Sunshine and Spice

Chapter 11

chapter 11

Waterfront Park always delivered. The peaceful lake shimmered cobalt blue, trees lining the pathways stood full and tall, and the sun’s rays had chased away the morning chill a couple of hours ago. It was unfiltered, surreal. Spirit-lifting.

Unfortunately, with yesterday’s events playing a loop in her mind, Naomi might as well have been sitting in a landfill. What had she been thinking? At the time, snuggling into Dev’s side, playing the part of doting girlfriend, had been the easiest option, a no-brainer like sliding on a pair of fluffy slippers after a grueling day.

The aftermath, though, had sent her crashing through the trees. Once Jasminder had left the store, “Honey Boo Boo” had turned to Naomi with horror etched across his face. The triumph of a successful charade had dissipated quickly, and Naomi, at a loss for how to explain the new, rocky terrain she had stumbled them into, had done the most cowardly thing possible.

She’d fled. Nick’s crew had finished packing up for the day, providing Naomi with the perfect excuse to dash out the door like a world record was on the line.

But it was a new day, and with the sun toasting her legs and the rush of sugar from a sprinkled donut fading away, she knew it was time to face the music. With a resolute set of her shoulders, Naomi pulled out her phone and hit the call button, worrying her bottom lip as it rang.

“Well, look who it is.”

Naomi relaxed back on the weathered park bench, allowing the familiar baritone on the other end of the line to soothe some of her tension away. “Hi, Dad.”

“Happy Saturday,” Eric Kelly replied. “Where are you today, sweetheart?”

Every Saturday, Naomi chose a park or nature sanctuary to unwind and decompress after a long workweek. The outdoors called to her, a trait she had inherited from her stepfather. When he had visited last month, she’d dragged him to Kasugai Gardens, laughing as the retired plumber lumbered through the peaceful Japanese-inspired gardens, in cargo pants and work boots, no less.

He was a simple guy, her stepfather. And her best pal.

“I’m at Waterfront Park.” Naomi closed her eyes and smiled at the sun. “It’s lovely.”

“It’s cold and gray here,” Eric informed her, his voice cheery and unbothered. Born and raised in the same rural small town he was living in now, he was a man who was used to cloudy, cool skies for eight months of the year. He didn’t mind living in a place with over five burger joints to choose from but no Thai or Vietnamese options. Or that the extent of “Culture Day” at school involved maybe a handful of students whose Ukrainian or German grandparents sent traditional dishes, while everyone else claimed to be Canadian and that was that.

Naomi’s mother had refused to allow her to participate in Culture Days, much to her teachers’ disappointment.

Still, despite their respective preferences for where they called home, Eric was Naomi’s rock.

“What have you been up to?” Naomi asked.

“Everything is fine, just fine. The Campbells down the street had a basement flood emergency yesterday, so I spent most of the day there.”

“Dad, you’re supposed to be retired.”

“Oh, come now. They’re my neighbors,” he chuckled. “Besides, I would never pass up the opportunity to—what do you kids say these days?—‘flex’ my skills.”

At her stepdad’s admission, Naomi forced a smile even though he couldn’t see her. It was probably best that he was the neighborhood’s unofficial on-call plumber: her mother was not a homebody. Supriya “Sue” Kelly lived for adventures and new experiences, which included signing up for whatever classes she could find, planning lengthy soul-searching trips, and changing jobs every few years.

“Hang on, sweetheart,” Eric said. “I think your mom is home from her aerial class and the garage door is stuck again. I’ll be right back.”

Naomi immediately moved her phone several inches away from her ear as, predictably, her stepdad dropped his phone on the nearest hard surface with a clatter. As she listened to rustling and her parents’ muted voices, a large family gathering at a nearby picnic table caught her eye. Adults chatted while unpacking coolers and bags of Tupperware while children scrambled about in what looked like a hysteria-induced game of tag. A balding grandfather sat at the rapidly filling picnic table, holding a baby and smiling at the kids shrieking around him.

It was a familiar scene for Waterfront Park and, at face value, served to enhance its picturesque views: the family was happy, comfortable, and so…together. A familiar ache hollowed Naomi’s chest.

“Naomi?” Sue chirped into the phone. As usual, she didn’t wait for a greeting before launching into a detailed description of her escapades. “You’ll never guess what I learned today…”

Usually, Naomi absorbed her mother’s tales with the same ease with which she accepted the odd, chilly breeze during her Saturday outings, but today she couldn’t stop sneaking glances at the picnicking family, their noisiness momentarily stifled by a shared meal.

“There I was, dangling in midair, ribbon riding straight—”

“How come you never taught me to cook Bengali food?”

