by Sonali Dev
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice too loud in her silence.
* * *
When Nikhil pulled away from her, she felt so bereft she knew she was in trouble.
“I’m really fine, Nikhil. The sweatshirt took most of it.” She wasn’t lying; she had barely felt the three dots of oil. Which was more than she could say about what being touched by him had done.
She, who felt safe with no one, wanted to crawl into his arms again, disappear into his wide, hollow shoulders. For all his emaciated body, the spirit of him was huge and protective, and it had enveloped her so completely that for a few moments she had forgotten to draw breath.
And he wasn’t even trying. Not only was he not trying, he was trying hard not to be the person he so obviously was. What would become of her if he found himself again?
What would happen if he stopped fighting that thing that had flared between them like a wickless flame, borne from nothing, yet sustained on something?
She had tried not to face it, to not name it. But what she was feeling for Nikhil—what her body was feeling—was not its usual nothingness.
He opened and shut a few drawers and held up a tube of something, his eyes still dark with concern, bright with wanting. “It’ll blister if you don’t put something on it.”
He held out his hand, but she couldn’t let him touch her again. Her entire life, the proximity of any man had brought with it either abject terror or absolute disgust or some combination of both. That sickened feeling was actually her body’s default reaction to almost any sort of awareness of itself. Except when she danced. When she was dancing, she ceased being herself. She became her dance. When you were movement and rhythm and music, nothing bad registered on your whirlwind of a body.
When Nikhil touched her, it was like she was dancing. Her body moved and melted and felt different. She felt different. She felt.
“Let me,” he said. His gaze touched the patch of skin still cold from the ice he’d rubbed into it, and the strangest vacuum flared in her belly, hungry for something, raw with hope, dizzy with a feeling of safety.
Only it wasn’t safety, it was madness. Madness that felt like hope but was a hallucination.
She took the tube from him. He was supposed to be the vulnerable one. But the danger of him being hurt by this twin heat burning in their gazes was next to nothing. “Nikhil, you promised we could go to Jen’s apartment and search there.” She rubbed ointment into the burns she couldn’t even feel.
All the warmth left his gaze. The mention of Jen made anger rise in its place, hard and fast.
She had to fan it. “I wish we had all the time in the world for you to work through your family drama. Much as I’m enjoying stuffing pastries for your cousin’s baby shower, for a baby she doesn’t even want, I can’t stay away from Joy any longer.”
Instead of letting the anger she’d fanned blaze, his brows drew together over eyes that tried to gauge what she really wanted.
“I don’t know what you’re up to,” he said, “but could we keep Ria out of it, please?”
She couldn’t. Because she needed his anger to push him to act so she could get away from him. “Yes, let’s. Let’s keep Ria and Jen both out of it, because you were right, I have never been in their shoes. I . . .” She couldn’t stutter, she had to do this. “I always wanted my baby.”
Her words hit their mark. Shame burned inside her. She’d been looking for anger, and now here it was, hot and potent in his eyes. Still, he took a breath, giving her another second to back away, but she raised her chin, showing him no remorse, and he snapped.
“And what about Joy’s dad? Did he want him too? Why is it that you keep lying about him? Why do all those hard-as-nails defenses of yours spike out every time he comes up? Do you even know who the father of your child is?”
She wrapped her arms around herself, pressed her knees together, her thighs, clenched everything to keep herself together. She had hurled rocks at him to instigate him into action. He was just reacting. She deserved this.
But, dear lord, it hurt.
As soon as he said it, all his anger evaporated again. “Jess, I’m—”
She raised her hand to cut him off, to keep him away. She was glad he had said it because it snapped her out of her delusions. It was a good reminder of how he saw her under everything, of the huge distance between them.
“I know how you see me,” she said, her voice steady. “An unwed mother. A chorus dancer. A film extra.” What an apt name for the profession. For her. It wasn’t the first time someone had called her a whore. It wouldn’t be the last. She didn’t care.
He opened his mouth, but she could not do this any longer. “No. Don’t insult me by denying it. Yes, you and Jen and your huge, noble hearts that bleed for the entire world. I admire it. I really do. So you can insult what I do, look down on me, I’m okay with it. The world needs people like you.”
He shook his head, but she couldn’t stop. “And yes, you too. You might think you will never go back to being who you were. But you can’t control it. It’s who you are. I can see it coming back. But me? My world is just me and Joy. It doesn’t matter who his father is. What matters is that I need to go home to him. And if it means begging you to get your act together so we can end this, I’ll do it.”
* * *
How on earth had the conversation devolved into this? One moment heat had sparkled between their bodies, the next she was talking about him not respecting her? He reached for her, but she winced away from his touch and backed out of the kitchen, taking all the warmth in the air with her.
She stormed up the stairs with him close on her heels and slammed the door shut behind her.
