Chapter Ten #2
Nimita shook her head, eyes soft. “Well, she is lucky that you care for her so deeply,” she finally said.
“That’s what I tell her.” He chuckled.
They had ordered room service and donned the hotel robes and talked while they waited for food. Their conversation wandered about, each of them seeming to absorb every detail the other offered, yet still wanting more.
“Who was the last person you were in love with?” he asked.
“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been in love.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“I’ve had a few relationships. But no one that I felt I needed to invite into the mess that is my family.” She shrugged. “How about you?”
“I guess I was actually in love with Simmy.” He shrugged. “Or at least what I thought was love.”
“What was she like?” she asked. A little green monster started growing inside her.
“Jealous?” He had the nerve to smirk. And look good doing it.
“Curious,” she countered, hoping she sounded deadpan.
“I thought I loved her. I mean I was still in med school.” He shrugged.
“What happened?”
“She thought I was too overprotective of Malini. She was afraid that I would do that to her as well.”
“Would you?” Nimita asked. “Be overprotective of the woman you loved?” She opened her hands out and sat up. “Judgment-free zone.”
“I would want to keep the woman I loved safe. But I would never want her to feel smothered.” He sounded tentative, then more determined when he said, “Malini was sick. That last relapse… It was terrifying. The treatment leaves her immunocompromised, and she needed looking after. She still does, even in remission. Anything could happen. I have expectations of myself, and one of them is ensuring Malini’s safety and happiness.
I guess Simmy didn’t want to be caught up in all that. ”
His tone made it clear that that topic was done now. She nodded. “Okay. Tell me something weird about you. That no one knows,” she challenged him.
Roshan shook his head at her. “No.”
“No?” She mock frowned. “You owe me.”
“For what?” She’d clearly distracted him from the more difficult topic of his sister.
“For yelling at me fifteen years ago.”
He inhaled and cocked his head at her, beautiful lips in a pout. “Fine. But the guys don’t know about this.”
She leaned in, excitement building in her belly. It felt so intimate, so personal to learn someone else’s secrets. She didn’t think too much about why she wanted this intimacy with Dave.
He narrowed his eyes and hesitated, and Nimita was afraid for a moment that he would change his mind. “Every Sunday, when the paper comes, it’s not the comics I like.” He paused, clearly embarrassed. “The first thing I read about is…” he shook his head at her “…is the weddings.”
“The weddings.” She grinned. “Like who got married. How they proposed?”
He nodded, a bright flush coloring his face.
“That’s…” She studied him a second. “That’s really sweet.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“I kind of thought it was pathetic.”
“Not at all.” She grinned.
“Something about reading all those love stories. Makes me feel hopeful.” He shrugged. “If not for me, then at least for humanity. Your turn. Tell me a secret,” he said.
She waved him off. “You don’t want to hear my secrets. Why don’t I tell you instead about the time I went cliff diving in Greece?”
“You did that?” He was clearly impressed.
She wished he wasn’t. She forced a laugh. Somehow, she didn’t want Roshan to be impressed by where she had been, the things she had done. Not everything she did was commendable. “I did.”
“What is that look?” he asked, making eye contact.
“What?”
“Every so often…you look… I don’t know…sad.” He spoke genuinely.
She studied his handsome features. It wasn’t his looks that had caught her attention, though. It was the way he was looking at her. Like he cared. Like he was concerned.
She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I went off and had all these adventures…but… I missed home. I would come back from time to time.” She had found herself homesick more often than not.
“My sister and I would fight. And I would leave again.” She and Reena could not seem to find common ground.
“It’s like I didn’t know how to be home, and if I’m honest, the travel was…
hollow almost from the get-go.” She shook head.
“I know, poor little girl off having the experiences of a lifetime.” She rolled her eyes.
“I know I ran off. I know my sister was holding down the fort. I just didn’t know how to make it right.
So I would take whatever flights were open to me.
Work a long-haul to Africa or Europe and take vacation time exploring. ”
“And now you have to go home,” he said softly.
She nodded. “I want to go home. But I also don’t. I don’t know what I could say or do to make it right.”
