37. You Do Not Still
You Do Not Still
Kiri
“Papa!”
Radhika’s voice cut through the room. Every muscle in my body loosened at once.
She stood in the doorway with sunglasses pushed into her hair and exhaustion clinging to her despite the way her face lit up when she saw me.
She wore an ivory kurta over loose trousers, gold at her wrists, her dark hair falling over one shoulder.
She looked at me first. Only for a moment but it was long enough to make the entire journey worth it. Then she turned to her father.
“Twenty minutes,” she said. “I leave him alone with you for twenty minutes, and you’re already asking about our future?”
“I was asking reasonable questions.”
Mrs. Malhotra reappeared behind her, smiling like she had been waiting for this exact moment.
Radhika crossed the room and bent to kiss her father’s cheek.
He accepted it with the look of a man betrayed by every woman in his home.
Then she came to me. I stood. At first, we only looked at each other.
Months of video calls. A flight across the world.
Her face reduced to a screen until now, then she smiled.
It wasn't the public one she put on for everyone else.
It was mine.
“Hello,” she said.
“About time.”
Her father cleared his throat. One of the aunties entered behind her and announced something rapidly in Hindi. Radhika’s head snapped toward me.
“You learned Hindi?”
“A little.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
Mrs. Malhotra touched Radhika’s arm. “He has eaten almost nothing.”
“I’ve been eating continuously since I arrived.”
“See?” her mother said. “Almost nothing.”
Radhika laughed. The sound reached into every exhausted, nervous part of me and pulled it loose. Her father rose from his chair.
“We will continue our conversation later.”
“Looking forward to it,” I said.
Radhika looked between us. “No, you aren't.”
“No,” I admitted. “Not even a little bit.”
Her father’s mouth twitched. Radhika caught it and her eyes widened slightly.
“He likes you.”
“I wouldn't go that far,” her father said.
“His face moved,” she said. “That’s practically an embrace.”
Mr. Malhotra walked away before either of us could enjoy it. Radhika watched him leave, then looked at me.
“I should show you to your room.”
Radhika pulled me toward the staircase. The upper floors were quieter.
Long corridors led to doors looking onto the courtyard filled with palms and flowering vines.
Every few feet, I passed another painting, another sculpture, another photograph of someone famous standing beside someone even more famous.
“My room is in another country, isn’t it?” I asked.
“The guest wing.”
“You have wings?”
She stopped in front of a carved wooden door and opened it. A huge bed stood beneath a canopy, facing windows that opened onto a private terrace. There was a sitting area, a marble bathroom, fresh flowers, a tray of fruit, and my sad black duffel resting on a bench. I stepped inside.
“This is a room?”
“One of them.”
“How many are there?”
She smiled. “Don’t ask questions you aren’t prepared to hear the answers to.”
The door clicked shut behind her. I turned, finally we were alone.
I crossed the room before she could say anything, caught her around the waist, and pulled her against me.
She squeaked, like I had never kissed her before in my life.
My mouth found hers before the sound had fully escaped.
Her hands slapped lightly against my arms.
“What're you doing?”
“Kissing my girlfriend.”
“My parents are downstairs.”
“I met them. Mom's nice, dad hates my guts. I remember.”
“You can't immediately corrupt their home.”
“Too late.”
I kissed her again. She tried to hold herself stiff, but my arms wrapped around her and her body gave up the lie almost instantly.
Her hands slid from my forearms to my shoulders.
Her mouth softened beneath mine. When I pulled her closer, a small sound caught in her throat and disappeared against my lips.
I walked her backward until her shoulders touched the door.
“Kiri,” she whispered.
I kissed beneath her jaw. She tilted her head before she could stop herself.
“You can’t act shy now,” I murmured against her skin. “These walls will only be innocent for so long.”
Her fingers tightened in my shirt.
“We can’t.” I kissed the place below her ear that always made her breathing change. “We can’t do anything,” she insisted.
Her body pressed closer. Her hips found mine.
The contradiction nearly made me laugh. I lifted my head and looked at her.
Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted.
Every careful, elegant part of Radhika Malhotra had abandoned her except the voice still trying to defend the honor of her family home.
“We can’t,” she repeated, quieter this time. I brushed my thumb across her mouth.