He was about to shove it open. But he stilled his hand. How could she think he respected her after what he had said? All she’d done since they’d met was help him, help Jen, whom she hadn’t even known. If he knew anything, he knew that she felt tied to Jen. And for whatever that connection was, she had picked him out of the dirt more times than anyone else in his life ever had. She had spent all this time away from her child for Jen, to do the thing that he should have done, so she, a complete stranger, didn’t have to.
How had he let those bastards go? How had he not burned down everyone who had done that to his wife? How had he not destroyed the world to complete the work she had given her life to? How had he let his grief and anger shut him down like that?
He knocked on her door. “Jess, I’m coming in.”
She didn’t answer. He twisted the doorknob, giving her time before pushing it open. She stood there facing him, her arms folded across her chest, her usual “you can’t touch me” mask on. She looked exactly the way he expected her to look.
“You want to grab your bag? In case we don’t get through everything today, we might need to stay the night.”
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“We’re going to Jen’s apartment. We’re finishing this. So you can stop instigating me and then twisting my words.”
Despite her best effort, the relief on her face was so stark his heart folded in on itself.
“And for the record, you have how I see you completely wrong.”
29
Dharavi is darker than most any place I’ve been to. But its spirit is brighter than all the world put together. The lotus, they love to say here, is the purest of flowers and it thrives best in the muddiest of ponds.
—Dr. Jen Joshi
The jagged edges of the Chicago skyline loomed in front of them as they flew down the road. Nikhil’s mood had swung from gentle and purposeful all the way back to dark and stormy, but she could do nothing to protect him from what was coming.
“It’s beautiful,” she said quickly, as he swung onto a curving overpass and the lake came into view, shimmering silver in the late-evening light.
“Yeah. Just beautiful,” he said.
Wow. Three entire words. He had been silent since she’d heaved a sigh of relief and settled into the car.
He screeched into another turn and pulled into an underground parking lot in a high-rise building, slamming some numbers into a keypad on a post as they entered.
He didn’t even pause to think about the numbers he punched in. She wondered when he’d last been here. He pulled into a parking spot, bouncing to a stop inches from a concrete column with a number painted across it in red. His breath came in gusts, the only proof that his rigid body still breathed.
“Nikhil?”
He spun around so fast she started, and before she could stop it a yelp escaped her.
His face turned livid. “What, now you’re afraid of me? What do you think I’m going to do? Now, right now the way I’m feeling . . . you think I’d touch you? You think I’m thinking about touching you?”
He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white, his anger crowding her. She slipped out of the car before she reached for him, and sucked in a concrete-laden breath. This need to comfort him had to stop. She reminded herself why they were here.
This was it. They had to find the evidence here.
There were no more places to look.
She had gone over all the things Jess had said in her head, but there was no more help to be had. She closed her eyes and tried to get a hold of her stupid thudding heart that spasmed painfully when Nikhil emerged from the car.
This wasn’t the Nikhil who had cried in her arms, twice, who had asked to sleep in the bed meant for her. But this wasn’t the Nikhil who had teased her by the river either, who had run a thumb across her lips. The Nikhil emerging from the car was one Nikhil dragging that other Nikhil behind him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, coming up to her.
She didn’t mean to but she snapped at him. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?” He looked ready to say something, but then he turned around and started walking.
She fell in step behind him. A glass door led to an elevator lobby. He slammed the door open and it slammed behind him. No matter what had happened between them, he had always been considerate and polite. Something no one else had ever done. Her hand shook as she started to push the door back open.
Think about Joy. Think about Jen. Think about . . .
Just as she touched it, the door flew open, the way doors between them couldn’t seem to stop doing.
He held it open, not meeting her eyes, and waited for her to enter.
She walked past him.
“Jess, I said I’m sor—”
“I know.” She slammed her palm into the elevator button.
“This is hard for me, okay?”
“I know.” She should have stopped there, but she couldn’t. “You don’t think I know this is hard for you?” The urge to reach out and touch his face, to comfort him, was so strong she clutched her sleeves in her fist.
“Why are you so kind to me? Why do you take it when I’m a jerk?”
That was it. “No, Nikhil. Don’t. Don’t be like this. Don’t be nice. You know, if every time you are nice to me you have to balance it out with being awful, why even bother?”
“I said I was sorry.”
“And I said I know you are.”
The elevator arrived, and she stepped in.
He followed her and pressed the number twenty-one. They watched the numbers change in silence.
He ran his fingers over the hair now covering his head in a thick jet-black stubble, the gesture so familiar she wanted to scream. At least he wasn’t doing the ring-twirling thing as much nowadays. His thumb went to his ring, her eyes went to his thumb, and he pulled it back.
“What?” he said, his eyes screaming at her to not answer his question. God, they were such a mess. No. He was a mess. She was just far too tangled up in his mess. The elevator door opened, and she stalked out of it only to have her arm gripped behind her.
