But then…a sudden and terrible thought struck her. She despised herself for it and she knew Bharat would never forgive her for it but…if it meant Nakul would forgive her. She had to take the chance.
“I do have a request.”
“Name it,” Bharat said instantly.
“Now that your company is funded, maybe you could pay my dad what you owe him…from JoyXS. I mean, it’s the least you could do now…” Sophia bit her lip, her voice trailing off into a soundless whisper.
Bharat’s head whipped up, just once, as if she had punched him. His nose was still bleeding profusely. Sophia wanted to touch him, hold him. Nurse him back to being okay and take back all the ugliness of the last five minutes.
Sophia dug her nails into her palms and forced herself to meet his condemning gaze. Then he nodded a third time.
“Sure. Give me one minute.” Bharat went to the closet and removed something from his neatly packed suitcase. A checkbook.
“You don’t have to do it right now,” she insisted.
He looked incongruous in a bed sheet dhoti and a strangely, injured dignity. He hunted for a pen, got it from the Aria’s stationary kit. Bharat uncapped and started filling it in. “I just realized I didn’t pay you for your expertise and your time too,” he said.
“I hope this covers everything.” Bharat tore the check off at the perforated edge and handed it to her.
Sophia stared at him with swimming eyes, clutching it in her white fist.
He shrugged. “I get it. I do. You have to go. I’ll say I am sorry but…”
“You don’t understand, Bharat,” she cut him off. She stood there, counting off precious seconds. Memorizing his face. Broken nose and all. “I am not sorry, either. Please see a doctor for the nose.”
She shoved the check in her pocket without checking it out and ran from the posh five star room as fast as her sneakers could carry her. Crying all the way down to the lobby of the hotel, where she knew, just knew, that she would lose the second man she loved today if she didn’t move fast enough.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sophia reached the foyer of The Aria, flushed and out of breath. The bellboys shot her strange looks as she streaked past them, weeping her eyes out, wiping the tears as fast as they fell.
She considered screaming for her brother, finding Nakul in the crowded lobby did not seem likely. But, it seemed, the fates were the tiniest bit kind to her.
She saw him striding into the lobby restaurant. Putting on a renewed burst of speed, she took off after him, pushing a startled Asian couple out of her way.
Luckily, the dress code was casual at the restaurant. Sophia dashed inside and scanned for her brother, her chest heaving. The tears had dried up in her exertions, but she knew she looked like a crazy person.
Mopping up her face of tears and snot one last time, she went to the bar where she saw Nakul sliding into an empty seat.
“Nakul,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder. He jerked her off.
“Dada, please,” she whispered.
He took his time turning around to see her. His gaze raked her from top to bottom. She flushed once more. From endless embarrassment and guilt.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I want to talk to you. To explain what happened.”
Nakul shrugged. Grabbed the whiskey glass and swallowed it down in one go. Looked critically at the cut glass tumbler. “This forty-dollar whiskey tastes the same as Antiquity Blue. How is that?” he mused.
“Are you going to allow me to explain?”
~~~~~
“What do you want to explain, Meethi?”
Nakul was endlessly weary. He wanted to put his head down on this lovely bar and never get up.
He’d tried so hard. So very hard. And he had failed so badly. He would never forgive himself for failing his family. His sister.
“That it wasn’t just sex,” he bit out. “That you love Shrinivasan? That he wants you equally? That he is a changed man now? Is that what you want to tell me?”
Sophia slid into the seat next to him; nodded so hard, her curls hit him in the face. “Yes, dada. Yes! He has changed so much. He isn’t brash and thoughtless anymore. In fact, he is willing to change his new technology to make it more job-friendly instead of less and…”
“Save it. Stop defending that asshole.”
“What?”
“I said,” Nakul said evenly. “Stop defending that asshole. I don’t want to hear how awesome he is. How he turned his life around… what he means to you. I don’t care. He is scum. You hear me? He is shit. And I can’t believe you’d sleep with him.”
