Chapter Forty
forty
Lanie
■ 12-FEB ■ Trans-Continental Airways ■ Flight: 7446 ■
JFK-John F. Kennedy Int’l Airport ? LHR-London, Heathrow
Seat Assignment: 29K
Lanie groaned as she watched Jonah’s sister, Charity, flip a penny into her pint. The coin settled gently at the bottom of her glass and the bubbles that fizzed around it mirrored the many dozens roiling in her belly.
Marissa cheered and Shanice, who had been twirling on her bar stool, paused for a moment to appreciate Charity’s precision.
“You know what that means, Big Cuz!” Les, the only man allowed on Gemma’s hen night pub crawl, gave her a big smile.
Lanie crooked a finger in his general direction—he was shifting slightly in her line of sight as she tried to pinpoint him—then beckoned him closer. He leaned in. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that glass of water you’ve had for every pint of ale we’ve drunk all night,” she whispered.
He smiled conspiratorially. “Babes, I have to get back to Peckham on the night bus. If you think I’m gonna wake up in some dank skip tomorrow morning messing about with you lot, you’ve got another think coming.” He sniffed.
Charity snorted. “A bunch of reprobates, innit?”
“Innit.” He nodded, nursing his seltzer unapologetically.
“C’mon then,” Gemma commanded. “Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!”
Her crowd of fellow reprobates chimed in behind her.
Gemma was wearing a slinky, sleeveless rainbow-sequin ASOS dress with a bachelorette’s requisite glittery plastic tiara and a giant pink “Bride-to-be” sash. With her normally curly mane flat-ironed bone straight, spider-leg eyelashes and full-face makeup, she looked like an escapee from the pageant circuit.
“So, I’m the only one that thinks it’s unfair Les is cheating?” Lanie complained, deliberately stalling. She wasn’t sure what number drink she was on. She only knew she hadn’t imbibed like this since...damn, since she used to do this bullshit with these same women in her twenties.
But they were decidedly not in their twenties anymore. Lanie groaned, thinking of tomorrow’s hangover.
“Hey, I’m not drinking either,” Fatou offered, as she nursed her virgin mojito.
Lanie waved her off tipsily, nearly spilling her lager. “You don’t count. You’re Muslim now.”
“I was always Muslim,” Fatou deadpanned. “What I am now is pregnant.”
For one second, there was an impossible stillness among their entire group as they all digested this information. Then through the ambient tavern noises—random conversations, televisions, glasses clinking—came Gemma’s eerie squeal at a pitch that probably woke up neighborhood dogs blocks away.
“Oh my God! What? Are you joking? What are you telling me, Fatoumata Gyamerah-Soleimani? What are you telling me, right now?”
Lanie squeezed her eyes closed, bracing herself as the whole world tilted for a moment at the intense noise. Then the rest of the women joined in, screaming and jostling to be closer to Fatou. Someone held Lanie’s shoulders steady as people hooted and hollered and moved around her, rattling their side of the solid oak bar so much that the bartender and other patrons turned to look their way.
“Alright, settle.” Fatou had to finally raise her voice as assorted women hugged her and Gemma hung from her neck, plying her with enthusiastic but sloppy kisses. “Settle.” It was like she was trying to corral a pen of excited puppies.
“When are you due?”
“What did Arash say?”
“How long have you guys been trying?”
“Do you know what it is yet?”
“Do you have a name picked out yet?”
The questions came nonstop. And in her normal, terminally practical Fatou way, she addressed each of them methodically as Gemma looked on, brightly grinning like a high beam.
“I’m stepping out for a cig. You look piqued, love, join me.” When Charity spoke directly into her ear, Lanie finally identified the hands that had been holding her steady.
Lanie slid off the bar stool clumsily, leaving the pint and retrieving her cell phone before following Charity out.
In the grip of winter, the nighttime temperatures could be quite brisk, but after the crush of bodies inside, the chill was a relief. Lanie was happy to be outside in the wide-open space and fresh air. She took a deep lungful of it. Next to her, Charity rooted through her stylish snakeskin clutch until she retrieved a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“I thought you quit, like, ten years ago?”
