46. Queenie
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
QUEENIE
RECOMMENDED LISTENING ‘DO DIN KE BAAD’ BY TAARUK RAINA
Dear Miss Madhavan,
We are pleased to inform that, after a thorough internal review based on your past performance and your current situation, the Thorndon University Board of Admissions has decided to transfer your scholarship to the course of your choosing. Congratulations and welcome to the Class of …
The words blur as I read the email. For the third time.
I wipe the dust off my Blackberry screen and read it again. I’d applied for a transfer, the morning after my rooftop date with Noah. My application was succinct, passionate, and logical. I didn’t really know what I was expecting when I sent it off.
But it wasn’t acceptance.
Or maybe it was.
I shake my head, my stomach trembles. It must be low blood sugar; I didn’t have a full lunch because I was on double shift. Covering for Lisa, the waitress who took my shift when I left to arrange our romantic date, three days ago.
My stomach clenches again.
That damned date!
If I’d never arranged it, if I’d never thought to want something so extravagant, I would be fine right now. I’d be elated, jubilant even, at the admissions board transferring my ride to the major I really want. If I’d never arranged it, I’d have gone on just fine with my life. Having earth-shaking, multiple-orgasms-inducing sex with a lovely, kind, Australian cricket player .
If I’d never arranged it, I would be okay when the lovely, Australian cricket player went back to his real life once summer was over. I would go back to mine too.
Now, I am the opposite of okay.
I’m in love. For the first time in my life. And I’m terrified. Petrified, because he is absolutely not who I imagined my love to be.
For one, he lives on the other side of the world. For another, he is a soon-to-be world-famous athlete. Those men have egos the size of Brinks’ trucks and portfolios to match. Not to mention swathes of groupies who throw their panties at them, hoping for a locker room quickie.
In case I need another reason, he is a legitimately wealthy man in his own right without all the shiny cricket money.
He is just so different from me. So focused and determined and patient. He doesn’t get depressed when he has a bad innings or even loses a match or his mom . He just picks himself and dusts himself off, to do better, different next time.
He’s never allowed his failures to define him. Only the fact he tries.
Lastly, and this is what petrifies me, needing him is the easiest thing in the world, because he’s never let me down. Not once.
But we aren’t true equals. Partners. We cannot be. Not with the financial, social, and all the other kinds of obvious disparity.
We cannot be because I am still stuck in an office room watching a door gently being shut. It’s not a constant sadness in my life, anymore. It’s not the only thing I think about now I have Noah and the boys and my new life to occupy me.
But…it still exists.
It’s the reason I’m terrified of this fluttery butterfly of an emotion rising up with its own wings.
How can I be in love when I am not even myself anymore? How can it be real and lasting and have any meaning when so much of my life has no meaning beyond the fractured present?
I don’t have the time to be in love. It is inconvenient, unpleasant, and it requires too much.
I want to bang my head against the bathroom mirror of Domenico’s where Noah asked me to meet him for dinner.
I received the admissions email just as I walked into the restaurant, so I ducked into the ladies’ room to check it out. And now here I am. A trembling, shaking mess of a woman.
I’ve kept a lid on my feelings and sensibilities for the last few days. Pretended everything was fine. Normal. Great. Cheered Noah at the last match and gone to sleep beside him.
Because those things are safe. Routine.
They’re part of my summer romance. And I enjoy them to the hilt.
This… love is not a summer feeling. It’s too huge, too indescribable to be seasonal. Fake. This love demands sacrifices. It hungers for choices.
Things like being accountable, being decisive, trusting him, trusting myself…
I don’t know how to do so anymore.
Tears well in my eyes and I knuckle them away. I shake off my melancholic mood and walk out of the bathroom before Noah buzzes me again.
He’s in another of his suits. This time, the color’s a mild blue and he’s left off the tie. He looks exactly what he is. Tall, strong, dependable.
And he deserves a woman who is all of those things and more.
