Chapter 36
Simran thinks her cousin might be eligible for sainthood as they pull into the driveway of Iyer House early the next morning. After a quick nap, she drove all night back to New Jersey, just so Simran could see Leo as soon as possible.
Kavitha switches off the gas and turns to look at Simran. “Really? You were so impatient in Toronto, I thought you’d be out of the car and sprinting to Leo the second we turned onto the street.”
Simran reaches for her weekender in the back seat and pulls out the tube she stuffed in there before leaving Toronto. “I have something to give you.”
Kavitha opens it and her eyes light up. “The DDLJ poster signed by Shah Rukh Khan! But this is yours.”
“I asked Liv, she agreed. I’m sure Leo will too.” Simran smiles. “Your first housewarming gift for your New York City life, from your Toronto crew.”
The mood dims. “Maybe we can share custody,” Kavitha says. “Six months in each of our places. That way, we’ll have to see each other to make the exchange.”
“We’ll see each other more than that,” Simran says, though she has no way to guarantee it.
After a moment of quiet, Kavitha shoves her out of the car.
Simran can hear her aunt gardening out back and when she turns from the foyer to the drawing room, she spies Ashok peripa in his chair.
He points to the back of the house. “Study,” he tells her.
She gives her uncle a smile and rushes through the labyrinth of hallways at the back of the house.
She takes a moment, stopping in the doorway of the study, looking in. Leo, his back to her, stands in front of her parents’ portraits. The people she loves the most, past and present, in the vicinity of each other. It makes her feel whole and hopeful.
“Hi, Leo.”
He whips around, mouth open in surprise. “You’re here.”
“Kavitha drove all night,” she says, stepping into the room. “I had to see you.”
The sight of his smile suffuses deep relief into her bones. He came back to Iyer House for the same reason.
“I have to tell you something. I should have told you before you left. I should never have let you leave,” she says, walking closer with each word, till they meet in the center of the room. “I love you, Leo.”
Leo’s eye crinkles come out, like a map of her favorite places, and she curls her hand into his shirt in anticipation of him saying it back.
“Yeah, your aunt told me that already.”
Her jaw drops. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve been scooped,” he says, the flecks of gold in his eyes practically dancing.
She gently shoves him but he pulls her fully into his arms. She can feel the rumble of laughter in his chest as he holds her close.
“Even if you’d never said it and Veena aunty hadn’t told me, I would know.
You show you love me all the time, even when you don’t think you are.
Especially when you don’t think you are.
” She rolls her eyes and he laughs. “Like whenever you roll your eyes at me. When you stood up for my truly awful chai. When you got jealous of the aunties hitting on me. As if I ever even saw anyone else. I love you too, Simran. I always have.”
He slips his hand behind her neck and pulls her to him for a lingering, delicate kiss.
She likes how he sees her, her flaws as mysteries to unlock but not solve.
She likes that he can tell her actions are how she feels, not her words.
She likes that he’s been devoted to her all these years because she plans to be devoted to him in equal measure from now on.
But something insistent keeps tugging at her mind.
“Leo …” She glances over his shoulder at her parents’ portraits. “I haven’t really told you much about my parents, have I?” she asks.
“You look like your mother,” he says as they turn to face the photos.
Everything swirling inside her calms to a halt.
Simran sees the similarity, especially now that she is closer to the age her mother never moved past, a thought that feels like tiny pinpricks all over her arms and legs.
But there’s also happiness at hearing her face has grown into her mother’s. “And I act like her too.”
“Stubborn?” She laughs because he’s not incorrect. Her mother was quite hardheaded and just as bighearted.
“Determined,” she amends. He chuckles, a sound she wants to wrap around her like a blanket.
He pokes her cheek. “This dimple is all your dad, though.”
“I want to tell you about them, Leo. Like how my mother would make this wheezing noise that sounded like a rusty gate whenever she laughed too hard. Or that my father arranged his shirts in color order without realizing it. That I hope when they went, it was quick and peaceful and they didn’t hurt too much.
That I hope, wherever they are, they know I’m okay.
” She takes his hand in hers. “They would have loved you, right from the start, no schemes needed, because they would have seen how happy you make me. I’m going to tell you everything about them.
The big stuff and the small. But to do that—I have to remember it.
And I need help with that. So much of them is here, tied to this house and the rest of my family.
” She swallows and gives him the love he gives right back, with complete openness.
“I want to move to New York. With Kavitha. Will you come with me?”
He doesn’t answer but that vertical furrow between his eyebrows appears. Her finger worries at the cuticle of her thumb. “I don’t know …” he says finally.
“I know, that’s a lot to ask. I don’t expect … I’m really happy you got the job, Leo.” At his questioning glance, she says, “Liv told me.”
“She’s like a publicist I never asked for.
” He chuckles. “They want me in the Toronto office full-time. No remote work,” he says.
Leo looks down at their joined hands and runs his thumb over the arc of her nail.
“If I moved, I’d have to quit. Not to mention that Liv’s going to miss having you around. ”
She knows how excited he is about this job.
She places one hand on his chest, hearing what he has not said outright: Leo likes his life in Toronto.
The thought that they might have to be apart just as they’ve figured it all out sits heavy within her.
But Leo hasn’t said no yet. He’s still considering if this is something he needs to do for her, for them.
She cups his cheek. “You don’t want to leave,” she says. “So don’t.”
His eyes are tight with emotion. “I don’t want to be away from you either. And I understand why you have to move here.”
She takes his hand and brings it to her lips. “You need to stay in Toronto. You want to stay in Toronto. I know you’d move for me but you don’t have to,” she tells him. “You don’t ever have to do anything for me. I just want you.”
He pulls her in close, kissing her softly, but she presses back against him.
She doesn’t want him to feel like this is a compromise; it is a choice they’re making with each other.
They’ll be apart now for a better future together soon.
When they pull away, she says, “At least we know it’s not difficult to travel between Toronto and New York. ”
“Maybe we learn something from this,” Leo muses. “Less schemes and hijinks and running through airports and more just … talking to each other.”
“On the phone, even,” she says.
He tilts his head, eyes luminous. “Wow. You really are in love with me.”
She laughs. Burying herself in his arms, she memorizes the shape they make together, something to carry her through the days they’ll only have pieces of it apart. She misses him already, even though he’s right next to her.
Leo pulls away the slightest inch to look at her. “It’s like the Tamil phrase for ‘goodbye.’ Poitu varen.”
Simran nods, her nose brushing against his. “We’ll leave now—”
“And we’ll come back.”
“To each other? Always.”