34. Lonely
Lonely
Kiri
Iwas twenty-four the first time I saw Radhika Malhotra, and in that moment, I forgot how to breathe. It wasn't in some dramatic metaphorical way. My lungs actually stopped working.
The party was in one of those houses in the Hollywood Hills built entirely from glass, because rich people had recently decided walls were for poor people.
Light spilled across all that polished stone.
Music rolled softly through rooms full of actors, producers, models, label executives, and men who wore sneakers I'd stared at through store windows as a kid, dreaming.
The Riven Altar had been grinding for almost six years by then.
Six years of clubs with floors that stuck to our boots.
Six years of sleeping wherever we could, taking whatever opening slots we were offered, and smiling at men who promised to change our lives before forgetting our names by morning.
The last album had done well—not changed the world well, but well enough that suddenly invitations like this appeared.
We were no longer the dirty band trying to sneak in through the kitchen.
We were the dirty band people wanted photographed near the pool. Edgy, sexy, cool.
Progress.
Rafe had already disappeared into conversation with some producer whose last record sounded like machinery fucking during an opera concert.
Rithy had cornered a man who made custom guitars for musicians with more money than sense.
Ronan was talking to a television producer who wanted us on some late-night music show and kept assuring him the veils would be “a visual asset.” I was supposed to be networking. I had every intention of networking.
Then I saw her.
She stood in the center of a group near the terrace doors, surrounded by some of the most beautiful people on earth.
Indian actors and actresses, Stefan would later tell me, in the most immaculate clothes and perfect posture I'd ever seen.
The kind of group that made everyone else at the party look unfinished.
She was the only one that kept my attention.
Radhika wore gold. The fabric shifted over her body like warm light, fitted close through her waist, one shoulder bare. Her dark hair fell down her back in a heavy wave, and her face—fuck.
I’d heard Rafe talk that kind of shit for years.
Men and women who looked like gods. Love as some ancient curse.
Helen burning cities. Persephone dragging spring behind her or Apollo carrying the sun in his mouth.
Every person he wanted became a myth before he even got their number.
I’d always rolled my eyes and called it bullshit.
Fancy words to get them naked, that’s all it was.
Then Radhika turned her head. Suddenly, I understood how religions started.
One person saw something impossible staring back at them and dropped to their knees.
That was her. That was the whole fucking origin story.
She looked like a painting someone had taught to breathe.
Like a goddess had stepped down from a temple wall, put on gold, and wandered into a Hollywood party to see whether any mortal man could survive looking directly at her.
I could have been convinced to worship her right there, no scripture required.
Her eyes found mine.
I should've smiled. I was good at smiling at women. I had an entire arsenal: lazy smile, dirty smile, sweet smile if I wanted someone to think I wasn’t the worst decision they'd make all week.
Women had crossed rooms because of those smiles, slipped hotel keys into my hand and numbers into my pocket on the promise of those smiles.
They'd whispered exactly what they wanted against my ear while their friends pretended not to notice.
So smiles? I knew how to smile to get what I wanted.
Instead, I stared, like a complete idiot.
Radhika’s eyes widened slightly. Then she looked away with the smallest shake of her head, as though she had caught herself doing something equally foolish.
Color bloomed in her cheeks. And, somehow, I felt heat climb into mine.
I turned away so fast I almost walked into a sculpture.
“What the fuck?” I muttered.
Blushing was not part of my usual process.
I’d had women every way a man could think to have them and a few ways they had to teach me.
Women with bodies that were soft as silk, translucent enough for blue veins to show beneath it and pale pink nipples, women bronzed by the California sun and legs for fucking days, women with rich umber skin and deadly dimples who smelled like expensive lotion and tasted like heaven.
I'd kissed, tied, teased, followed orders and given them. There wasn’t much left that could make me nervous or shy.
But one look from Radhika Malhotra and I was fourteen again, incapable of operating my own damn face.
So, I did the mature thing and avoided her for the rest of the night.
I let Rafe introduce me to the producer with the violent industrial sound.
I nodded intelligently while the man told me bass was the “subconscious architecture of music,” which sounded like something Rafe would tattoo across his back.
