by Sonali Dev
Mili had no idea what she was going to do. There was a huge window behind her, but it was sealed shut. Not that she could move if she tried. The nurse had put her ankle and her wrist in splints but it still hurt like a Deghi red chili in her eye. How had she been so stupid? Her stupidity was going to cost Ridhi her happily ever after. At least she had bought time. This entire mess had to have taken at least an hour. By now Ridhi and Ravi were definitely far enough from Ypsilanti to have a chance. The thought brightened her. Plus, she had no idea where they were, so she couldn’t give them away. Also, maybe after having her throw up on his shoes, Ridhi’s brother-slash-cousin had left and decided to chase Ridhi down on his own.
He walked in. He lifted the floral curtain with one bulging arm and filled up the tiny space it enclosed. Mili blinked. She didn’t think she had ever seen anyone who looked quite like that before. At least not in real life. Not only was he as perfectly chiseled as a statue, he was also impeccably put together like one of those models in ads who tried to look oh so casual about wearing perfectly fitted, shiny new clothes around the house. But who were they trying to fool? Except this one was barefoot.
She swallowed guiltily and he followed her gaze to his feet. “They couldn’t find hospital slippers in my size.”
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Good Lord, what size feet do you have?”
“Fourteen.” One side of his lips quirked up as he watched her reaction.
For once she couldn’t find a thing to say. Her own feet were a size four and a half.
“How are you feeling?” His golden eyes moved from the cast on her leg to the cast on her arm.
“It’s not too bad.” Or at least it wouldn’t be once the medicine they were pumping through the IV started to work. “I’m sorry about the shoes. I didn’t mean to do that. But I swear I don’t know anything.” Oh no, why had she said that? It must be the stupid medicines.
He blinked and raised his eyebrows. He looked so genuinely surprised she wanted to slap his face. The one thing she couldn’t stand was people playing games.
“Seriously, no point pretending, I know why you’re here and you’re wasting your time. I’ll never tell you anything.”
He opened his mouth to say something but it seemed she had completely stumped him and he shut it again.
“What kind of brother are you anyway? How can you stand in the way of love? Separating two people who are meant to be together is a sin of the worst kind. Don’t you see that?”
Anger darkened the translucent brown of his eyes. He glared at her as though she was the one who had done something wrong, not him. “How can you love someone you’ve never met?”
“What do you mean never met? Did you think a little separation would kill the love? I know you’re playing the heartless film-villain type right now. But don’t you understand how it feels to be in love?”
Samir just stood there opening and closing his mouth. For the umpteenth time in the short while he’d known her, he wondered if the girl was completely crazy. And she wouldn’t stop talking long enough for him to get his thoughts in order.
“You seem like such a nice person. See how you helped me. No one who can be so gentle, so—” Suddenly her pitch-black eyes lost focus and her lids drooped as if they had turned too heavy. She seemed to drift off.
“Did they give you something for the pain?” he asked. She looked like she’d taken a hit of something potent. “Do you want me to get the doctor?”
Her eyes fluttered open, then shut, then open, then shut. Incoherent sounds came from her mouth. Her lids kept fluttering as if she were fighting to stay awake, until finally her lashes fanned out against her cheeks.
He’d never seen lashes like that. They made him want to touch them just to make sure they were real. He’d never seen eyes like that. Her irises were the size of small coins, the color of onyx mined from the remotest deserts of Rajasthan, and they harbored an innocence from some long-bygone era. Except it was all just pretense. He imagined those fake-innocent eyes skimming the legal notice she had sent his brother and they turned beady in his head.
In the event of Virat Rathod’s death his entire pension fund, insurance monies and his share of all ancestral property belong to Malvika Rathod. The words seared like brands on his brain.
In the event of Virat Rathod’s death.
Her eyes fluttered open again, pain and narcotics playing up the wide-eyed innocence just the way diffused lighting did in still shots. Samir reminded himself who she was. The woman who’d cared only about getting her hands on the haveli when they didn’t know if Bhai was going to live or die.
