7. Sona
SONA
M y heart raced as I gathered my clutch and walked out with Mihir. He looked magnificent. From the moment I’d seen him at the bottom of the stairs, my heart had turned into a tuning fork, producing relentless vibrations. And the vibrations were not confined to my heart either. Every part of my body was drawn to him as if by an invisible force. His commanding figure, the mischievous person behind the no-nonsense fa?ade, and the way he flirted and pursued me all evening had made it more exciting than I had anticipated.
I wanted him, but was that a good idea? For one, we were socially too close to engage in casual sex. Plus, my past was already holding up red flags. He’d asked if he was my type. He was exactly my type, the type I gravitated toward, the type that eventually left me devastated.
It was the fall chill, not the memories of my past, that hit me the moment we stepped out of the house and walked toward his car. Or so I chose to believe. A gentle shiver rocked my body, and I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“Just a bit. Should have brought my winter coat.”
“The temperature drops fast after sunset,” he said, removing his blazer.
I huffed. “Cliché much?”
“Come on now, this is a gentleman’s privilege. In fact, I’ve never had a chance to do this,” he said and tenderly wrapped the blazer around my shoulders.
“I’m not buying that for a second, playboy. Sameer has told me all about you.”
“Has he now?”
As I pulled his jacket snug around me, the warmth of his body and his spicy wood fragrance enveloped me. But there was another note in that scent that I could not place, a mysterious one.
“What’s the dominant note in this cologne?” I asked as he held the car door open for me.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“There’s an unusual note in your fragrance that I can’t figure out,” I said and leaned in to smell him. “It’s…not very commonplace.”
“It’s tobacco. Dry tobacco.” His chest rumbled against my nose, and I stepped away instantly.
“I’m so sorry! I promise this isn’t a come-on,” I said, flustered by my proximity to him. “Sometimes curiosity gets the better of me.”
“No harm done,” he said as I slipped into the car. When he came around in the driver’s seat, I pushed my seat all the way back to align with his.
“I struggle with attention deficit,” I explained softly as we pulled out of the driveway. “Mostly I manage it well, but sometimes, the impulsivity just slips out.”
“I’m glad it does. That’s the source of all creativity, isn’t it?” I expected a patronizing smile to follow that statement. But he just drove with the assured composure I had come to expect in the little time I had known him. “My mother is mighty impressed with you.”
A rush of warmth coursed through my body. “She is brilliant. I had a great time chatting with her.”
“She’s a misfit for this crowd, a renegade. Did you notice the reactions when you spoke?”
“I did, and I ignored them. I’m used to it now, and aunties are still better than uncles. Aunties acknowledge that you are too smart for your own good, then claim that you’d never make a good wife and a dutiful daughter-in-law. Uncles insult your intellect and discount your opinions just because you are a woman. It used to tick me off, but now I find it amusing. A social experiment of sorts.”
“I prefer confrontation in such situations.”
I flashed back to the fierce avatar I had witnessed that afternoon. “You can afford confrontation because you’re a man…and a privileged one at that. I’ve learned to catch more flies with honey.”
“Honey doesn’t change a social mindset, only sugarcoats it. You need acid and fat to burn it all down.”
“True, but so many of us aren’t allowed to use such tactics. Our voices would never be heard if we used only acid and fat. So sometimes, we use honey. It helps build alliances instead of burning everything down.”
“Well, we disagree on this issue. Let’s leave it at that.”
“But the people who really surprise you are the ones you least expect.”
“Like Juhi?” He slipped me a quick look, then smirked at my reaction. “It’s not surprising in the least. Privileged women have always behaved that way.”
I sighed. “You’re right. Juhi’s behavior shouldn’t surprise me, but this is not an academic inquiry that I can conduct with a certain degree of dispassion. She’s Sameer’s family. It hits a little too close to home.”
“Your research intrigued me. How might you categorize your field of study?”
“I am a feminist political geographer.”
He nodded. “Hmm, interesting,” he said.
“Do you know you have a distinct Texas drawl?” I couldn’t resist mentioning. His luxurious words had melted my insides so many times that evening.
“Well, I grew up here. My parents moved to Texas when I was about three months old. Dallas is the only home I’ve known. How about you?”
“I’m a Mumbai girl, through and through.”
He smiled. “Ah, and terribly proud of it, I see.”
“Absolutely. You’d have to live there to know what it’s like.”
“Haven’t lived there, but that’s where I was born,” he said.
“So what do you do, Mihir?” I asked with utmost curiosity. “You pretend to be all intimidating, and mysterious, and brusque, but that’s not who you really are, is it?
“Am I not?” His lips lifted at the corners. “My company consults on corporate restructuring and turnarounds.”
“Huh, you say that as if it makes sense.”
“Ditto for feminist political geography.”
I laughed. “Fair enough.”
“Basically, we help companies struggling with financial management get back on their feet. Where did you get your Ph.D.?” he asked, and when I told him, he added, “That’s a good school.”