Things I’m not.
His PGSOFS smile splits his face into a radiant sun when he sees me. “There you fucking are!”
Noah grabs me and kisses the lipstick off my lips, bending me over the waist with his enthusiasm. We get a few claps and whistles when he lets me up. I hide my face in his chest. He smells of the sun and summer and Davidoff Cool Water.
He smells like he’s mine.
My heart knocks hard against my chest.
“You look smashing, but you took heaps too long.” He seats me opposite him.
I’m in a white summer dress which swishes at my calves, with a small slit at the knee. It’s a new purchase because I wasn’t sure the empire bustline suited my boobs but Noah’s eyes gleam appreciatively at how the neckline pushes them up.
“All good things take time.” I primly placing my small purse next to me on the table. My phone’s next to it, with the email that dictates the course of my future.
“They do, don’t they?” He murmurs enigmatically.
“Sir, ma’am.” A pleasant wait staff smiles down at us. “Would you like a cocktail while you decide what to order for the night?”
I shake my head. “No cocktails for us.”
“Actually, bring us the Verve Clicquot 1998, would you, mate?” Noah counters.
I frown. “You’re not drinking, are you?”
“I’m not.” He shakes his head. “I’m just going to watch you drink it all. And if you can’t.” His grin is deviance itself. “Then I’ll just pour it into the bathtub when we take a bath together.”
“What’s gotten into you?” I am mystified at his mood. It’s a little manic, a little festive.
Noah picks up my limp hand and kisses the tips. “Maybe I just like watching you in candlelight. It’s flattering on you.”
I chuckle. “Okay, did you take a bouncer to the head? You’re being weird.” I slide my hand away from him.
My heart hammers unsteadily. Because when he talks in his sinfully drawling voice, I want to believe him. I want to trust him. I want to make him watch me in candlelight and tell him I lo?—
“I did not take a bouncer to my head, woman. I’m just trying to be romantic.” Noah sighs, dramatically.
“Like the other night?”
He shrugs. “Maybe.”
“Any special reason?” My heart hammers faster. Is he about to--?
He picks up my hands again and plays with them. Twines them around his strong, cricket-battered fingers. “I want to celebrate something amazing with you.” Noah smiles. Soft and dreamy. I’ve never seen it before. It’s boyish. Adorable. “This afternoon, I got a call from the assistant manager of the Melbourne Marvels. They want to offer me a league contract for next season.”
My jaw drops. My eyes widen. “ What?! ”
He nods. “Yeah. I can’t believe it myself. But there’s a contract in my inbox, right now. So…”
“Oh my god, Noah!” I squeeze his fingers back, excited and elated and just tremendously happy for him. “That’s amazing. Congratulations!”
“Thank you.” He smiles wider. “I still can’t kind of believe of it. But…it’s real.”
“Of course, it’s real. It’s so real. And you deserve it. You earned it, Noah. You really did.” I smile as wide as him. My happiness in the news, my pride in him shines out of me too. “I’m so proud of you. So proud. I can’t…”
“And I was thinking,” Noah says slowly. Then he pauses because the wait staff shows up with the champagne. His knee jiggles impatiently under the table as the server uncorks the bottle and pours it for me, before sticking the bottle in an ice bucket.
I raise my glass in a toast to this magnificent, amazing person. “To Noah Dumaine. The next cricket superstar. Watch out, world,” I tip my flute to his plain water glass. “Here he comes.”
Noah clinks glasses. “Thank you, love.”
My heart jerks. Does he mean to call me love or is it just an endearment? I slide my eyes away from him, hoping he doesn’t notice the sudden jitteriness.
I sip the fizzy drink. It hits my system like starlight. I feel like I’m up among the clouds. Floating. Falling…
“So, as I was saying?—”
“Yes, what were you saying, Melbourne Marvels’ newest opener?” I grin cheekily.