“Sleep now. We can talk later.”
“See, so nice.” Those were her last words before her breathing evened into sleep.
Samir woke up to find his face pressed into a paper-covered mattress. Damn jet lag. He straightened up and noticed her fingers clutching his, her touch cool and soft. She had the smallest, most delicate hands he’d ever seen. Her entire hand from fingertips to wrist spanned a little more than his palm. The way her eyes had widened when he’d told her his shoe size flashed in his mind and he smiled. When he pulled his fingers from hers she stirred, but when he patted her forehead she calmed back into sleep.
All night she had tossed and turned and moaned in pain. And a tiny piece of him had been glad she wasn’t alone. No one should be alone in this state. Finally it had been easier to pull his chair close to her bed and pat her head when she winced. It seemed to be the only way to calm her down.
He looked at his Breitling. It was almost midnight. They had both been asleep for hours. He stood up and stretched and separated the blinds to look out the window. The sky was an endless black. He was wide awake. And he had absolutely nowhere to be. He was supposed to have checked into the hotel yesterday, but with Malvika’s accident, all his plans had turned upside down, quite literally.
He glanced around the room. His washed and ruined Mephistos were drying in a corner. Fluorescent red numbers flashed on some sort of monitor on one wall. Plastic tubes and medical contraptions covered every surface. Amidst the clutter, on a rollaway cart, lay a yellow notepad and a pen. Samir walked up to it and picked them up. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself sitting down by her side, and writing.
When Mili came to, for the first few moments she had no idea where she was. Then she tried to move and the pain that ripped from her ankle to her wrist almost split her in half and dragged everything back. She must’ve moaned or screamed or something because the man sitting by her bedside frowned and leaned closer. She forced the painful fog in her brain to clear.
Oh no. It was Ridhi’s Greek god, male-model brother-slash-cousin-slash-whatever relative he was. They must have really drugged her good because despite his hair standing up on one side and bedsheet wrinkles on his cheek he still looked as perfectly put together as he had before she fell asleep.
He studied her with honey brown eyes that belonged in those ultra-fancy magazines Ridhi loved to read. “ ’Morning.”
Oh God, his voice sounded exactly the way he looked. Golden, impeccable, as if the creator had paid special attention while crafting it. She frowned. As a rule Mili disliked pretty people. They reminded her of that girl Kamini in her village who always got what she wanted just because she looked like some sort of Bollywood star with marble white skin. Ugh.
He leaned closer and patted her forehead with far too much familiarity. Good Lord, he even smelled the way he looked, like that perfume they folded into Ridhi’s magazines. Mili narrowed her eyes and gave him her fiercest look. How dare he get so overly familiar anyway? And act as if he were doing her some sort of favor. He was the reason she was here in the first place. He was the reason her new bike was broken. Her beautiful bike. She suppressed a sob.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as if he’d known her for years. And why was he grinning like that?
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” she snapped.
That threw him. Good. “I believe I
haven’t introduced myself. I’m Samir Ra—Veluri.”
“Raveluri? What kind of name is that?”
“Not Raveluri. Veluri.”
“Then why did you say Raveluri?”
He closed his eyes, swallowed, and then opened them again. “Can we start over?”
“Sure, but first please take your hand off my head.”
Greek God looked utterly offended, as if no one had ever had the gall to ask him to stop touching them. “Sorry, it seemed to calm you down when you were in pain, so I thought—”
“You stayed here with me all night?” The heat of her temper fizzled like water on a hot tavaa pan. Then flared again.
Through all her mind’s acrobatics, he remained as calm as the Buddha himself. Which made her temper flare some more.
“You told the nurse there was no one she could call,” he said with utmost patience, “so I thought—”
“You chased my only friend away. Now you want me to be thankful?” Everything that had happened after he knocked on her door flashed in her mind and she wanted to slap his perfect face.