~~~~~
All the blood drained from her face again, her head pounded so hard it physically hurt. “It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that. Don’t bother denying it. You saw him. You wanted him. And so you decided to go for it. I’d say congratulations and all that but, Meethi…”
Nakul closed his eyes and opened them. He had aged years in minutes. Sophia felt the punch of guilt and condemnation hit her again.
“You could have picked anyone in the whole world. Any guy. Any guy except him and you didn’t. I don’t even know what to say.”
“It’s over. Me and him,” she said desperately. “It’s over. And I am sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I just wasn’t thinking and I am so sorry I hurt you, dada. I didn’t mean to. It just happened.”
~~~~~
“It wasn’t an accident, Meethi,” Nakul said wearily. “And no, you meant to hurt me. Don’t lie about that at least.”
Sophia started crying again. Ugly, hot tears that splashed on her fingers and scalded his soul. But he couldn’t help it. He was tired and angry and he hurt. He wanted her to suffer. Suffer till she could not take it anymore; suffer like he was suffering.
“I am not lying, dada,” Sophia whispered. “I wasn’t thinking about you…about dad when I was with him.”
“That doesn’t make it any better, Meethi,” he whispered back.
His baby sister closed her eyes. Defeated and somehow…ended.
Nakul wanted to put his arms around her, pull her close and tell her it was okay. That it could be fixed. But he knew he would be lying. There were some things that could never be fixed.
“Did he send you after me?”
She shook her head. “No. I told you. It’s over with him. I won’t be seeing him again. Actually.” She smiled the saddest smile a woman could. “I am definitely sure he won’t be seeing me again. I said some…unforgivable things to him.”
“Why would you do that?”
She shrugged. “Because I love you. You are my family. And I couldn’t choose him…I just could not…I am sorry, Nakul. Please, you have to believe me. Please,” she pleaded with him.
But Nakul’s heart had turned to stone. He had nothing left in him. Not mercy or kindness. He had nothing left at all.
“I think it’s best if you go now. I think it’s best for everyone.” He turned back to contemplating his tumbler. The expensive whiskey he couldn’t afford lined his stomach with acid. Burning it down to ashes.
For a long time all Nakul heard was her soft sobs. And he felt like such a kankir pola, a heartless son of a bitch, but he could not make himself care. He just could not.
Finally Sophia spoke, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I know you know that. I’ll leave this here. Maybe this could begin to make it up to you.”
Nakul felt a small white paper slide in his direction, made no move to pick it up. After minutes passed, he picked it up.
It was a check from Bharat Shrinivasan - crumpled from being mishandled but a legit check nonetheless - for the exact amount that Rajeev Kulashreshtha had invested in his first company, JoyXS. Plus ten percent interest.
It was a lot of money. Nakul sucked in a surprised breath. Felt the punch of it down to his toes.
“Sophia, I…” He turned to his sister and saw an empty bar seat.
Because Sophia was gone. Just like he’d asked
her to.
Oh man. Oh man! What had he done?
~~~~~
Thierron was taking a shower when he heard urgent knocking on his door. Setting aside his lavender scented anti-dandruff shampoo, he cursed, dropped the showerhead on the floor, wrapped a towel around his waist and went to open it.
“Hold your horses…” he muttered.
He flung open the door, saw his visitor. “Fuck!”
Bharat stood there. Blood dripping down his tee shirt, backpack slung on his shoulder and he wore two different pairs of sneakers on sockless feet.
“What the hell happened to you?” Thierron jerked him inside.
“I am going back to California. Right now,” Bharat wiped blood from his chin.
Thierron groaned and rushed to the bathroom. Shut off the shower and grabbed the emergency medical kit his room came with. He also remembered to grab a pair of sweat pants and slung them on before hobbling back out.
Bharat was changing into a fresh tee shirt. An ugly bruise formed on his mid-section. A purple splotch.
“Dude! What the hell happened to you?” Thierron repeated, visions of Bharat using again, slid into his head.