He runs a sheepish hand through his hair. “It’s not finalized. And I still have to play the Triskelion Cup and maybe get selected for the men’s squad, too?—”
“Which of course you are.” I raise my glass to him again. “You’re going to be unstoppable next year, Dumaine. It’s just the beginning for you.” This I believe down to my bones.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Yes? Tell me.” I bump knees with him. “Are they offering you a swanky penthouse with the deal? Or do you have to buy your own?”
“I was thinking…” Noah gulps down his water. “I wanted to—” He plays with the water glass. “I was hoping you’d come with me too. To Melbourne.”
I shake my head. I couldn’t have heard him right. “You…what?” I ask him stupidly.
“This is not a short-term fake arrangement for me anymore,” he says simply. “I want to be with you. For the long term. For go…for good. Will you come with me?” His obsidian eyes blaze in certainty, in heat.
“I—” I don’t know how to answer him. I don’t know what to think. How can I just…?
“Just think about it, will you? And I’ve been looking at universities in Melbourne. RMIT’s got an excellent science program. I am sure they’ll be thrilled to have you.”
“RMIT?”
Noah nods eagerly. “Yeah, I went on their website and checked out the professors and the curriculum. It’s no Thorndon, of course, but it’s good. And—” he reaches out and grips my hand tightly. His grip is tight and possessive.
Hot and cold chills travel through me at the touch. At his words.
“It’ll be a fresh start for you. Away from—” He waves his hand around the restaurant. “Everything,” he finishes softly.
“A fresh start,” I echo.
He nods again, eagerly. “Exactly. You said it yourself. You don’t need to repeat classes and stuff, right? So, you can just do your last semester in Melbourne, instead of here. And I could even talk to your parents for you?—”
“Talk to my pare—Noah!” I actually hold my hand up.
My breaths fight to reach my lungs. Which are squeezed tight from pressure and suffocation.
Noah stops talking. Gives me a bewildered look. “Okay, maybe you can talk to your parents. About coming to Melbourne with me if you want to.” He gives me a blinding smile. “Which I really hope you do. I hope with all my heart you do, Devika.”
I blink because he says my real name. My actual name. With the correct inflection.
“I need…” I finish off the champagne. “I need a minute.”
“Of course, take all the time you need. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot or anything.”
“Then what was that?” I hurl at him.
Noah gives me a blinkered look. “That was me offering you an alternative, Queenie. You don’t mean to tell me you want to be a waitress at a diner forever.”
I feel like shit because I yelled at the man I love while he was making plans with me. Grand, romantic plans
“There’s nothing wrong with being a waitress at a diner,” I snap defensively.
I also pour myself more champagne. It goes straight to my head. Makes it woozy. Trembly. I am reconciling having a future, the academic future I want and now he’s dropping casual bombs about moving to the other end of the world for it? —
“There is nothing wrong with it. I just asked if it’s what you want,” he says quietly.
I don’t know what I want. I’m scared to want things. Wanting you is devastating me. I can’t want anything anymore, without losing my mind.
I straighten my shoulders. Sip the wine more cautiously. It burns down my throat. I give him a thin smile. “Can we just enjoy your amazing, good news? Celebrate it?”
“Will you at least promise to think about it? About being with me?” He persists.
I feel hemmed in. Claustrophobic. On one side is Noah and the promise of a future with him. However uncertain it is. On the other side is the ruined wreckage of my own past. And I am in the middle, teetering in the cratered present.
Love is not an inconvenience anymore. It’s an iron ball, dragging me down for the third time.
“I—”
Someone bumps against my chair, dislodging me. I shoot them an irritated look. “Can you just watch where you’re going?”
“I’m sorry--” The offender glances down at me. Smiles softly at me. Sickeningly.
The world stops spinning. Gravity has no meaning. I am arrested, transfixed… as I see the man who tore through my world. He ended it and left me to deal with the debris.
“Miss Madhavan,” the man who assaulted my roommate begins. “My apologies.”