Chapter 25
chapter 25
Dev—and about two dozen other Diwali participants—stared as a woman dressed in bohemian clothing ran to Naomi and pulled her to her side so the two of them stood somewhat apart from the others. The muscles in his arm tightened and he instinctively moved to steady Naomi when she stumbled, her face tight with discomfort and something he’d never seen on her before.
Panic.
But when Naomi’s eyes met his, his legs betrayed him: they locked in place, as if the fear in her gaze had poured concrete right into his veins. An awkward silence stretched among the group before the stranger pressed the palms of her hands together and bowed her head. “Namashkar,” she said, more mocking than civil. “I’m Naomi’s mother, Sue.”
Blood coursed through Dev’s ears, drowning out the whispers the announcement inspired around him. The woman standing beside Naomi was her mother? Although Naomi was much taller, and her skin several degrees warmer, there were obvious similarities between the two. The curve of their foreheads, the high cheekbones. The rigid set of their shoulders: Sue’s challenging, Naomi’s shocked.
Naomi’s eyes were much lighter, though, and her neck, even with the tendons stretched tight, more graceful. Again, the desire to surge forward threaded through Dev’s brain, but this time, the hard lines around Sue’s mouth told him to stay back.
As the murmured conversations of onlookers grew stronger, Sue turned to Gia. “Perhaps we should take this somewhere else,” she said in perfect Bengali. Switching to English seamlessly, she added in a much louder voice, “Somewhere we can speak in private.” Ignoring the collective sigh of disappointment around them, Sue grabbed Naomi’s hand and marched out, leaving Gia and Dev no choice but to follow.
When they were in the less public, but not entirely private, hallway between the main hall and the bathrooms, Gia turned to Sue with wide eyes. “Are you…Bengali?” she asked in English.
“Yes, I am,” Naomi’s mother responded in curt Bengali as if to prove her point. “And you are?”
“I’m Gia Mukherjee.”
Understanding drew Sue’s face tight, sharpening the already hardened lines in her face. “So you’re Gia.”
Dev’s stomach clenched at the disdain in Sue’s voice, but Gia’s attention was fixed on Naomi. “But Naomi is not Bengali.” Gia cocked her head to the side. “She’s West Indian.”
“No, she’s not,” Dev corrected. “She’s North Indian.”
“Actually, uh…” Naomi interjected in a small voice, shooting a fearful glance in Dev’s direction before turning to Gia. “I never actually said I was West Indian. You assumed and I didn’t want to correct you.”
“ Hanh? ” Gia’s head reared back. “Why?”
“I…I didn’t wish to be rude, especially with the contract for the bazaar on the line.”
Dev studied the side of Naomi’s face, trying to read the uncertain lines bracketing the corner of her eyes. Why would she mislead his mother like that for something as trivial as the bazaar’s rebrand? That didn’t make any sense.
“What did I tell you?” The ferociousness in Sue’s voice hurled Dev’s train of thought off its tracks. “These people love to assume and tell you who you are. Who you can be .”
“Hang on—” Dev began, but his mother cut him off.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Gia asked. She turned to Dev, her frown heavy with disapproval. “What kind of person hides who they are?” From her tone, it was clear it was a question Gia didn’t need an answer to.
“She’s not like that,” Dev said. His voice faltered a little when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Naomi stiffen, but he cleared his throat and continued, “I know her. I know Naomi.”
“You don’t know the first thing about her,” Sue interjected.
“Mom,” Naomi cautioned. “Don’t.”
Gia crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe we don’t know anything about you, but I know what it looks like—you hid the truth because you’re ashamed .”
“Ashamed of what?” Sue’s voice was low and full of censure.
Dev’s mother, however, paid no heed. Her accusatory eyes pinned Naomi with barely restrained disgust. “Ashamed of being Bengali.”
“That’s not it.” Dev jumped in, but he couldn’t stop himself from glancing at an uncharacteristically silent Naomi again with a raised brow.
When he turned to face his mother again, he could tell that Gia had reached her capacity for patience and understanding. As she had done many times before whenever even a whisper of doubt regarding her culture was uttered—whether it was over the purpose of ancient customs or their relevance in the world they lived in—she shut down.
