over the country—and he barely saw Dan or Erica (who were occupied with wedding planning more often than not). The one constant in his life was Nisha, whom he still saw every day at the office.
Not that they spent much time in there these days. “Let’s go out somewhere,” Arjun had said to her the day after he returned from his trip to Iowa. He’d barely done any work; instead, he’d spent his time surreptitiously examining Nisha’s expression for the slightest hint of what she’d meant when she told him that she missed him.
“Where did you have in mind?” she asked, folding down her laptop screen.
He shrugged. “It’s San Francisco. I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”
“Arjun, I have a lot of work to get through today.”
“You have work to get through every day. Come on, play hooky with me. You’re writing again, right? Surely, a jaunt around the Golden City will inspire you more than sitting in this depressing little office.”
Nisha laughed. “I can’t argue with that.”
And that was where it all began.
They toured the Presidio on a slow Monday and hiked up to Coit Tower when the Wednesday workload had sapped them of energy. They meandered down Jackson Street, and Arjun tried not to be annoyed as Nisha sampled every variety of hand cream at an expensive boutique. “Come on, live a little,” Nisha said, squirting lotion into his palm. “Smell it—it’s called ‘Exploding Sunrise.’”
Arjun rubbed in the lotion and smelled his hands. “What’s an exploding sunrise supposed to smell like? Tires on fire?” Nisha laughed and stroked his arm, and Arjun felt a jolt of electricity race up to his heart.
“What have you been working on lately?” he asked her on a perfect April Sunday, as they sat on their bench at Buena Vista Park. Though they’d toured dozens of spots in the city, this was the one that they kept returning to. The sun was setting, and the Golden Gate Bridge cast a dark, matchstick outline against the brilliant sky.
Nisha nodded. “I’ve been writing every day,” she said. “You know that, though.”
“Yeah, but anything you’ll actually let me see? Come on—how do I know you’re not just faking me out?”
She laughed. “Fine,” she said, reaching into her backpack. She drew out a composition notebook and cracked it open for Arjun to see. There were entire pages filled with her neat script, done in green pen; she flipped through the notebook and opened it to a dog-eared page. “You can read this one,” she said.
She didn’t need to ask twice.
It was a short story, only a few pages long, and Arjun read aloud: “‘The roses were in full bloom the day Jesse died. It was a memory he carried with him as he passed into the afterlife, struggling to pull it through the veil separating the living from the dead. Evelyn had always loved roses. He watched her as she kneeled beside the rosebush, tears glittering like diamonds on her cheeks. But try as he might to comfort her, Jesse could not. He felt like a fly, tap-tapping on a glass window.’”
It didn’t take long for Arjun to finish the story, and he closed the notebook when he was done. He looked up at Nisha. “It’s a ghost story,” she explained.
He shook his head. “It’s a love story,” he said.
She smiled. “I guess.”
“It’s really good, Nisha. Does this mean you’re seeing someone new?”
“Nope,” she replied. “What about you? Any more meetings on the horizon?”
He nodded. “Dhanya sent over some more biodatas yesterday. I’m aiming to have another meeting or two next weekend.”
Nisha was silent for a moment. She took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet scent of the magnolia trees just coming into bloom. “Hey, can I ask you a personal question?”
He sat up straighter. “Okay.”
“Does it ever frustrate you? That you haven’t matched with the right person yet? I mean, you’ve been at this process for months.”
He shrugged. “I know this journey is supposed to be expedient, but I’m still looking for a real connection. That just takes longer, I guess. Especially since no one is marching anyone down the aisle anymore. Which is a good thing,” he added hastily, noticing Nisha’s bemused expression. “Who knows—maybe I’m still too picky.”
Nisha grinned. “Oh, you’re definitely too picky.” She turned her body towards him, leaning one elbow on the back of the bench. “You never told me why, you know.”
“Why what?”
“Why you’re getting an arranged marriage in the first place.”
“Oh,” said Arjun. “Why does there have to be a reason? You know, in lots of places, an arranged marriage is actually the default.”
Nisha smiled. “Come on, Arjun. I like to think I know you pretty well by now. There’s a reason behind everything you do.”
He sighed. Nisha knew so much about him—but she didn’t know this. Can I tell her? he wondered. Even now, the memory was painful, an old wound that had never scarred over.
“I met Vicky Chang when I was nineteen,” he told her. “I wish we had some adorable meet-cute, but it was nothing like that. We were assigned to the same econ section, and the other kids were stoned or absent most of the time. Vicky and I hit it off, and eventually, I worked up the courage to ask her out on a real date.
“We’d only been together for six months when my dad died. I told my mom that I’d take the rest of the year off from Yale or even transfer to the University of Iowa so I could be closer to her. But it was Vicky who called her and told her that I had to come back to school, that she’d be my support system in Connecticut.”
Arjun felt his throat tighten. “That was Vicky. And she really was there for me. Sure, I had Dan and Erica, but Vicky was the one I’d go to when things got too overwhelming, when I had a funny story to tell my dad before realizing he wasn’t here anymore.
“After college, the two of us got accepted to Stanford GSB together, and I thought, This is it. Kismet. A sign from the universe that this girl and I were meant to be together forever. We stayed strong through business school, and when we graduated, the two of us found jobs in SF: me at Intellia, which eventually became a part of PSI, and her at a private equity firm in FiDi. We shared a tiny one-bedroom in SoMa, and we were so busy that we barely saw each other. But we were happy. At least, I thought we were happy.
“Dan tried to talk me out of proposing. I don’t know, maybe he saw something I didn’t, but he told me: You’re too young for this, Arjun. Give it a few years. Still, I loved Vicky. I wanted her to be my wife. And so, I bought a ring, took Vicky to Baker Beach, and got down on one knee.
“I knew something was wrong when she didn’t say ‘yes’ immediately. I don’t know how long that silence lasted, but it felt like a century. When she finally spoke, she said something that I will remember forever: ‘I love you, but I don’t want to marry you.’”
Arjun clenched his teeth and felt his jaw muscle pulse under his cheek. His throat was locking up, but Nisha was looking at him, and he needed to finish his story.
“She told me that she’d been having doubts for a while,” he continued. “‘People say falling in love is like being struck by lightning,’ she said. She didn’t know if people actually felt like that or just sang about it—but, on the off chance that that feeling existed, she owed it to herself to find it. And she said that she’d never found that with me.”
The breeze picked up around them, stirring the leaves above. It was a low, soft sound, barely perceptible, but Arjun felt as though the very earth was quaking underneath him. “How could I not have seen it?” he asked Nisha. “We were together for five years. I thought she loved me. I certainly loved her. But it wasn’t enough. And, ever since Vicky, it’s never been enough.”
Nisha nodded slowly. She looked at him with those dazzling eyes, green as springtime. “That sounds really painful,” she said. “But can I be honest? Like, brutally honest?”
He nodded.
“Vicky was only twenty-five, Arjun. You can’t even rent a car when you’re twenty-five. Are you really going to let her get in the way of your happiness?”
“And what does that even look like? My happiness?”
Nisha leaned closer. Arjun could feel the intensity of her gaze, could almost taste the way the light filtered through the trees and dappled her lips. “I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was soft as velvet.
Arjun knew what he wanted to do then. He and Nisha had never talked about their kiss—but, in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to kiss her again.
But that was his heart talking. And where had that ever gotten him?
He leaned in and kissed Nisha on the cheek. He felt his lips linger. “I should go,” he whispered, his lips a millimeter from her perfect ear.
He stood and walked down the hill alone.