Rithy dragged me over to meet a luthier who had built instruments for three of my heroes.
I managed to ask coherent questions while still checking the reflection in every glass wall to see whether Radhika had moved.
Ronan introduced me to the television producer, who said they would love to have us perform even if we refused to remove our veils.
“Especially if you refuse,” she added.
“Nothing sells like mystery,” I said.
My attention drifted over her shoulder. Radhika was laughing at something one of her friends had said.
The sound didn’t reach me across the room, but I could see it move through her whole body, her hand touching the arm of the woman beside her.
Smile wide enough to destroy whatever remained of my dignity.
A model slipped me her number near the bar, then a singer with silver hair pressed her lips close to my ear and told me where she was staying. Next up, a girl from a band I vaguely recognized hooked one finger through my belt loop and asked whether I liked redheads.
“I’m an equal-opportunity disappointment,” I told her.
She laughed like that was an invitation. On any other night, it would have been.
By midnight, I could have taken at least ten women home.
Instead, every few minutes, my eyes went back to Radhika, and every time they did, I found hers already on me.
She always looked away first. I always pretended I hadn’t been caught.
This continued until I finally looked toward the terrace and discovered she was gone.
So was the entire group she'd been with. Panic hit me so fast I almost laughed.
Panic? Over a woman I hadn’t even spoken to? Get a fucking grip.
I swallowed the rest of my drink and reminded myself of reality.
Women like Radhika Malhotra didn't leave parties with men like me. She wasn’t some actress hunting for a reckless night in Los Angeles.
She wasn’t someone impressed because I played bass on an album that had briefly cracked an international chart.
I'd found that out when I finally asked Stefan who she was, trying hard to sound casual. He'd looked at me as if I’d asked who Madonna was.
“Radhika Malhotra?”
“That’s meant to help me?”
“Bollywood royalty,” he said. “Her parents are legends. She’s already bigger in India at twenty-two than most of America's biggest stars. Her family’s worth an obscene amount of money. Educated in London, I think. Speaks at least four languages.”
“That all?”
Stefan looked at me like I'd slapped his mother.
“If you have something in mind, drop it. You'd just embarrass yourself and the label.”
Now she was gone, and that was probably for the best. I'd been allowed to look at a goddess for the evening, not every man got that much in a whole lifetime.
I went in search of champagne to erase her from my mind.
The first two trays I found were empty. I finally tracked down a waiter near the back corridor and lifted a glass with enough relief that the poor man gave me a concerned look.
I took a drink, turned—and nearly walked straight into her.
My hand jerked. Champagne leapt against the side of the glass but somehow stayed inside it.
Radhika reached out instinctively. Her palm landed flat against my chest. The whole place stopped moving.
Up close, she was lethal. There were gold flecks in the brown of her eyes.
Her lashes were thick enough to cast shadows.
Her perfume was soft and warm, jasmine and cinnamon, which it turns out, was a combination I found hard to resist. Her hand rested directly over my heart, and the stupid thing slammed against her palm like it was trying to abandon me.
It had decided, without asking my permission, that it belonged to her now.
“Sorry,” she said. Her voice was deeper than I expected and so smooth, its British edges softened by the cadence of somewhere I’d never been.
“No.” My voice came out rough. I cleared my throat. “That was me. My fault. My bad.”
Her hand remained on my chest until she came to her senses, then she pulled it away. I missed her touch as soon as it was gone.
She glanced at my glass. “You saved it.”
“Years of practice.”
“With champagne?”
“With nearly ruining things.”
Her mouth curved. Fuck. That smile aimed directly at me? I was going to die at this party.
“We haven’t met.”
“Kiri.”
“I know.”
Her eyes flicked down, coy now. “You're wearing a veil in half the photographs people post of you, but it's not a very effective disguise. Your eyes give you away. Plus, you've been staring at me all evening.”
I nearly choked on the champagne.
“I wasn't staring.”
She laughed. Here I was, standing in the sound of it with no idea how I’d gotten so lucky.
“Radhika,” she said.
“I know.”
One eyebrow lifted.