“—up my…What?” Sue paused. In the span of that single-syllable word, Sue’s voice plummeted from cheery to wary. “Why?”

Naomi didn’t miss the undertone in Sue’s tone, the warning that rusted floodgates were better left untouched. Her mother never talked about her upbringing. When she had fled her family—a newborn on one arm, a flight-risk boyfriend who had taken her virginity on the other—she hadn’t just escaped that chapter of her life; she’d thrown it in the shredder and set fire to the scraps.

It was a topic Naomi had learned to avoid at an early age, an easy feat in her homogenous community where the pressure to fit in with her white classmates was encouraged by her mother as well. As if embracing the present was a foolproof way of replacing the past.

“Did your parents not teach you how to cook traditional foods?” Naomi pressed. “Do you have a favorite Bengali dish? Do they?”

“Naomi, what is this about?” Sue’s impatience reminded Naomi of the day she’d returned home from elementary school, crying, because a classmate had used a red marker to draw a dot on Naomi’s forehead without her consent. Her mother had rolled her eyes, irritated that her eight-year-old daughter would shed tears over such a trivial matter that could be easily washed away with soap and a rough cloth.

Naomi hesitated, torn between suds and water or lamenting over the abrasions the scrubbing had left behind. Why don’t I know my grandparents? Why can’t we talk about them? Would they want to meet me? There were too many questions lodged at the back of Naomi’s throat, and after so many years of letting sleeping dogs lie, she had no idea where to start.

“Did something happen in Kelowna? Did someone say something to you?” her mother demanded.

Naomi straightened. She had known that her grandparents lived in Nanaimo, a city several hours away, but it had never occurred to her that any indirect connections to them could be made. Her social circle in Kelowna was small and, until recently, hadn’t consisted of any members of the South Asian community.

“No, of course not,” Naomi said. “I—”

“You don’t mind what anyone says to you,” Sue said with the kind of passion she normally reserved for realigning her chakras or showing up the perky blonde at spin class. “They can be so nosy and judgmental.” Her voice rose a pitch. “Why you choose to live so close to them, I’ll never understand.”

Whether Sue was referring to other South Asians or Naomi’s grandparents, Naomi wasn’t sure, but at the shivery timbre in her mother’s voice, she instinctively sought to pacify her. “No one said anything,” she said. “I was just curious.” Naomi’s eyes looked to the family gathering again. The grandfather was now cuddling the sleeping baby while listening to what a young girl, maybe five or six, was telling him. They shared the same dark hair and serious expression. “Sometimes I wonder what they’re like.” And how she’d fit with them. Whether they’d like her and if she’d see a piece of herself in them.

“Count yourself lucky you don’t,” Sue said. “They are the least open-minded people I’ve ever met. They’d expect you to do everything their way, no matter how backward or old-fashioned.”

Naomi thought of Gia. “And if I didn’t live up to their expectations?” she asked softly.

“Then they would never accept you,” Sue snorted. “They never accepted me. I got out rather than live a lifetime of never-ending criticism and disappointment.”

Naomi wanted to argue, to express her disbelief that something as simple as personal choice and living one’s life could escalate to abandonment and grudges that tore a family apart. But then she thought of Dev. Maybe Gia wouldn’t sever ties with disobedient children, but given Dev’s adherence to her wishes, Naomi imagined the alternative would be very bad.

Which was why her decision to position herself as Dev’s fake girlfriend was ludicrous. She had everything Gia would disapprove of: a rebellious mother, scandal, and an estranged family.

As if sensing her discomfort, Sue’s voice softened. “Trust me, honey. I raised you so you would never have to know the sting of rejection.”

But she did, didn’t she? Her father had left her, her grandparents wanted nothing to do with her, and since getting mixed up in Gia’s Bazaar, she had felt it in a hundred different ways.

For a moment, she thought her mother might say more about where she came from, about the people Naomi longed to know. They rarely talked about Sue’s past, but when they did, Naomi gathered all the tidbits she could, tucking them away to examine, turn over, and preserve. Instead, Sue fell back on the same habit that had saved her from countless difficult situations. She retreated.

“I need to squeeze in a shower before book club. I love you, Naomi.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

Dev brushed his hands against the sides of his joggers and glanced around his new living quarters. Not terrible. The original furniture, while outdated, was still in good condition and, aside from a few dishes and new bedsheets, Dev would require very few additions to make this place livable for the next few months. Citing the bazaar’s remodel as his excuse, Dev already felt a thousand times better about his decision to move into the apartment above the store, despite his mother’s protests and guilt-tripping sighs of woe.