Bharat shook his head as he used the previous tee to mop up the blood. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve booked a ticket already. Flight leaves at four. I am going to the airport now. Inform Henry and Donald, will you?”
“Yeah, of course. But what is going on, Bharat?” A sudden thought struck him. “Did Sophia…did she do this to you?” he asked, cautiously.
Bharat chuckled. A humorless sound. “It wasn’t her. Her brother did it.”
Thierron cursed low under his breath. “Indian brothers are over-protective as fuck, are they?”
Bharat shook his head. “No, it wasn’t like that. It was because of me. I deserved it.”
“Sit down, will ya, pal? I’ll just fix the nose. I hope it’s not broken?”
~~~~~
Bharat shook his head. He winced as the action made the pounding in his entire body worse.
His heart was sluggish. He wished it wouldn’t beat at all. This hurt. God. What had he been thinking? Tangling with Sophia Roy Kulashreshtha? How had he ever thought he’d be able to be with her with no consequence at all? Was he high?
Was he delusional?
“No. My nose is not broken,” Bharat slurred. But he sat, because his legs refused to support him.
He sat on the coffee table and when Thierron pointed to the nice couch, he sat there. His hands slumped between his thighs, while blood dripped on the floor of The Aria’s four-thousand-dollar hotel room.
Sophia would be appalled at the mess…Bharat ordered his brain to stop going there.
Thierron sighed, opened the medical kit and grabbed everything required. He took a position on the coffee table and gently dabbed at Bharat’s nose with the gauze. It soaked up a lot of blood. A lot.
Bharat didn’t even flinch. It was like he wasn’t even there.
“Please tell me you have not been using,” Thierron muttered.
Bharat shook his head. “No. I am not high, Thierron. I am just…” Hurt. Broken.
But he could not say those things out loud without admitting it was all his fault. He had made Sophia cry. Dear god, she’d cried so much. He hoped she was okay. He hoped Nakul was nice to her.
His heart hurt when he thought of her so he stopped the thought cold. Leaving numbing vastness behind.
“I am not high,” he repeated. “I didn’t drink. Didn’t smoke. Didn’t do drugs.”
“That’s good.” Thierron replaced the gauze with another, swabbing it with antiseptic this time.
Bharat cursed at the sting of the antiseptic - the first reaction he’d shown.
“How the hell did you almost break your nose, you idiot? How did Sophia’s brother get here in like a day? He lives in Delhi, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, he was supposed to be in India. Jeez. Can you cool it with the antiseptic?” Bharat shrugged back but Thierron clamped a hand on his shoulder and made him stay still.
Bharat thought about it for a second. “US passport,” he murmured. “They both have US passports. They are US citizens, technically.”
“I see.”
Bharat doubted Thierron saw anything but he kept his comment to himself. Endured the man’s ministrations. He figured the faster Thierron was done, the faster he could leave and he wanted to leave. He needed to leave.
He could not stay here one more second in this city, this hotel room without thinking about Sophia and how much he wanted her and how he could never ever have her.
She’d asked for money. She’d asked for money for the time they’d spent together. Cheapening it. Degrading the beautiful moments they had shared. Putting a fucking price tag on it.
“I paid Sophia,” Bharat said abruptly. “She asked for money so I gave her the money I owed her dad. His investment in JoyXS. I should have done it years ago. I don’t know why I never thought of that.”
Thierron pursed his lips as he fished for a band-aid to stick on Bharat’s nose. The bleeding had stopped once he mopped it all up.
“That was a nice thing to do.” Then after a second’s pause, he asked, “She asked for money?”
Bharat nodded and felt the action reverberate through his skull. “Yes, she did.” He smiled. A sick parody.
Thierron felt a spurt of sympathy for his old friend. Sure, Bharat was a genius with tech but his people radar had always sucked. And this was cruel, the ultimate cruelty. “That is a shitty thing to do.”
Bharat shrugged. “I should have never gone after her… when I found out who she was. This whole thing was doomed.”
“She knew it too. It’s not like you forced her or something right?”