“Miss Malhotra your body doesn't agree with this defiant mouth of yours.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t believe me.”
“I think you, believe you.”
I leaned in until my mouth hovered over hers.
“But I don't think your body can keep up the act for much longer.”
Her breath trembled between us. Suddenly, beyond the door, footsteps sounded in the corridor. Radhika shoved at my chest. I stepped back just as they passed. She stared at me, horrified and breathless, I smiled back.
“I invited you for Holi, to meet my family. To behave.”
“I said I can behave around parents. The rest? All I heard was ‘spend a week testing the craftmanship of the furniture in the guest wing.’”
She covered my mouth with her hand.
“Stop. Talking.”
Then someone called her name from downstairs. Radhika closed her eyes.
“I have to go.”
I caught her hand before she reached the door and pulled her into one last kiss, slower this time. She melted against me before remembering herself and stepping away. Then she slipped out of the room, leaving me alone in a palace with her taste still on my lips and six hours until midnight.
She said we couldn’t do anything. Her body had already told me that was a lie.
All I had to do was wait for her to prove it.
The first few days at the Malhotra estate taught me two things.
The first was that Radhika had not exaggerated when she said her family had staff.
There were people for everything. Drivers, cooks, gardeners, housekeepers, assistants, men who appeared whenever furniture needed moving and women who could produce tea before I knew I wanted any.
I never saw Mrs. Malhotra carry anything heavier than a cup without someone materializing to take it from her.
The second was that I had no idea how to let people wait on me.
On my first morning, I found her mother in one of the interior courtyards directing three men as they moved enormous brass planters into place for Holi. One of them bent to lift a crate filled with clay lamps, and I stepped in before he reached it.
“I can take that.”
The man looked at me. Mrs. Malhotra looked at me.
“It is heavy,” she said.
“I’ve carried amplifiers up four flights of stairs.”
I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, but I had already committed, so I carried it across the courtyard while every member of staff watched the foreign musician perform manual labor for reasons no one understood. Mrs. Malhotra followed me, trying not to smile.
“You know we pay people to do that.”
“I know.”
She laughed and showed me where to put it.
After that, she started finding things for me to carry.
At least, I suspected she did. Boxes of powdered color arrived in the afternoon, and somehow I was the one hauling them into storage.
The next morning, I helped move folding tables into the garden while two perfectly capable men stood nearby looking insulted.
When garlands came from the florist, I carried half of them inside and ended up covered in marigold petals.
Mrs. Malhotra plucked one from my hair. Her expression softened.
“You do not sit still. Radhika is the same.”
Mrs. Malhotra told me stories Radhika never had.
How she had climbed onto the roof at eight because her father said she couldn’t.
How she once refused to speak for an entire day after losing a school debate, then spent the next month preparing for the rematch.
How she used to perform scenes from her parents’ films for the household staff and become furious if anyone laughed during the serious parts.
“She always wanted to attention,” her mother said as we sorted trays of flowers. “But only exactly as she wished it.”
That sounded so much like Radhika that I stopped arranging petals.
“I don't think that's changed much.”
Her mother looked at me and smiled. Her father remained less convinced as he continued to read his paper.
Mr. Malhotra had a talent for appearing whenever I found myself getting comfortable.
I'd be drinking tea on a terrace, and suddenly he was asking whether the band had a five-year plan.
I'd be walking through the garden, and there he was, wondering whether I intended to live permanently in America.
I thought I was safe one afternoon sitting with Mrs. Malhotra while she crocheted.
A mistake. He joined us, accepted a cup of tea, and asked whether musicians found monogamy difficult while touring.
Mrs. Malhotra never looked up from her yarn.
Once, I was trying to identify whether a large bird near the fountain was another peacock or something even more expensive, and he appeared beside me to ask whether I wanted children. I nearly walked into the fountain.
“Eventually?” I said.
It came out like a question. He noticed.
“And marriage?”
“We’ve only been together a year.”
“That wasn't my question.”
I looked across the garden for Radhika. She was nowhere in sight. Her family had an impressive instinct for abandoning me whenever her father began an interrogation.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“In general?”
“For your life.”
“Music.”
“You already have music.”
“More music?”