Charity popped the cigarette into the corner of her mouth then nodded, cupping her flame to protect it from a breeze that wafted by. “Hmm, yeah.” She took a deep drag. “Try being trapped inside with your mum, dad, little brother and nan for two years and only having the back garden to retreat to. See if you don’t pick up a few bad habits.”
Lanie made a sympathetic noise, opening her cell phone to check her messages. “At least you had a back garden...and that loft extension.” Lanie referred to the tricked-out mother-in-law suite Charity lived in above her parents’ house. She rushed to open a text that she’d missed earlier from Ridley.
“Innit?” Charity concurred. “I’d have killed my mum if Nan and I hadn’t agreed to swap spaces.”
RIDLEY:
You dancing on any bars yet?
He accompanied that message with a gif from the movie Coyote Ugly of sexy female bartenders line-dancing on top of a bar.
RIDLEY:
If so, send pics.
Lanie giggled, checking the time. It was midnight here, only a little after seven in New York.
LANIE:
That doesn’t start until drink #9. I have 3 more to go.
Is that true? Lanie didn’t know. She also didn’t know what pub they were at. She turned to read the awning. The White Hart. She groaned. That meant they had two more pubs before they wrapped things up for the night at the Kings Head in Tooting.
Lanie’s heart thumped when she saw those wonderful three dots bobbing. She waited.
RIDLEY:
What are you waiting for then? I need pics by the time I get back to my hotel. Chug-a-lug.
Lanie snorted at the eggplant emoji that followed.
“That your fella, then?” Charity asked, gesturing to the phone with her cigarette, her perfectly plucked eyebrows bobbing suggestively. “Gem and the girls said he was well fit.”
Damn Gemma. The thought both pleased and bothered her. But Lanie grinned, giving Charity a little shrug. False modesty didn’t really become her but neither did bragging. And Charity seemed to get it, smiling back.
“Bless.” Charity took another deep drag on her cigarette, before breathing it out in a long, exaggerated sigh. She wrapped her arms across her chest, hugging herself as she gazed out at the traffic going up and down Balham High Road.
Lanie didn’t think she had ever seen this morose side of Charity before. As Jonah’s older sister by two years, they hadn’t really hung out much as kids. Particularly since, previously, Charity really didn’t care for Gemma, which Lanie used to take as a personal affront. But even as they became adults, Charity was mostly in and out with her own university and work friends.
“You’re not getting any younger, Charitha.” Lanie startled as Charity spoke, breaking up an extended period of contemplative silence and doing an uncanny impression of her mother, Syreeta. “Charitha, you and Jonah were in primary school by the time I was your age. Charitha, aren’t you embarrassed your younger brother is getting married before you? Think of your poor aachchi, won’t you, Charitha, huh?”
Lanie smiled, finding only mild humor in that. She also sensed the pressure from society at large to pair off. She was already thirty-one, it reminded her, and unmarried with eggs that were shriveling in her womb.
“I always want to say, ‘Do you really think I’d willingly subject myself to all the hoops Jonah and Gem are jumping through right now?’ Do you even know how hard it can be to pee in a saree?”
“Apparently, I’m about to find out,” Lanie said.
“Yes, you will.”
“Look, Charity. About the sarees...” Lanie glanced around. Their group was tucked away in a back corner inside and no one walking up or down the sidewalk was even remotely interested in their conversation.
Charity frowned, throwing her cigarette to the asphalt and stubbing it out with the toe of her shoe. “What about them?”
“Is it...” Lanie didn’t know how to put this.
“Is it what?”
“Is it culturally appor—” the possibly six previous drinks made Lanie stumble verbally “—appropriative for us to be wearing them?”
Regardless of what Gemma said, Lanie still felt deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of donning elements of Jonah and Charity’s culture as some form of cosplay on one of Gemma’s little whims.