“But who will double-check that all the doors are locked after I’ve fallen asleep on the couch? Who will run to the store to grab me yogurt when I’m in the middle of cooking?” she’d asked.

“I lock the doors from an app on my phone and you can still call me for cooking emergencies,” he’d replied, but when he’d looked up from packing his meager belongings, there had been real trepidation in Gia’s eyes.

Even before his father’s passing, he’d always been the one taking care of his mother in small, often insignificant, ways. His older brother had idolized their father, while his younger brother had been too flaky. It was Dev who had noticed the work Gia put in appeasing a workaholic husband, the loneliness she felt within the walls of her own home. So he’d sat with her through marathon Bollywood sessions, fumbled his way through the Indian grocery store when she’d put in a long day at the bazaar. Helped clean up after dinner, even though his father scoffed because it was “woman’s work.”

Gia wasn’t one to say thank you, but Dev was always the first person his mother turned to for help.

He needed some space, even if said space was a tiny studio apartment, complete with a bathroom housing the tiniest shower known to man. The main room couldn’t have been more than six hundred square feet and consisted of a queen-sized bed, a small kitchen with enough counter space for very careful knife wielding, and a love seat turned to face a TV set from the nineties. But at least now he had the privacy to find a new job and get himself his own, more permanent place. It was a small step toward reclaiming his own life, a one-fingered salute to everything that had been predetermined his entire existence.

A soft chime sounded in the apartment, alerting Dev through the security system that someone had entered the bazaar below.

“Hello?” Naomi’s voice called from downstairs.

Dev stuck his head out the door. “Up here.” He shouldn’t have been nonplussed at Naomi’s arrival—she had texted him this morning asking if they could meet, even though it was Saturday, her self-imposed day off—and yet his hands grew clammier with each approaching footstep on the rickety staircase.

“Oh wow,” she said once she stepped through the door. “Are you living here now?”

Dev scratched the back of his neck as he glanced around. Although he felt a peculiar sense of accomplishment for moving into this meager apartment, he frowned, embarrassed, when he realized how the empty walls and old-school furniture might look through Naomi’s eyes. “I moved in this morning,” he said. “But it’s temporary.”

“Can I snoop around?”

Dev cast a wary glance at his tight living quarters. “Uh, sure.”

“Did your family live here at one point?”

“No, we grew up in Glenmore,” Dev said, referring to one of the more affluent neighborhoods in Kelowna. “But this was the perfect solution for cheap babysitting. When we were old enough to not need constant supervision, my mom would stick us up here while she worked downstairs. There’s only one way out and not much up here for us to get into trouble.” He nodded at the chipped coffee table in front of the love seat. “We used to cram around that table and do our homework.”

Naomi moved to stand beside him and smiled at the makeshift living room. “You and your brothers must be pretty close.” There was a thread of wistfulness in her voice, reminding Dev that Naomi was an only child.

“We were, but we’re very different from one another. We get along now, for the most part, but I wouldn’t say we’re close anymore.” It was hard to find common ground with Neel, who embraced everything their parents had forced upon them, while Dhan seemed unaffected, likely thanks to his fondness for hotboxing.

He gestured to the stove behind them. “This is where my mom would often make treats and chai for her friends downstairs. And us, of course.”

“So…Did you pick out that comforter yourself?”

Dev folder his arms across his chest. “How about you stop stalling and tell me why you’re here.”

Naomi moved so that her back was against the stove and she was facing Dev. She took a deep breath. “I wanted to apologize.”

“Apologize? For what?”

“Thanks to me, everyone is going to think you have a girlfriend.” Naomi’s light brown eyes widened. “That’s the last thing you need.”

“That’s exactly what I need.”

“Do you have to be so sarcastic all the time? I’m trying to apologize.”

Dev reached forward to place his hands on Naomi’s shoulder. “I’m not being sarcastic.”

“Wait.” Naomi tilted her chin and examined Dev’s face. “You’re serious?”

Dev grinned. “I needed someone to keep the women away, and you came through.” At the time, Naomi’s snaking her arm around him and staking her claim had nearly bowled him over, but after some thought, he realized she’d provided him with the perfect cover. Word spreading that he had a girlfriend was the ideal repellent against his mother’s marriage-making schemes. Surely now, fewer girls would seek him out, much less approach him, if he was already spoken for.

It was perfect. And Dev couldn’t deny that being linked to Naomi wasn’t a hardship: she was smart, warm, beautiful, and fun. He would never admit so out loud, but even with her propensity for poking fun at him at every turn, she was surprisingly easy to be around. Dev liked being in her company, even though she was constantly shoving paint samples, design magazines, and baked goods his way.

“But…you don’t want a girlfriend,” Naomi protested.

