Chapter 9 #3
“So. This is a lot,” she says as she looks down at him.
They’ve known each other for so long, but with this feathering heat between them, she’s learning to read him all over again: the twitch at the right side of his mouth when he’s amused, that brown- and gold-flecked gaze, always curious and moving, the hands that she can now hold, like a furnace around her always-freezing ones.
Is he learning her too? Does he know that when she says it’s a lot, she means for her as much as for him—maybe more?
“Kavitha is really set on this, but I want to warn you: My aunt is … She’s not going to be won over. Not the way you’re imagining.”
“Of all the things I’m imagining,” he says, eyes still closed, “your aunt is not one of them.”
“Starting tomorrow, you and I are going to have to pretend to be complete strangers.” Leo Bridgers, always slightly oriented to Simran like she’s his cardinal north, outright ignoring her—she can’t picture it.
He opens his eyes to look at her. “I think it’ll be more difficult for you than for me.”
She angles her chin, giving him a circumspect look. “I have a lifetime of practice lying to Veena perima. I’ll do fine.”
His thumb gently presses into the hollow under her left hip bone, and she teeters on the brink of a shiver. “If you say so.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I don’t always see things the way you see them.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just that we’re very different people.”
“Obviously—” She’s mid-sentence when he pulls her forward and kisses her, hand buried in her hair.
“What were you saying?” Leo murmurs.
She can’t remember. Her eyes flick down to his thumb as it brushes over her bottom lip.
She wants that thumb in her mouth, she wants those lips back on hers, she wants things she shouldn’t want while half kneeling on her childhood friend’s bed.
Completing the eye roll she knows he was waiting for, she pulls away and leaves the room.
Kavitha is waiting on the back steps of the Chopras’ house and they head through the backyard gate to Iyer House together.
“Kavi.” When her cousin looks at her, Simran says, “Can we be okay now?”
“It’s not that easy,” Kavitha says. There’s no trace of the excited, all-in-this-together girl she was upstairs. “Let’s see how this whole thing goes. You’re a flight risk.”
“It’s not like that,” Simran says. “I just needed … space.”
“So much space that you had to cross a national border, apparently,” Kavitha says.
“Just because you’ve never taken space doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t either,” Simran says. She’s annoyed that her cousin isn’t seeing it from her side at all.
Kavitha gapes at her. “Like I had the chance! My sister was prancing around the Northeast collecting every degree known to man, and then you ran away—what, was I supposed to make it three for three in leaving my mother and father by themselves?”
“It’s not your responsibility to manage them,” Simran says.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I get why you wouldn’t understand, but that’s not how family works. Family is doing things you don’t want to do, even when they’re not convenient for you,” Kavitha replies. “I can barely believe you’re here for the wedding.”
“But I am here. So are we just going to fight the whole time?” Simran asks.
The Kavitha she knew could never hold a grudge too long, unlike Simran, who could stew in her displeasure for years.
Back when they were kids, one of the neighborhood kids had pushed Kavitha off the swings on the last day of summer break.
Simran had refused to talk to him for the entire school year.
“We’re not even fighting now,” Kavitha says calmly. “But just because you’re here doesn’t mean I can forget all the times you stayed away.”
Simran is about to reply, but the back door opens and Veena perima’s stout form appears.
“Eh! Where have you two been, roaming around in the middle of the night?” It’s nine p.m. The sun set an hour ago.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you go missing for half of the party today!
Faffing around during your sister’s engagement party instead of helping. Shameless. Come inside!” she barks.
Kavi marches out in front of her and Simran follows. This is where Kavitha is wrong; Simran doesn’t expect her cousin to forget or forgive what she did—or didn’t do—five years ago. Simran hasn’t forgiven herself for it either.
That first year she moved to Toronto was better than the years she spent in Iyer House, but barely.
Every single time Kavitha and Simran texted or the rare occasions they talked, it would end in the same stalemate, a painful and dwindling holding pattern: Simran begging Kavitha to come to Toronto, Kavitha begging Simran to come back to Iyer House.
Then, five years ago, they stopped talking altogether. Not without reason.
Simran had been at work and all through the day, her phone kept flashing with calls from Veena perima that she declined.
It was nearing the anniversary of her parents’ death, and Simran knew her aunt would try that as an excuse to get her to return to Iyer House.
Simran couldn’t do it. Toronto had allowed her to breathe for the first time in years.
She couldn’t go back. Later that evening, as she was walking home, her phone rang again. But this time, it was Kavitha calling.
Simran stopped short on the sidewalk, the rain like percussion against her umbrella. Just to have the chance to talk to her cousin, she picked up the call.
“Kavi, I’m glad you called, but I’m not—”
“Dad had a heart attack this morning.” Her voice was flat, but Simran could hear the tremor in it. “They took him in for a triple bypass procedure. He just got out. He’s going to be okay. Thought you’d want to know.”
Simran dropped her umbrella and was soaked within seconds. That’s why her aunt had called so many times. “Oh god. I—”
“I have to go. Bye.” And then her cousin hung up.
Simran walked the rest of the way home in a daze, knowing she should book a ticket and go down to see her uncle.
She was too familiar with the ways a brush with mortality—whether realized or not—stained the edges of your every thought, infiltrated every space and weighed it down.
But the longer she waited, the less she could convince herself to go back.
One week turned into a month, which turned into five years.
She still has so much further to go with her cousin. But she’s here and at least now Kavitha can’t ignore her.
Let the games begin.