“It helps to be a bit…vulnerable.”
“Oh, is that all?” She rolled her eyes.
Silence floated between them for a moment.
“Fine.” She exhaled as if he had been silently nagging her. “You want to hear a secret of mine?”
“Always.” He grinned.
Her heart thudded in her chest. “I wasn’t fired.”
His jaw dropped.
“I quit.” She held her breath and waited for him to call her out, to say she was ridiculous for not having a job—or whatever it was that the responsible sibling thought and said.
“I want to go home and make things right. But I can’t give myself an out—like a job to go to.
If I’m going to do the right thing, I have to ensure that I am present—regardless of what happens. ”
He smiled at her, pride on his face. “You’re ready to do whatever it takes to make it right.”
She nodded, her eyes filled with tears. She was.
* * *
Roshan sat with Nimita on the beach, a soft blanket beneath them. Nimita’s tears had subsided, and calm had descended. She was on her knees, leaning over the edge of the blanket, aimlessly looking for shells as they waited for the sun to set.
“Oh!” Nimita gasped and crawled over to him. She held out a small shell and handed it to him. “Moonrise shell. Very rare. Though this one is chipped.”
He covered them both with a blanket, pulling her close, and then inspected the shell. It was scalloped, green-gray with a hint of orange. “This is beautiful.” He wrapped his leg around hers under the blankets.
“Keep it,” she said.
“You sure?”
She kissed him. “Yes. They’re associated with hope and strength.”
He tucked the shell into their beach bag and pulled her close to watch the sunset.
They were still, in quiet reverence as the sun set, the sky a mix of purples and oranges and pinks.
The sky went from orange to purple to the deep blue of twilight before darkness took over.
The beach cleared out as a chill set in, and darkness fell.
Roshan was alone with Nimita, the only sound the ocean.
Their picnic dinner sat, finished and packed up, between them, one bottle of wine empty, another poured into their glasses.
“You weren’t kidding,” he said into her ear before kissing her neck.
She tilted her head to give him more access. “I don’t joke about sunsets on the beach.”
He continued to kiss her, pulling her to him.
She turned to him. “Sex on the beach can get…messy.” She gave him a playful smile.
“We only have one more day,” he whispered in her ear, not caring in that moment how desperate he sounded. He needed her.
She grinned as she rolled over and straddled him.
He pulled her close and drew his hands over the bare skin at her waist, under her cover-up. “Messy is a problem for later.”
She took his mouth with hers, and he was lost.
A few hours passed in a haze of pleasure.
It was properly dark now, and Nimita was curled up next to him under the blanket as they gazed at the night sky.
A crescent moon waxing larger hung suspended in the deep navy blue night sky.
The stars were bright pinpricks of light.
The ocean continued to rise and fall, the sound of the crashing waves their soundtrack.
Roshan was in awe of the night sky. “This is amazing,” he said softly. “You didn’t mention how beautiful the ocean and sky are at night. There’s almost no light pollution.”
“Surprise,” she said softly. She started pointing out constellations with the confidence of someone who knew what they are looking at. Roshan was completely intrigued. He soon joined her, and they were both laughing as they competed to point out constellations first.
“You know, I have always been fascinated by the stars.” He spoke softly. “When I was little, I wanted a telescope more than anything. I used to lie in the grassy area near a pond in my neighborhood and just stare at the night sky.”
“Did Vishal and Karan go with you?”
“Sometimes. But Karan would complain he was hungry and Vishal would get antsy fifteen minutes in. So I used to go alone. When I was eight, my dad said he would get me a real telescope on my fifteenth birthday, if I worked hard and learned all about the stars.” He paused, remembering his passion for astronomy, the sheer vastness of the galaxy, of the distinct possibility that life existed…
elsewhere, and the beauty in that. “So I did.”
“You know, I remember how advanced you were in physics class,” she said. “It seemed funny to me that you knew so much about black holes and red shift but were behind me in chemistry.”
He snorted. “Not that behind.”
“You needed me to tutor you for how long again?”
They laughed, always competitive.
“So do you still have the telescope?” she asked after a while.