Charity seemed to consider it before shaking her head. “No, I don’t think so. I mean I understand what you’re asking, thank you, but for one, seeing Jonah wearing a traditional Kandyan wedding outfit will make our grandmother very happy and—”
“What are you two on about out here?” Gemma stepped out of the pub, into the street, shivering immediately. “Come back inside. It’s freezing out.”
Charity waved a hand with a newly lit cigarette in between her fingers in explanation. “When I’m finished. Mel’s just keeping us company.”
Lanie held her breath hoping Gemma would go back inside before Charity continued. But she hung by the door, holding it open. Waiting . Exerting silent pressure like she always did.
“Anyway,” Charity went on, obliviously. “I think they’ve been doing a wonderful job of being really respectful, consulting with my mum and nan. And Gem actually looks terrific in her Osariya .”
Gemma came out of the bar more fully, her arms tightly crossed over her breasts. “Were you talking about the sarees again?” She bristled in irritation. “How did I know you weren’t going to let it go? How do I always know?”
Lanie felt too drunk to argue. “I just needed to ask, Gem. I think I have that right since I have to wear one too. And it feels, I don’t know, disrespectful to me.”
“Disrespectful?” Gemma huffed. “Well, I think it’s bloody disrespectful that you’re out here quizzing my sister-in-law at my party!”
“Wait, Gem,” Lanie started defensively.
She knew all that liquor wasn’t helping her comprehension skills, but one look over at Charity’s dumbfounded face told her Charity was lost too.
“Hang on,” Charity concurred, stubbing out the next cigarette on the sidewalk, then holding up a hand.
“I told you we discussed it already, didn’t I? I said we had it under control.” Gemma’s voice began to rise, ignoring Charity’s objections. “We sat down with Nishan and Syreeta and talked about how we had the utmost respect for Sri Lankan culture and wanted to find the most appropriate way to incorporate it into our own ceremony.”
“And I asked you that, Gem. You could have just said that.”
“You never trust me anyway,” Gemma wailed. “Never the benefit of the doubt. Somewhere along the way, you’ve assumed that I’m just some mug who can’t even be relied on to make a simple decision.”
Lanie could barely speak, stammering before she could form a coherent rebuttal. “Just wait! Gem, I’ve never ever said anything like that!”
“You don’t have to say it! I know you think it.” Gemma was shouting now and Lanie could see eyes inside the pub nearest the door starting to turn toward the window. “You bloody-well fly all the way to England once a month to check up on us, don’t you? What more is there to say? Silly ole Gem, can’t even manage to get her own nan to hospital without her younger American cousin coming to hold her hand.”
“Tell me how you really feel, Gem,” Lanie muttered.
“I’ve tried! And I’ve tried! And I’ve tried! But you won’t stop and listen, will you? You can’t help yourself! You have to show off how smart you are. How capable you are.”
“Stop what? What did I do?”
“I can’t even get married in peace.”
“Hold up, no one forced you to include me. You asked me to help you!”
Lanie was genuinely confused. She distinctly remembered telling Gem and Jonah that she didn’t want to have anything to do with their stupid wedding and getting roped into every aspect of it anyway.
...Or something like that. Right?
“ Help , not take over ! We couldn’t manage a single decision on our own! There you were in every single element!”
“You couldn’t manage a single decision, period. You refused to make any! If I didn’t force you, you’d still be picking out cake flavors. And I let you choose things!”
“Let me? Do you hear yourself? It’s my wedding! I should’ve chosen everything . But you were always there, weren’t you? Butting in—”
“Oh, stop it! Not everything could wait until you or Jonah ‘felt’ like dealing with it, Gemma!” Lanie yelled. “Believe it or not, getting married in five months doesn’t involve wishes or magic or vibes . Someone has to do real work and make actual decisions.”
“And here’s you, always happy to be the one to do it, right?”
“Sorry, someone has to,” Lanie said smugly. Even through her alcohol haze and patina of shame, Lanie could still feel the anger brewing within her.
