Chapter 1
First kisses, while important, get too much credit; it’s second kisses that are the real magic. First kisses get all the glory, the dizzying delight of asking: Will they or won’t they?
Last night, Simran and Leo answered that question.
Under a sky streaked purple by the fading sun, no noise except for the slow glide of cars and murmurs of people walking home, what started as a hug good night slipped into something soft and clinging.
His lips dragged over her cheek so slowly; she pressed her fingertips into his waist as if it could speed up time.
Kissing him felt like she’d breached the surface of some deep blue body of water after having held her breath for so, so long.
It replays in Simran’s mind now as she lets herself into the studio she rents weekly.
Shafts of morning sunlight stream into the airy space where, in an hour, she’ll hold a recital for her preschool Bharatnatyam-Bollywood fusion dance class.
She imagines the teasing exclamations of “Finally!” from their friends when they find out about her and Leo.
It had been months, maybe even years, of this playful push and pull between them and of her insisting to anyone who pointed it out that they were just friends.
Though, in the back of her mind, she knew that people who actually were just friends rarely needed to say it out loud.
Then, on an otherwise unmemorable day, a handful of weeks ago, everything had shifted.
She’d been reading on a park bench, waiting for Leo to finish work before they went to a movie.
When he walked up to her, his eyes had lingered over her shoulders, bare in a strapless dress, and the jolt down her spine made her realize she’d worn the dress hoping he’d do just that.
From that moment on, being the object of Leo Bridgers’s attention had felt like standing under the midday sun in August: scorching, direct, on the crest of unbearable.
Last night, she’d practically floated up to her apartment after she and Leo had parted ways, but this morning, she’s back to longing.
The time between a first kiss and a second one is a liminal space.
It happened once, but will it happen again?
First kisses are about acknowledging. Second kisses are about choosing.
She walks around, getting the space ready: connecting her phone into the sound system and testing it, laying out the colorful dupattas her students will tie over their clothes, and marking a makeshift stage with painter’s tape.
She brings out folding chairs from the storage closet and arranges them into rows, pausing when she sees a familiar pair of broad shoulders in the window.
Her stomach swoops as the door opens and he enters the studio.
Leo.
“Hey,” he says, striding in on long legs. His wavy brown hair is messy, and he rakes a hand through it to push it off his forehead, but like always, a thick shock flops forward.
“Hi,” she says. “Going to work?”
“Well, home first,” he says, walking over and helping her with the chairs, taking two at a time.
“I think this pushes the limits of business casual.” His threadbare Raptors T-shirt clings to the defined curves of his upper arms. He plays pickup basketball with his friends at a court nearby at some ungodly hour and always pops in to say hi to her on his way home.
But today, there’s a new energy between them, so height-ened it’s almost tangible.
It reminds her of listening to the radio in the car as a kid, hoping, hoping, hoping that the next song would be her favorite.
Leo holds up his palm and points to it. She squints to read the words “Happy Birthday” scrawled smudgily in Sharpie and lets out a huff, her exasperation clearly false because she can’t stop smiling; it’s his way of getting creative with her rule that her friends are allowed to wish her only once.
She mouths “thank you” and he winks back.
“Sorry I can’t come to the recital,” Leo says, walking to the storage closet and grabbing chairs to help her.
“That’s okay. Did you win your game?” she asks. He’s on the opposite end of the same row, and they work their way in, closer and closer with each chair.
He gives her that satisfied, almost smug smile she knew was coming.
“Damn straight we won.” She laughs softly—for someone so easygoing, Leo has a competitive streak a mile wide.
“Might have been the best game I’ve ever played.
I woke up this morning energized and full of life and feeling kind of invincible. ”
They’re only a few feet apart now. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?
” she asks. “Come on now, Sim,” he says, as if it were obvious.
They set up the last two chairs and turn to each other, Simran a little more slowly.
“It’s because I kissed you last night.” Warmth courses through her and she looks away, like his face is too bright.
“So much for playing hard to get,” she tells him. They’re now only a few inches apart, and he’s looking down at her, his gaze unwavering.