From the stubborn pinch between his mother’s eyebrows and the darkness of her gaze, it was obvious that Naomi had crossed some undefinable line for Gia. A sister who toed the line of old-world and new-world traditions for the sake of convenience? Sure. A cantankerous son who questioned his mother’s every decision but ultimately fell in line? Fine.
But a person who hid the truth of her culture? Despicable.
When Gia spoke again, there was an awful finality to her tone. “Whatever the case, she deceived us all,” she said. “You, me, Aashi…Veera Auntie, all those women…She’s told so many lies.”
“We’re both responsible for the fake-girlfriend lie,” Dev protested. His skin itched at where Naomi’s gaze bore into the side of his face, but he kept his eyes on his mother. “I was miserable, and Naomi helped me out. It’s my fault, too.”
“This is exactly why you need my help finding a suitable wife,” his mother replied, shaking her head. “Girls like this lead men astray. She isn’t proud of her heritage. She is not our kind of people. Who knows what else she’s hidden from us?”
Dev turned to Naomi, more than a little mortified at the pleading note strumming his words. “Tell her what you told me—you said you were North Indian when we first met,” Dev said. “Naomi, tell her…” His pleas petered out when Naomi closed her eyes in defeat.
“I lied.” With a deep breath, Naomi’s eyes flicked to Dev’s, their honey depths asking for something he had no idea how to provide. “My parents are Bengali.”
“But you said—”
Naomi shook her head slowly. “I lied to you.”
“Sweetheart, trust me, she’s Bengali.” Sue’s voice dripped with the kind of contempt that soaked through Dev’s pores, spreading the heat of humiliation over every possible surface. “Not that it’s anyone’s business,” she added for Gia’s benefit.
Gia scoffed and began speaking in rapid Bengali, her words razor-edged darts flying into the confines of the narrow, dimly lit hallway.
Dev clenched his hands, barely registering how icy his fingers felt curled into his palm. “Excuse me,” he muttered. He didn’t bother to wait to see if anyone had heard him before he turned and stalked out of the community center.
When Naomi joined him outside several minutes later, the curved edges of Dev’s shock had given way to sharp, metallic anger, just barely coating the stomach-churning embarrassment underneath.
She’d manipulated him. It wasn’t the lie about her heritage that chafed but the fact that she’d never bothered to share the truth about herself—even when he’d opened up to her, admitted things to her he’d never dared to say out loud to anyone else before—that stung. It was bad enough that, like everyone else, he’d believed all her lies and had played right into her hand; but worse still, he’d placed his feelings for her above everything else—the traditions, the expectations, his family—because he’d actually believed they could have the kind of relationship he never imagined he’d be privileged enough to find.
He’d trusted her to take care of his heart.
He was such a fool.
At some point during the disastrous evening, the sky had opened up to the same torrential downpour as their night at Garba. It was depressingly similar, Dev thought as he stared out into the crowded parking lot to where his black BMW was parked on the other side. Except this time, there was no teasing, no beckoning heat between them. No laughter punctuating the sweet clink of Naomi’s bracelets against his eardrums.
There were only two people staring at each other, the hammering of raindrops a foreboding backdrop to the tension growing, even now, between them. Dev felt like he was looking at a stranger.
“Dev, I’m sorry you had to find out this way.” Naomi took a small step forward but halted when Dev shuffled back. Hurt clouded her eyes.
“ That’s what you’re sorry about?”
“I—”
“You manipulated me. Why would you…you…” The words deserted Dev as he thought back to the past three months. There had been countless times—maybe not at the start but after they’d grown closer and admitted feelings for each other—that she could have come clean about herself.
But she’d held back—allowed him to make assumptions about her so she could have a leg up with the bazaar. As realization dawned, Dev could’ve sworn icy claws had clamped around his heart; this whole thing was about her getting ahead. She’d used him to build her fucking career.