“And technically, I don’t have one.” In Dev’s eyes, that was the real beauty of their situation. He wasn’t technically lying, just skirting the truth, which was something he’d done his entire life in order to circumvent, at least somewhat, his parents’ strict rules and impossible expectations.

Dev watched in amusement as Naomi wound a curl that had escaped her ponytail around her finger. Not for the first time since meeting her, he had the unexpected desire to give that same curl a tug and watch it spring back into place. Another part of him wanted to feel the softness of that curl between his fingers.

The realization was more than a little unnerving, so he quickly added, “We should probably come up with some ground rules.”

“Ground rules?”

“Yeah. The more we look like a couple, the less likely girls are going to be interested in meeting me. But we should be in agreement about what that looks like for us.”

“So you don’t stiffen up like a corpse when I touch you?”

Dev rolled his eyes. “Right, because you calling me ‘honey boo boo’ was so natural. Let’s scrap that nickname, by the way.”

Naomi chuckled. “If we want to look like a couple, you’re going to need to get used to certain things.”

“Like?”

After a slight hesitation, Naomi took a step forward so that her body was half an inch away from his. They weren’t touching and yet the air suddenly seemed a little too thin for Dev’s rapidly compressing lungs. Naomi lifted her hand and, after a moment of hesitation, placed it on his chest in the barest brush of contact. Dev wanted to joke that she needn’t treat him like he was a wild animal, and once his heart stopped galloping, he planned to do exactly that.

Once she saw that he wasn’t going to push her away, Naomi’s hand flattened against him with confidence. “I won’t overdo it, but we should share casual touches like this.” When Dev didn’t respond, she cocked her head, half playful, half unsure. “You should give it a try, too, honey boo boo.”

Dev had had girlfriends before, and flings and one-night stands, and yet his palms began to sweat at the idea of touching this decoy girlfriend in front of him now. When Naomi raised her eyebrows expectantly, he lifted his hands to waist level, pausing for a brief second before ever so gently resting them on her hips.

A faint blush was creeping onto Naomi’s cheeks. “We don’t need to be a handsy couple or anything, but we do need to look comfortable with each other,” she said in a low voice. She cleared her throat, and a half smile quirked her lips. “Still, a little notice before you decide to jam your tongue down my throat would be appreciated.”

Although he knew it was his cue to laugh, every nerve ending directed Dev’s gaze to Naomi’s lips instead. When she parted them, he was powerless against leaning forward, his neck all too happy to curve to accommodate the difference in their heights. He was vaguely aware of the insistent press of her hand on his chest, but it wasn’t pushing him away. Rather, it was like she was drawing him forward. The scent of coconut and late-summer sunshine filled his senses. The roar of waves rushed to his ears.

He could learn to like the beach.

Dev was suddenly aware that they were very alone in a too-quiet apartment. For the first time in many days, there was no persistent banging of a sledgehammer, no intrusive Mukherjee family members sticking their noses where they didn’t belong. No wedding hopefuls skipping in his direction, matrimonial bells echoing their steps.

There was only the two of them, sharing the same oxygen between her parted, cherry pink lips and his. Somehow Dev knew she wouldn’t taste like a cherry, though. She’d be a smooth, salted caramel bourbon: rich and full-bodied. And there was no way in hell that one taste would be enough to satiate the ache in the pit of his stomach.

The ache of wanting. Dev wanted to be around this woman whose endless optimism should have grated on his nerves. He wanted to step closer and imprint the contours of her body onto his, to feel the scorch of her luminosity on his bare skin.

He wanted to kiss her.

“That’s…” Naomi swallowed, and Dev fought the urge to slide his hands upward to cup the sides of her graceful neck and feel the flex of the delicate muscles there. “That’s more believable.”

Under Dev’s long, silent look, Naomi pressed her lips together and stepped back, her fingers sliding away slowly. He would feel the burn of her fingertips long afterward. Her cheeks were rosy like an August sky at dawn, and it would’ve been too easy for Dev to lean into her again. Instead, he braced his hands on the counter behind him and willed his body to calm down.

Dev forced a nod. “Okay, good. Right,” he agreed. His brain was doing that short-circuiting thing again; he desperately wanted to lighten the mood, to erase the startling heaviness between them. “At least I didn’t jam my tongue down your throat?” Dev closed his eyes in mortification. He would do well to learn that for a guy like him, silence was always the safest option.

But when he risked opening his eyes to see Naomi’s expression, her gaze was glued to the floor, her face unreadable.

“Right,” she said. She pressed her fingers into the shallow nook between her collarbone and Dev’s mouth went dry. “At least we didn’t do that.”