Chapter 24
“This is your house?”
Cynthia glanced at the passenger seat of her white Audi, where Naomi sat, her eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar as Cynthia maneuvered the vehicle into her parents’ curved driveway.
“My parents’ house,” she corrected. “You’ve been to my apartment before.”
“Right.” Naomi nodded as she unbuckled her seat belt. “But you know how your parents’ home always feels like your own?”
Folding her arms over the top of the steering wheel, Cynthia looked at the dwelling that was, and would always be, an extension of her father’s success.
The house was the immigrant dream personified: located in a nice, quiet neighborhood, with a large and immaculately tended lawn, the pool in the backyard shimmering and clear.
Her parents had designed and built this house to make a statement.
The Tudor-style home, complete with overlapping gables and an arched overhang above the front door, boasted that they had successfully found their place in upper-crust society, while the modern touches—the heated driveway and motion-sensor-lit walkway—confirmed that the Kumars had money to spare.
The house had always been a point of pride for Cynthia, but in her mind, it was a testament to her father’s hard work, and now more than ever, it didn’t feel like hers.
She sidestepped Naomi’s question by swinging her car door open. “C’mon, let’s go.” Her voice sounded unnaturally bright to her own ears, but Naomi didn’t comment as she followed Cynthia up the peony-lined path that her mother took full credit for even though a gardener came weekly.
Once inside, Cynthia led the way upstairs to her old bedroom.
Her mother had preserved her childhood room despite her daughter moving out more than five years ago.
Whenever Cynthia stepped back into the space—usually for access to the closet full of saris, lehengas, salwar kameezes, and other garments she had worn only once or twice before—the room, like the house, did not feel like her own.
Sipra had decorated the room in rose gold and white with fluffy-slash-furry everything and rose-patterned fabrics.
As a child, Cynthia had tossed the pink, oversized rose pillow on the floor every night with no intention of retrieving it in the morning.
And yet, every day, when she returned from school, there it was, greeting her from the center of her frilly rose gold pillows.
To this day, Cynthia abhorred roses.
Despite interior design being a large part of her portfolio now, teenage Cynthia hadn’t spent a lot of time customizing her bedroom aside from a small collage of teen heartthrob pictures torn from magazines arching over the curve of her tufted cream headboard and a ridiculous number of now-expired perfumes lining the dresser.
“Whoa…” Naomi’s eyes were even rounder than they had been on the driveway. “ This was your room?” She gingerly sat on the bed and fingered the pink duvet embroidered with roses. “I never pegged you for a girly girl.”
“I wasn’t,” Cynthia said flatly, crossing the room to the wall-length, mirrored sliding-door closet. “Unfortunately, my mom didn’t care much for my tomboy ways.”
“I was a tomboy, too!”
In the mirror, they exchanged grins, but Cynthia broke the connection by sliding the closet open with a briskness that belied the rush of pleasure spiraling through her.
The onslaught of human connection at work was still overwhelming for her, making her feel like an overfilled sponge burdened by the weight of everything it had absorbed with no clue how to wring itself dry.
With Naomi, though, the feeling was different—light, easy, and, most importantly, comfortable .
The closet was filled with neatly lined-up outfits, arranged by style, in a flurry of colors and textures.
Seeing them tugged a fragile thread in Cynthia’s chest: every ensemble told a story, sometimes taking her back to specific moments in time like spending an entire evening playing hack-and-slash video games with the boys when visiting a family friend’s home while the girls played Barbies in the corner.
Sometimes Cynthia’s heart squeezed for her younger self, who couldn’t have known what shoes she would try to fill one day, zero inkling of the impossible tasks that would one day be in front of her.
Naomi’s squeal cut through Cynthia’s trip down memory lane as she pushed past her to finger the exquisite clothes. “These are gorgeous! Are you sure you’re okay with loaning me one?”
With a careless shrug, Cynthia took a seat at the vanity table from Pottery Barn and waved a dismissive hand. “Help yourself.”
“This is so generous of you,” Naomi said, her words muffled by her head being halfway in the closet. “I’m attending a puja with Dev’s family and I can’t afford to buy something new every time we get invited somewhere.”
“It’s totally fine, but I thought Dev’s sister-in-law was lending you stuff, too?”