Meanwhile, he’d laid himself bare at her feet like an absolute fool . Dev turned to face the parking lot again, not sure if he was more disgusted with himself or with her. One thing was clear: she was no better than everyone else in his life, walking all over him so they could get what they wanted, his desires be damned.
“You let me go on and on about all the cultural shit I’m dealing with. You had every opportunity to tell me the truth, but you never said a word.” When Dev risked a glance at Naomi and caught her wringing her hands and biting her lower lip, anger roiled dangerously in his gut. How dare she act like the injured party here.
“I wasn’t trying to manipulate you,” Naomi said softly. “I just…It’s hard for me to talk about my heritage. I’m not like you. I’m not Bengali…not really.”
Dev rolled his eyes. “Your mother is in there talking to my mom in perfect Bangla right now, Naomi.”
“Dev, my mother looks like she belongs at a Burning Man festival. You don’t know anything about her. Or how I was raised.”
Dev shook his head, unconvinced, as bitterness flooded his senses. He’d shown her too many vulnerable moments in the last few weeks, and the memories embarrassed him now. Had she been laughing at him behind his back while playing angel of mercy to his face? Had she told her friends?
He couldn’t fall down that rabbit hole right now, not when she was watching him so carefully and seeing every emotion that crossed his face. Taking a deep breath, Dev forced himself to think rationally. “Why did you lie to my mother?”
“I didn’t want it to matter.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Authenticity means everything to your family, Dev! I’ve seen the kinds of girls your mom thinks you should marry, and I know what she thinks about me.” Naomi lifted her hands to her chest. “I don’t have the same upbringing as you—I’ve never gotten to know my grandparents, or aunts and uncles, or anyone from the same gene pool. I didn’t want it rubbed in my face, especially when I’d been hired to rebrand your family’s business. If your mother knew I was Bengali, she would have had a certain level of expectations.” Naomi’s voice thickened. “Those are expectations I’ll never meet, Dev. She would have written me off.”
“So you lied for the job.” The acknowledgment hurt anew: all he’d ever been to her was a stepping stone in her career.
“I…I hid the truth.” Naomi’s gaze roved his face. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“What it’s like to not belong…” When Dev snorted in disbelief, her face twisted. “Don’t act like you’re squeaky clean, Dev. You’ve lied to your mother plenty, and to the matchmaker, and all the girls who came to meet you.”
“But I never lied to you , Naomi. There’s a big difference.” Dev snapped his lips closed before he admitted something truly mortifying, like how, for the first time in his life, he’d felt secure enough to open himself to someone—only to have her stomp all over him.
“You don’t know the whole story.”
A small part of Dev wanted to back down from the dark feelings simmering inside him—to hear exactly what Naomi had kept from him and why—but he was afraid to give in. Because focusing on his all-consuming anger was a hell of a lot easier; keeping everything inside, safer. Besides, Naomi had yet to apologize for lying, as if skirting around her identity was on the same playing field as thwarting his mother’s attempts at pushing him into a marriage he didn’t want.
And here she was, acting like he shouldn’t be hurt by her deception. What was it about him that invited people to walk all over him? For months he had been acting like a guide, sharing his culture with her and explaining its baffling nuances as if its dictates—and his family’s expectations—were something to be embarrassed of. How pathetic he must have looked in her eyes, complaining about his family while toeing the line between servitude and sacrifice.
She’d acted like the worst kind of tourist, taking everything in with polite, wide-eyed curiosity to his face and likely pitying him behind his back. Poor, weak-willed, gullible Dev. He’s the Mukherjee family loser.
“And lying to me? What’s your reasoning for that, Naomi? Was this the plan all along? To manipulate me into helping you get the job done? Is that all this was?”
Naomi’s eyes widened. “ No , of course not.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that now?”
Ducking her head, Naomi dropped her eyes to the cracked concrete. She looked so helpless that his heart squeezed, an ache that was both sympathetic and a reminder that she had played the shit out of him.
But there was no way he would give in to that sympathy, not when Naomi had led him to believe that he could have more. That a relationship built on friendship and warmth was possible for someone like him, despite everything he knew about family and the iron chains anchoring him to that inescapable fate.
