37. You Do Not Still #2
His expression suggested this was not an adequate foundation for adulthood.
“I want the band to keep growing,” I said. “I want my mother taken care of. My brother too, though he’d be offended if he heard me say that.”
“And beyond work?”
There was no casual answer to that question in this house. Every conversation eventually found its way to the same place. Marriage. Children. Family. The future, spoken about as though it were a country waiting for me to decide whether I intended to apply for entry.
“I’m still figuring that out.”
Mr. Malhotra nodded. It wasn't approval. It was recognition of exactly what Radhika would eventually be forced to discover about me. I hated him after, for seeing it before I did.
Radhika joined me whenever she could. She also made sure she was never alone with me long enough for me to express my gratitude in the best way I knew how.
The first night, she came to my room after everyone had gone to bed.
She stood outside the door in a robe, arms folded, refusing to cross the threshold.
The second night, she stopped six feet from my door and refused to come any closer. The third, she brought me tea as though hot milk and spices could compensate for what three days of denial were doing to my body. She held the tray between us like protective armor.
“You’ve become very committed to chastity.”
“We're in my parents’ home.”
“Your parents’ 'home' has twelve wings. We could have sex in all of them and not be discovered until next winter.”
By the fourth day, I was losing my mind.
I'd never spent this much time near Radhika without touching her every way I wanted, and often.
Our relationship had been built in stolen rooms, every reunion compressed by departure times.
We had never needed patience because there was never enough time to justify it.
If we had thirty-six hours together, we spent thirty of them in bed and the other six pretending we were normal people who ate meals and visited museums.
Here, she sat across from me at breakfast with her ankle brushing mine beneath the table, then spent the rest of the day surrounded by relatives. She leaned over my shoulder to translate something and let her breasts press against my back, then walked away like she hadn’t done it.
During Holika Dahan, firelight moved over her face as we stood with her family around the bonfire.
She wore deep red, gold at her ears, her hair loose down her back.
Every time the flames shifted, I caught her looking at me.
I tried to get close after the prayers. An aunty appeared.
I tried again when everyone began moving toward dinner.
Her cousin stepped between us to ask about the band.
By the time she walked me toward the guest wing, I had spent hours imagining dragging her behind the nearest carved screen. She stopped outside my room. Again.
“I hope you enjoyed tonight.”
“I’d enjoy it more if you came inside.”
She glanced down the corridor.
“Someone could see.”
“Four days, Radhika. Four days of constant torture. Put me out of my misery. Just come inside, they’re all downstairs.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Then we’ll be quiet.”
Her eyes flashed. I thought I had her. Then she kissed my cheek and stepped away.
“Tomorrow is Holi. Sleep.”
“I can’t.”
She laughed and escaped before I could reach her. I laid awake for another hour thinking about the sound.
The next morning, someone knocked before the sun had fully burned through the haze.
I opened the door expecting tea. Radhika stood there instead.
She wore a white sari with a narrow gold border, the fabric wrapped lightly enough for the heat, her hair braided over one shoulder.
She looked clean, polished, and completely unprepared for what four days of frustration had done to me.
“We’re late,” she said. “Everyone is waiting in the courtyard.”
I looked past her. The corridor was empty. Then I caught her wrist and pulled her inside. Radhika gasped as the door shut behind her.
“Kiri.” I locked it. “What're you doing?”
“What I’ve been trying to do since I got here.”
I caught her face between my hands and kissed her. I took her mouth the way I'd been imagining for four days, and the little sound she made told me she had been imagining it too. Her hands came up against my chest.
“We don’t have time.”
I kissed her again. She said my name into my mouth and then, I lifted her. She gasped on instinct.
“You can't just drag me into your room and throw me around.”
“Watch me.”
I carried her to the bed and dropped her onto it. She bounced, eyes wide with outrage she didn’t feel.
“We’re already late.”
“Then we should stop talking.”
She caught my wrist and for a moment we stayed like that. Her breathing had already changed.
“Do you really want me to stop?” I asked, sincerity cutting through the hunger long enough to let her say what her body had already told me. Her eyes found mine. Then her grip loosened.
“If you stop now,” she whispered, “I’ll curse you in this life, the next one, and all five after that.”