“Who said anything about being thankful?” His hands tightened on the yellow writing pad he was clutching and the muscle in his jaw twitched the tiniest bit, but other than that he kept his smile as serene as ever.
“You had that look, like you expected gratitude.” Just for walking the earth, just like that stupid cow Kamini.
“Can I ask you a question?”
She shrugged.
“Are you crazy?”
See, she was right. All pretty people were horribly rude. That’s when it struck her. It was morning. Ridhi had to have left Michigan.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked.
“Because I just realized that you won’t find Ridhi now. She got away.”
He looked completely dumbfounded. “Who’s Ridhi?”
“Who’s Ridhi?”
After they’d both repeated the phrase “Who’s Ridhi?” over and over again an absurd number of times, Samir had to find a way to exit the loop. This girl was certifiable, no doubt about it. If he had to hunt down a girl halfway across the world, why couldn’t it at least be someone who bordered on sane? Someone nice and normal. Yeah, right, when was the last time he had met a nice and normal girl? At least she was easy on the eyes. And sitting next to her, after a year-long dry spell, he hadn’t been able to stop writing.
Holy. Fuck. Talk about complicating the plot.
“Okay, listen, if I knew who this Ridhi was, would I have asked who she was?” He tried logic. Although from what he’d seen thus far logic didn’t stand much of a chance with this one.
“What kind of man doesn’t know his own sister-slash-cousin-slash-whatever you are?”
Did she just say “sister-slash-cousin”? Who used the word slash in a sentence? “So you think this Ridhi person is my sister-slash-cousin?” Not that he knew what that even meant. Could she speak Sane, please? He continued to smile at her with that utterly absorbed look that made chicks go all gooey in the head.
Her onyx eyes narrowed, then widened in shock. “You’re not Ridhi’s brother?”
Now they were getting somewhere. He nodded. “Not her brother-slash-cousin-slash-any other relation.”
Her flawless chocolate skin went the oddest shade of maroon. He didn’t know how she did it but her super-tiny form shrank into itself. “Oh. Then why were you chasing me?”
Great question. And the perfect cue.
He reached for his messenger bag with the papers that had brought him here, playing the lines he had to say in his head: Virat’s plane. The annulment.
The yellow notepad slipped from his hand and fluttered to the gray linoleum floor. He squatted next to it. It was more than half-filled with closely scrawled words. He picked it up and stroked the ink-filled lines with his thumb. The words had burst from him all night like water from a hose. And man, had it felt good.
“What’s that?” Her onyx eyes skimmed the pad and met his as she tried to sit up. Pain exploded in her eyes and she folded over on her side.
He sprang up and leaned over her curled-up body. “Shh, it’s okay.”
Hair spilled over her face. He pushed it aside to reveal wet cheeks and a face scrunched up in pain. “Try to breathe. I’ll call the nurse.”
By the time the nurse had pumped her full of pain meds again, Samir found himself firmly in the middle of a classic good news–bad news scenario. The bad news was that he was stuck playing nursemaid for the next few weeks. For one, there was no one else to do it. For another, he just couldn’t bring himself to serve her annulment papers while she lay there doped out of her mind. The good news was that when he went home in a few weeks not only was he going to have his brother’s annulment, he was also going to have a completed script.
“Thanks.” It was the first thing she said when she opened her eyes.
Samir looked up from the yellow pad—it was almost out of pages—and found a shyness on her face that hadn’t been there before.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m afraid to move,” she said, barely moving her lips, but her eyes smiled. “You didn’t answer my question earlier. Why were you chasing me?”
“I wasn’t. I just moved into your building. My uncle is from your village, Hari Bishnoi. He gave me your address. I was just trying to stop by and say hello when you took off. I just followed you.” His writing mojo was definitely back. In all its genius.
“Well, that was stupid.”
So much for genius.
Seriously, she jumped off a balcony and rode a bike into a tree and he was stupid? But instead of telling her that he gave her one of those made-just-for-chicks smiles he had honed to an art form during his modeling years.