“Oh, she does.” Naomi paused to pull out a flashy pink salwar kameez and study its design work. “Priya is really amazing. But she also has two toddlers at home, and she works full-time at the library. I feel bad always bothering her for clothes.”
Cynthia opened a random drawer at the table and pawed through its contents as if Naomi’s ability to bond with anyone and everyone didn’t fill her with a faint glimmer of envy. She’d never been able to forge easy friendships with people; even her relationship with Naomi had started off rocky.
But she was friends with Naomi now and she had Rohit. And as Cynthia fingered the handle of a wooden hairbrush, she knew, without a doubt, she would kill for them if the situation called for it.
Naomi shot Cynthia a mischievous smile in the mirror as she held an orange outfit in front of her body. “You, on the other hand, I have no guilt about bothering.”
Cynthia rolled her eyes and joined Naomi at the closet. “Not this one,” she said, taking the outfit from her friend’s hands and returning it to the closet. “It’s too much for a puja. Are you going to a temple or someone’s house?”
Naomi’s eyebrows shot up. “Does it matter?”
Cocking her head, Cynthia rifled through the outfits with a decisiveness she usually reserved for steering clients in the right direction.
Except lately, if she was being honest with herself, she felt a little unsettled in the driver’s seat.
Cynthia still knew her shit, was committed to going over and above her clients’ expectations, but something had changed.
The urge to floor the gas pedal and crow her victory at the finish line had faded.
It was like someone had thrown her map—wrinkled and marked up from years of planning and plotting—out the window. A year ago she could’ve redrawn that map from scratch, but now?
She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“Where they’re having the event doesn’t matter, but the event itself does,” Cynthia replied, clearing her throat and returning to the task at hand.
She pushed a few outfits into Naomi’s hands.
“I mean, you wouldn’t wear something really sparkly or gaudy to the temple—or someone’s house—unless it was a big engagement party or something.
Religious-type events, unless it’s a big festival type of occasion, are a little more subdued and modest.”
Naomi dropped her gaze. “Sometimes I feel so stupid not knowing all this stuff. It’s like there are a ton of rules that everybody knows but me.”
“You’re smart. You’ll pick it up.” Cynthia grinned and elbowed her friend. “You’ll have to once you’re Mrs.Mukherjee.”
A rosy blush seeped onto Naomi’s cheeks. “Shut up.”
“Namashkar, Mrs.Mukherjee.” Cynthia pressed her palms together and bowed as she delivered the greeting that was traditional to Naomi’s and Dev’s shared Bengali heritage.
“You’re hilarious.” Naomi elbowed her back. “Seriously, though, I might need your expertise in this area when it’s time to plan what I’m going to wear to all the wedding events. All of which your presence will be mandatory, by the way.”
Her hands still pressed together, Cynthia fought the urge to hug herself, similarly to when Rohit had casually tossed an unexpected endearment her way.
Rani. He thought she was a queen.
It was ridiculous how these simple, barely perceptible moments affected her and yet she wanted to preserve them.
They spread a wonderful warmth in her chest, one that Cynthia knew, despite the limited number of relationships in her life, was precious and should be protected. And she would protect them.
She reached into the heap in Naomi’s hands and pulled out a soft green anarkali with a swirling white design embroidered down the front.
“This one.” She cringed when she heard how thick her voice sounded, and she hurriedly moved toward the dresser to hide her face.
“Try it on and I’ll find accessories to match. ”
As Cynthia rifled through the drawers where her mother—or a professional organizer—had arranged her jewelry sets in rows worthy of a display in an upscale boutique, Naomi’s sly tone gave her pause.
“The real question is…” Naomi paused for dramatic effect, “whether or not I should include a plus-one on your invite.”
A silver necklace skittered out of Cynthia’s hands to clatter back into the drawer, and from Naomi’s cackle, she knew her friend had witnessed her clumsiness. Cynthia turned to see Naomi in the green outfit with an impish smile on her face.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with a certain someone if I’m not mistaken,” Naomi added.
“It’s nothing.” The protest was hollow, barely half-hearted.
Naomi’s voice took on a singsong quality. “You liiiike him.”
Cynthia turned back to the dresser and tried to curb the silly smile pulling at her cheeks. “Fine. I like him.”
“You really like him.”
Cynthia couldn’t bear to face her friend even as the acknowledgment came easily to her lips from a place inside her that knew its truth with absolute, soul-grounding certainty. “I really like him.”