“It is. Is that a hint of condescension I detect?”
“Now, why would you think that?” His amused eyes glanced at me.
“Because you have Ivy League written all over you, Mr. Mihir Seth.”
“Is that right?”
“See?”
He returned a genuine laugh. “No, no condescension. I truly believe it is a good school.”
“But not as good as the snobby places you went to, right?”
He shook his head, and his wide smile turned my insides fuzzy. Flirting with him like this was a terrible idea, but teasing him was oh-so fun.
I tilted my head. “If I had to guess, I’d say you went to Harvard.”
“That’s hardly an impressive guess. Everyone goes to Harvard.”
“Well, I’d also say you then went to some hotshot B-school, possibly Wharton. How close am I?”
He threw me a sideways glance with a crooked grin, which I’d figured out was one of his trademark expressions.
“Ah, bullseye!” I congratulated myself with a hearty laugh.
“That laughter of yours sounds musical,” he said with a warmth that touched my soul.
My body stilled. Flirting with him was delightful. A tradition, even. Your best friend-slash-sister’s brother-in-law, or your best friend’s partner’s friend, didi tera dewar and all that. It was fun, but it was never prudent to cross over to the other side of that boundary. Although I wanted to, I so wanted to! His blazer draped over me held me in a soft embrace, engendering urgent feelings of want in my shaper shorts.
He pulled into the now-familiar parking garage of the condominium complex.
“I’ll walk you up,” he said, cutting the engine.
“That’s alright. You don’t have to.” I opened the door to step out.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you to be careful. It’s that Tara will kill me if I don’t see you to the door.”
I pulled the blazer tighter over myself as we walked to the elevator bank and rode up. My needy body kept nudging about my proximity to him, and my rational mind kept reminding me it was a bad idea.
“Would you like to come in?” I asked only out of politeness as he punched in the code on the keypad.
“No, I’ll let you rest.”
I nodded.
He sketched a clipped wave. “See you tomorrow.”
“Thank you for the ride,” I said. “I hope you didn’t have to go too far out of your way.”
I took the blazer off my shoulders and, in an unconscious move, brought it to my nose and inhaled his scent deeply. Our eyes met as I held it out for him, and we froze for several beats before he stepped up and leaned in. I felt his soft breath against my nose, the tobacco in his cologne seeping into my skin.
Maybe just a kiss. A kiss never hurt anyone. My eyes drifted to his lips under the trimmed mustache, and mine parted on instinct. My heart seemed to thunder aloud in the quiet hallway. As I drew my eyes up to his, I was greeted by an intensity that unnerved me. This was a bad idea , I reminded myself, but my body was already leaning in, ready to be devoured by his fire.
Just then, the elevator doors opened, and a young couple walked out with a sleeping toddler in the man’s arms. Mihir took a quick step back, and we exchanged polite smiles with the neighbors as they unlocked their door and disappeared inside.
This time, when he leaned in, Mihir placed a gentle kiss on my cheek, and I found the courage to bring my hand to his chest. “Goodnight, Sona. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said against my forehead.
“Goodnight.”
And that was it.
I brought my palm to my nose, and there he was, spicy, sexy, confident.
I had been down the relationship path before, and it hadn’t ended well. Actually, that was an understatement. It had almost destroyed me, my confidence, and my faith in myself. But a relationship wasn’t what I sought from Mihir. I wanted him for the same reason he’d been hitting on me all evening.
Once, during an inane conversation at Tara’s previous apartment, Sameer had joked about Mihir’s approach to relationships. Truth be told, his history of short-term attachments was the single most attractive thing about him right now. It would be exciting to have no-strings-attached fun again.
I trudged toward the guest room as images from my past flashed across my mind. There was no comparison, no overlap between my past relationships and tonight’s thrilling moments with Mihir.
The first man I had dated was controlling and abusive, and I’d been a na?ve young college girl in awe of him. But it was my second relationship that I was most ashamed of. A self-defined feminist, I’d been on my way to getting a doctorate. I’d thought I was in a relationship of love and equality until he ended it with a bizarre excuse and a guilt-free conscience. After it was over, I’d revisited our year-long association, trying to think if there were any clues I’d missed—or if it was the unexpected 180-degree turn that had left me shattered.
It wasn’t the loss of the relationship that bothered me, though. I later realized I’d never really loved Ajay, because I hadn’t even trusted him with my past. It was the ease with which I had allowed myself to be fooled by him, the ease with which he was able to leave me humiliated. It was the hurt of the reasons he gave. I’d been so easily replaceable in his life that he had moved on swiftly. When I’d seen him unexpectedly a few months ago at a grocery store in Brooklyn, he was smiling and cooing to a light- skinned toddler perched in his shopping cart. I’d slipped away before he noticed me.
Tara’s suggestion of moving to Texas was starting to sound more and more appealing.