Bharat thought about the times he’d forced himself onboard The Dragon. Paid people off so he could sneak in to see her. He hadn’t physically forced himself on her…
“I didn’t make it easy for her to say no.”
“Why?” Thierron was flummoxed. He didn’t understand these modern day relationships. All drama and passion. No substance. Christ.
“I wanted to. I wanted her so much. She is like…you know, that first ray of sunshine you see in the morning before you open your eyes and fully wake up. It’s warm and golden on your face.”
Thierron stared at his friend as he spouted utter garbage. “Fuck! You’ve lost it, haven’t you?”
Bharat shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter. She is gone,” he repeated to himself. “Her brother came and punched me. Said terrible things to his own sister. And I couldn’t stop him. Then she asked me for money and said I did not understand the concept of family because I am a poor orphan with no one. So yeah. It doesn’t matter.”
He wondered how he could say all of this and not lose his mind. It must be the numbing vastness. Protecting him. Shielding him like a firewall against the wormhole of heartbreak.
Bharat chuckled. “Well, you can now say I told you so.”
Thierron squeezed his shoulders, his eyes shadowed with misery and sympathy. “I am not going to. Is it still hurting?”
“Yeah.”
“I meant the nose,” Thierron said gently.
Bharat’s eyes clouded with reflected misery and aching. “I know. I know.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” Shiv said, one day and an interminable plane ride later.
“I don’t,” Bharat said. “I really don’t.”
“But, I’m proud of you,” Shiv continued. “You’re a good man. A good friend and you admit it when you screw up. And I am so fucking proud of you for sitting here at my bar and ordering iced tea.”
Bharat drained his glass of lemon iced tea. “This should be whiskey,” he said. Just like he had at the airport bar, on the flight, every time he’d texted Shiv. And he cursed himself blue. “Backsliding did no one any good, did it?”
Shiv slung a hand over his friend’s shoulder. The music at GWBG was
mellow rock, one of Coldplay’s earliest hits. “No, it doesn’t. As a champion backslider I can tell you it sucks bad.”
Bharat’s lips twitched into a smile. “I don’t want to laugh. Fuck you for making me laugh when my nose hurts.”
“I’m not sure Naina will take kindly to me fucking you, bro.” Shiv refilled Bharat’s glass with plain tap water. Four iced teas was the cut-off limit. Besides, he knew from personal experience no amount of sugar and water was going to fix what ailed Bharat.
Bharat gave him a baleful look. “Rub your perfect life in my face some more, will you?”
Shiv grinned, a more common occurrence now than it had been in years. “You know I’d never have Naina if it wasn’t for you.”
Bharat shook his head. “I should have kissed her harder on our dinner date, that’s what I should have done.”
“Thank you,” Shiv said simply, instead of saying something sarcastic back. The time had come, he decided, for his friend to stop feeling sorry for himself. Self-pity did no one any good either.
“And I’m eternally grateful to you for not kissing her harder. And, for helping me find Naina again.”
Bharat fiddled with the rim of the water glass. “Is there a point here, Shiv? Or can I brood in peace?”
“The point, Bharat,” Shiv said, “Is that it took you exactly five minutes to become the man you were six years ago. One punch and you became an insecure, strung-out brat.”
Bharat’s eyes flashed but he held his tongue. Shiv gave him props for it. Good, he was reacting.
“So, you’re saying I should have thanked Nakul for punching me? For calling Sophia unprintable names? I should be grateful she took my money and my heart?”
Shiv sighed, as he thought about everything Bharat had told him about the pretty card dealer from Delhi. More important, what he’d left out. And knew Bharat was in love, punch you in the feels love. “The heart you gave her for free, bro. Free and clear. Don’t bother fronting with me. And no, I’m not saying you should be grateful but you don’t have to be a coward either.”
Bharat straightened. “A coward? I’m a coward now?”
Shiv shrugged. “You didn’t fight for her, did you? You didn’t fight for anything. You caught the first flight out of Sydney and ran back home. That’s not a brave move.”
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