She frowned. “So, you’re just my new neighbor?”
“Yup.” Or at least he would be as soon as he got DJ to find him an empty flat in that shit-smelling building of hers.
“And you sat here all night watching over me when you don’t even know me?” Her eyes filled with tears.
What the fuck?
She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again and met his eyes with such directness he felt it all the way in his gut. “I think it’s time we started over.” She touched her heart with her unhurt hand, a one-armed namaste. “Hello, Samir. My friends call me Mili and I’m honored to make your acquaintance.”
8
The sound of Samir moving about in her kitchen woke Mili. She had been home for almost a week and Samir had planted himself by her side so firmly she was reminded of her neighbor’s goat in Balpur. The goat had shadowed Mili so insistently Naani had named him “Viratji” in a bid to move the fates along. Except that unlike the goat or his namesake, Samir had actually saved Mili’s life. If not for him, surely she would have died either of starvation or an exploded bladder.
She sat up on the mattress on the floor. Samir had moved Ridhi’s mattress to the living room for her. For the hundredth time since she had met him, she sent up an apology for comparing him to Kamini. The only thing Kamini had ever bothered to save was her marble-white complexion from the Rajasthan sun. Mili had always marveled at her impressive collection of umbrellas and her diligent use of them. The only thing Samir was proving to have in common with Kamini was said white complexion but with none of the proud awareness of possessing it. He might strut around in that way of film heroes with overly bulky arms—as if he were lugging buckets of water in both hands—but he had carried Mili up and down the stairs to her doctor’s appointments, fed her, and made sure she took all of her thousand medicines before the pain killed her.
As usual, he had propped up the crutches against the wall so they were within easy reach. Frustration tugged at her mouth and she frowned at the blasted things. What was the point of those crutches anyway? She’d been brilliant enough to hurt her wrist and her ankle at the same time, so she had no real way of gripping the stupid things to push herself anywhere. Add to that the fact that she was the most u
ncoordinated fool in all of Balpur and those crutches were going to stay propped against that wall until one of her broken parts healed.
“Why are you glowering at the crutches again?” Samir grinned his toothpaste-model grin and it was almost as beautiful as the sandwiches in his hands. “Do you need to go?” He indicated the bathroom door with a flick of his head and Mili wanted to die.
His stupid grin widened. It was a good thing her medication turned her into a drooling, groggy loon who dropped off into la-la land without warning. If it weren’t for being drugged and half-conscious she didn’t know how she could have handled letting a complete stranger help her to the bathroom and then wait outside while she struggled to do her business. And he usually did it without any hint of that amused grin he was flashing at her now.
He nudged her with the plate and she realized she was staring at her hands to avoid meeting his gaze. She gaped at the twin pieces of art he had piled on the two plates Ridhi had left behind. Her mouth watered like a starving street urchin’s. Every kind of vegetable was stacked up in layers of color between two brown pieces of bread.
At first she’d been embarrassed to let him into her kitchen, given that the sum total of her food supply included one half-eaten Hershey bar, a carton of milk, and stale, greasy noodles. But he had gone out and picked up bags full of groceries, and all her medicines, and a heating pad. He’d insisted the groceries were really for him, because he needed to eat too and apparently there were no utensils in his apartment.
He had let her use his cell phone to call the Institute, Panda Kong, and her professors to let them know that she needed to stay off her ankle for two weeks. Professor Bernstein at the Institute had told her to take four weeks if she needed to. “I’ll remember to exploit you once you get back on your feet,” he’d said with so much kindness she had spilled tears onto Samir’s super-fancy phone.
Egghead at Panda Kong had been far less gracious. “Don’t know if can keep job whole two weeks,” he’d said. But at least he hadn’t fired her like she’d expected him to. She’d been prepared to beg if needed, but a promise to return to work as soon as she could had been enough. How on earth was she going to send money to Naani this month with two weeks of dishwashing wages gone? And there was still the little issue of the rent. Not to mention paying Samir back for her medicines and the groceries.