She had done exactly what his mother had done so many times before: manipulated him for her own means.
Naomi was watching him, her eyes roving over his face like she was sorting through fragmented pieces of a puzzle. “What are you thinking?”
Did it even matter? “I don’t know who you are. I don’t even want to know why you chose to lie to me—” Dev cut himself off. Careful , he reminded himself. Don’t give any more of yourself away. Dev shook his head to clear his thoughts. He needed to salvage at least some of his pride. “I’ve had enough.”
“What are you saying? You don’t want to see me anymore?” Naomi’s voice was flat. Lifeless. She sounded so unlike herself that in any other situation, Dev might have paused and chosen his words cautiously, but he was so damn tired of treading carefully around everyone in his life. If it wasn’t his mother, it was his brother, and now it was Naomi, too.
If love meant jumping through hoops until the soles of his feet were bloodied and raw, he wanted nothing to do with it. “I’m saying that I just realized I’ve been fucking a stranger for over a month. So yeah, I’m done.”
He barely caught Naomi’s flinch as he stepped off the community center sidewalk and stalked into the parking lot toward his vehicle. He was halfway there when he felt her hand on his wrist jerking him to a stop.
The fire in Naomi’s eyes was a clear indication that she wasn’t going to back down. “You know who I am. You know the parts that matter . I’m sorry that you feel lied to, but I don’t owe you shit. I don’t need to prove who or what I am to anyone, and if this matters so much to you, to the point that you’re calling me a stranger? Then maybe you’re not the right person for me. Maybe you’re exactly what my mother tried to protect me from.”
“Hang on, you’re mad at me now?”
“I admitted that I lied, but you’ll never understand why. I bet you don’t even want to understand.” Naomi shook her head, rain flinging off her curls in every direction. “How are you any different than the rest of them? The people you constantly bemoan because they refuse to open their minds to anything outside of their narrow worldviews? Face it, Dev, you’re just like them.”
“I’m not like them.” The words sounded uncertain in his own ears, and, despite himself, he couldn’t resist a quick glance over Naomi’s shoulder to see if anyone had trickled out of the community center to witness their argument. He owed the skies a note of gratitude, the heavy rainfall granting Naomi the privacy to stomp on his heart.
“Really? Because I didn’t hear you telling any of them about our real relationship.” Naomi laughed sarcastically. “Oh, wait, silly me. Apparently we’re just fucking .”
A fleeting sense of chagrin fluttered in Dev’s chest. She wasn’t wrong, but he had been so bowled over by the turn of events that in front of Veera, his mom, and her friends, the right words hadn’t come. They never came when he needed them.
“I wasn’t ready to reveal my personal life,” he said stiffly. “Not to a group of people who would never understand.” He winced when he realized he’d parroted almost exactly the words Naomi had used only a moment ago.
Naomi barked a sarcastic laugh, and Dev’s shoulders hunched forward in response. “At least I define my own life, Dev,” she said, “but I don’t want to be with someone who lets other people’s expectations dictate his life, especially if I’m always going to come up short. I refuse to live like that. I’m done with that crap. I deserve better.”
Dev gritted his teeth. “They may not be perfect, but they’re my family and we stick together. I’m not going to throw that away for…” He trailed off, but from the clouding of Naomi’s eyes, she had heard him loud and clear: she wasn’t worth risking his relationship with his family.
“If you can’t respect that, then you’re right—I’m not the one for you,” he finished.
Hurt flitted across Naomi’s face, followed by something so raw and vulnerable that the urge to rescind immediately flickered like a tentative flame in the blackest of storms. He ignored the urge, resorting instead to dwelling in the familiarity of that cold, dark place of his that kept women like Naomi at arm’s length. That kept everyone at arm’s length.
“So we’re done?” she asked quietly.
Had Dev missed the words thanks to the deluge of raindrops around them, her face would’ve said it all. Naomi looked broken.
I don’t know. No. Although his heart squeezed in quiet warning, Downer Dev wouldn’t give in.
Dev turned on his heel and, after trying to swallow the lump in his throat, threw his parting shot over his shoulder. “We’re done.”