Gemma propped her hands on her hips. “You are so self-righteous. You think that everything would fall apart if you weren’t here to pick it up.”
Lanie didn’t dignify that with a response. She didn’t think it, she knew it. She cocked her head to the side, her own arms akimbo now. The fact that their grandmother had been well on her way to developing cirrhosis and had dropped over forty pounds in a few months without raising any alarms said volumes on its own.
Gemma knew what Lanie was thinking by the look on her face and huffed, stomping a foot in indignation.
She’s a child , Lanie thought uncharitably.
“You. Don’t. Live. Here, Melanie!” Gemma screeched suddenly.
“I know that,” Lanie whispered, retracting at that harsh reminder, pulling inward like a tortoise under attack.
But they did need her there. She didn’t have to say it.
“I don’t know how you imagined you and Jonah could’ve ever been a thing,” Gemma said then, changing tack, grasping for any way to wound. And she might as well have pulled a blade out from behind her back because this had gone from a pretty mild argument for them into a bloody street fight in fourteen words. “You live ten thousand miles away.”
Lanie rolled her eyes, shielding herself with condescension. “It’s more like thirty-five hundred, Gem.”
“See!” Gemma turned to Charity, who stared blankly, clearly wishing to be kept out of it.
“What? It’s not my fault your relationship to letters and numbers is tenuous at the best of times. Jonah must really be wearing those love goggles thinking you can manage at a uni.”
As soon as she said it, Lanie wished she could take it back. Desperately wanted to take it back.
Gemma gasped. Charity turned away, squeezing her eyes tightly shut as if wishing to be anywhere but there. And Les, who had just managed to make it out onto the street, skidded to a stop, eyes going platter-sized.
“I—I’m sorry, Gem.”
“At least someone wants me,” Gemma said with a sudden, preternatural calm, even though Lanie could almost see the steam rising from her ears and actual tears forming in her eyes. “Someone loves me. You’re kidding yourself if you think anything will ever happen with that doctor. That he really even cares about you. You? You’re a doormat. Like your mother.” Gemma laughed cruelly, ignoring the tear streaks that were running down her face, cutting through her makeup.
“At least my mother stuck around.”
“Alright! That’s enough,” Les said sternly. “Both of you!”
“You just can’t help yourself. It’s Jonah all over again, isn’t it?” Gemma shrugged off Les’s staying hand on her shoulder. “Chasing after a man who’s way out of your league and lives an ocean away so you can blame the distance for why it doesn’t work out. You’re so concerned with us here? Pay attention to your own life. I know you’re a mess back in New York, Mel. I’ve always known. Nan and Auntie Ryan talk. But you always come here acting perfect, come here acting like...like your shit doesn’t stink and you’re so smart! Why aren’t you back in school, Mel? Huh? ’Cos the truth is you’re pathetic. And no one wants you...not even your uni.” Her cousin gave her a pitying look. “Still, you can’t see it, can you? But aren’t you meant to be the clever one of us?”
Lanie bit back a physical reaction to her cousin’s words, fighting to remain steady, look unaffected.
Gemma turned to reenter the pub accompanied by her brother, who shot Lanie an irritated glance. Lanie shrugged . I’m not the one who started this.
Charity put a hand on Lanie’s arm. “She didn’t mean it.”
“No, she did,” Lanie said matter-of-factly, pretending that every one of Gemma’s shots hadn’t hit their targets, dead center.
Because Lanie knew, in her heart of hearts, Gem wasn’t wrong...about any of it.
Lanie hung around the periphery of the bachelorette party like a black cloud as it got later into the night. No one said it but she knew she was no longer wanted— but I organized the party —so instead of leaving, she floated through the rest of the night on a wave of shots and pints following behind the group until they arrived at the last pub. Replaying what happened in her head, over and over.
“Last orders, ladies!” a waitress came to inform them. A couple of the women in their group jeered drunkenly in response.