He scoffs. “I don’t play hard to get. I am not hard to get, not for you.”
She feels heat rising to her cheeks. Leo wears his heart on his sleeve in a way that baffles—and terrifies—her. It’s pretty much the worst place she can imagine keeping your heart, right out in the open. No, thank you. But he wears it so well.
He slips a hand behind her neck, pulling her lips to his. She tilts her head up and goes on her toes, surprising both of them with her fervency, pressing back against him. The other thing about second kisses is that they can very quickly turn into third and fourth ones, until she’s lost count.
A noise emerges from the back of her throat, unguarded and blissful, and she pulls away. “Forget I just did that,” she says, covering her face with her hand.
“Not a chance.” He tugs her hand away and pulls her back towards him.
After a few minutes, they stop reluctantly. Her students—and their parents—will start trickling in any moment now and he has to go to work. But he doesn’t let go of her and she doesn’t move away.
“You know, you cost me a hundred bucks,” she tells him.
“How’s that?” he says.
“Tia bet me a hundred dollars that you and I would …” She trails off. “Clearly, I lost.”
“Tell Tia I’ll give her the money.” Brushing her lips with his, he says, “This may be the first bet I’m happy to lose.” He pulls away to look at her. “It’s not like a hundred bucks per kiss, is it? Because that’s going to get expensive.”
Simran pushes him away, rolling her eyes. “Okay, I think it’s time for you to get out of here.”
He walks backwards as he calls, “Worth every dollar!”
She watches him leave and then glimpses her radiant reflection in the wall of mirrors, biting down on her lip.
It’s the kind of perfect linking chain of moments that, in a movie, might cue the credits to roll, happily ever after achieved.
But this is life, not a movie, and today—her least favorite day, her birthday—will keep going.
The one bad thing about starting it with Leo is that it will be hard to top.
There’s a different kind of delight in the twenty pint-size tornados zooming around as they get ready for their big performance.
Despite the tall ceiling and row of windows, noise laps over the studio like a high tide, making it feel packed, thanks to the added presence of parents, relatives, and friends.
Simran puts her thumb and middle finger in her mouth and whistles, the way her father taught her many summers ago, and though it’s not nearly as loud as he used to do it, the flurry of activity halts instantaneously.
“Good morning, class,” she says in a clear, carrying voice.
The reply comes in something less enunciated but more endearing than in unison: “Good morning, Miss Simran!”
“Who knows what day it is?” she asks, beaming as every child raises their hands, some so eager that they go on tiptoes.
From the back of the studio, her best friend and roommate, Olivia, raises her hand too, grinning.
Another thought she’d pushed away, along with her birthday: Liv’s reaction to the news that her brother and Simran kissed.
Liv has loved to be deeply unpredictable since the day they met, paired as roommates freshman year of college, so her reply could be anything from a shriek to a shrug.
Simran turns back to her students and says, “Why don’t you all tell me? ”
“Recital day!” they yell back. She springs into action, asking the parents to line their kids up at the front and grab a seat for the big show.
Mothers fuss over unkempt braids and fathers tie shoelaces and Simran makes herself look away.
Her heart clamps up anyway, an ache she will never quite get rid of, but she retrieves her smile.
She was a kid once, just like them, happy and sticky and surrounded by love.
She crouches down to adjust Vee Miller’s dupatta, nodding along with the child’s excited but incoherent story—after class, this kid is either getting a baby brother or a pet buffalo.
Moving to the middle of the studio, parents behind her, kids facing her, Simran says, “It’s time for namaskaram.
” Twenty sets of elbows go up, thumbs, index fingers, and middle fingers joining with the remaining two spread as she leads the kids in the traditional demonstration of respect that opens every class.
They do the simple motions together, a couple of the kids toppling over when they have to squat down to touch the floor.
But she’s taught them well because without prompting, they remember her motto—“You’re the only one who can pick yourself back up”—barely missing a beat.
(Okay, maybe missing a couple of beats.) She hits play on her phone and the opening notes of the medley blare on the sound system.