By then, Lanie’s hand was holding her head, which felt leaden weighing her shoulders down, inches above the bar top. She sat with her elbows on the polished wood surface and scrolled her Instagram and TikTok feeds. Every few minutes, a new photo or video appeared, posted by Gemma or Fatou or one of the other women whose accounts Lanie had unfortunately decided to follow earlier that evening. In a few posts, Lanie even glimpsed herself, a thigh here, an arm there, the back of her head in many. To judge from those feeds, their argument had not even been a blip in Gemma’s night.
Why am I still here? She was a glutton for punishment.
It was the only explanation that made sense. She was sulking, wallowing. Why was she even taking Gemma’s words to heart? It wasn’t like Gemma had been some romantic paragon. Yes, she’d had twice, maybe thrice, the relationship experience Lanie had, but quantity did not equate with quality. In fact, until whatever voodoo or deal with the devil she and Jonah had crafted to fall in love with each other, Gemma had had awful taste. A litany of “dodgy girls and wastemen”—by her own admission.
Gemma had just gotten lucky.
Merely recognizing the potential in Jonah that Lanie had always seen was no feat. And letting herself fall in love with a good guy she’d never previously given the time of day didn’t make Gemma some love genius.
Why shouldn’t Lanie have that kind of dumb luck too? They were cousins, weren’t they?
Lanie closed Instagram and opened her photo gallery. There were tons of pictures of her and Ridley. In London, at Regent’s Canal in Hackney, picnicking on Hampstead Heath overlooking the city, and at the Sky Garden with Tower Bridge in the background. She scrolled to pictures of them in New York, on the Staten Island Ferry with the Statue of Liberty behind them. Roaming around the Top of the Rock in Rockefeller Center, of him bending over the railing to check out the “Panorama” scale model of New York City at the Queens Museum.
She smiled to herself. She’d never encountered a man like Ridley before. He was always checking in with her, taking care of her. He liked and respected her and made that fact obvious. She’d never felt she had to do anything special to earn his attention, and with his quiet reassurance, he never asked her to be anyone but herself.
He was someone who genuinely enjoyed her company, and went out of his way to show her that. She’d never been with a man who appreciated her more, or adored her body more, who reveled in all her curves and whose appetite for her was more about his enjoyment of her than what she did for him . Who showed her in so many ways that her pleasure was his pleasure and vice versa. And the things he did to her, the way he made her feel, in and out of bed...
Lanie shuddered now thinking of their last encounter, after the Botanical Gardens visit, when they’d holed up in a hotel in TriBeCa for the rest of the weekend. Even the way he looked at her made her feel cherished in a way no one had ever before.
That couldn’t be faked.
His feelings for her had to be real...because hers were as well.
I love him.
Lanie let out a little gasping hiccup at the realization. The feeling, while itself wasn’t new, was newly understood, newly articulated.
She loved him in a way that was infinitely different and vaster than her abiding feelings for Jonah. Like the difference between the light cast by a lamp and that of the sun. She felt a beauty in the way they were together, how happy he made her feel inside. She was suddenly filled to the brim with the immensity of it.
Fuck Gemma and her pronouncements. Forget Mom’s prophecies too; she can’t see beyond the tragedies of her own love life. And, well, maybe Narcisa just has it wrong. She’s never seen us together. She doesn’t know how it is. Fuck limerence.
Yes, fuck limerence. Impulsively, Lanie pulled up his number and dialed. It was only nine p.m. in New York and this revelation couldn’t wait.
She frowned, slightly daunted when she went straight to his voicemail.
He had to still be up. Lanie shook the setback off, taking a swig from the lonely shot of Irish whiskey that sat abandoned in a row of glasses she’d had the bartender set up earlier.
She was going to do what she had never done with Jonah. She would tell Ridley how she felt so that there could be no confusion. She would not make the mistake of losing him because she was too much of a coward to ever tell him the truth.
She took a deep breath at the tone.
“Ridley? Hey, it’s me...”