It was an aggressive gesture, so of course Nikhil pulled it off with the utmost gentleness.
She groaned. An electric spark zinged through her belly as she met his eyes.
“Don’t be angry. Please.”
“I’m not the one who’s angry here, Nikhil. You are, and it’s not at me.” Shut up. Shut up before you say something you can’t take back.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, staring at his hand on her arm.
She wanted to yank it back, but he looked so devastated, she placed her fingers on his and tried to peel them off her arm. “It’s okay to live again, you know. It’s okay to feel things again.”
He let her arm go. “Really?”
She stuck out her chin. She was fed up with his innuendos and guilt trips, fed up with having to shut up. “Yes. Really.”
“This from a person who hides behind the largest sweatshirts she can find? Who trembles when she sits in a car? You’re the queen of moving on, aren’t you? No baggage there. None at all.” He dug his hands into his pockets.
“This isn’t about me.”
“Of course not. Nothing is ever about you. Under those loose clothes, under that damn frozen shell, how can anything be? This is about me. I’m the one who’s hiding from the world. I’m the one who won’t let anyone see anything about me. Won’t let anyone so much as touch me without reliving whatever the heck happened to me.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“You’re right. I don’t. Because you answer every question with deflection. God forbid, you let anyone get anywhere near you.”
She spun around and faced him. “Now we’re getting somewhere. At least you’re admitting that you want to get near me. And you can’t handle that you do.”
Her words echoed in the silence across the long, brightly lit corridor, the kind of silence that follows an explosion.
Nikhil looked like she had slapped him.
She had gone too far. But she was sick of it, sick of his seesaw and what it did to her. “It doesn’t matter, Nikhil. You’re right. There’s nothing here. Nothing that you could—”
He grabbed her, her hair, her face, whatever his fingers could reach, and slammed her body into his. Taking the rest of her words with his lips.
* * *
The shock of the contact, her startled intake of breath, the fact that she pushed into him instead of pulling away fried Nikhil’s brain. Jolted his circuits as if someone had thrown a hair dryer into his bath. He yanked himself away, shaking. She swayed toward him, her lips following his, as if the thread of his kiss tied them together.
Her eyes, the innocence in them, the trust, the hot molten trust. All the other shit erased for one blessed moment. Gone. His hand went to her cheek. The soft curve of it sank into his palm, filled it, the feel of her filling him. It felt so damn good. To be able to touch someone. To be able to feel something.
She didn’t move away, and it made him stupid.
This time when his lips met hers, it was in wonder and greed and hunger. He plucked at her lower lip, fitted his lips around the lush, erotic curve. Endless softness, honey sweetness. He suckled her, tasted her soft, wet response. She melted into him. Her mouth, the skin under his hand, all of it melted and coated him, cool salve on his burning, torn-up self. Without even touching him, she wrapped him up.
He dragged his lips across hers, tasting the edge of her mouth where a pinprick dimple sank into her cheek. He pressed his cheek into hers, soaking her up. Taking all he could.
Her cheeks were wet.
He pulled away.
There was so much pain in her eyes, he knew he had gone too far. He should never have touched her. Not when his heart was supposed to belong to someone else. Did belong to someone else.
She shrank back against the door he’d pushed her up against.
“Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, leaning forward as though she meant to lay her forehead on his shoulder, but then she pulled away as though she’d given too much away again.
“Then why are you crying?”
She reached up and touched his cheek, and held up her fingers. They were his tears, not hers.
He took several steps back, but he couldn’t go too far.
Silence stretched and wrapped around them and he had to break it. “You’re right,” he said, and she looked like he had kicked her. “I can’t handle it. Whatever this is between us.”
She collected herself. Of course she did. Rolled back into that pristine ball. Only, it didn’t look easy anymore. This time he saw what it took each time she gathered herself up like that. He hated it. Hated seeing all that she struggled to hide. Hated how easy it was with her. To see. To show. To forget.
He stepped into the home he had shared with his wife.
He never wanted to forget. Never could forget.
* * *
Jess followed Nikhil into the apartment. It was another snapshot straight out of a Karan Johar film. Even with white sheets covering the furniture it was rich, luxurious, and warm. With high ceilings, exposed brick walls, massive vibrant paintings, and cozily arranged furniture. The kitchen and living room were all one space, separated by a glass-and-concrete breakfast bar. A vision of Jen and Nikhil sitting on those leather bar stools and sharing a married moment splashed across her mind like ice water someone had tossed at her while she was still burning from his touch.
She wanted this over. Please, could this just be over?
Each step Nikhil took looked labored, as though the polished wood floors had suddenly turned into an endless desert under a brutal sun. All sense of self-preservation told her to get as far away from him as she could. He stopped, and she stepped closer. The desire to be needed by him beat like a live thing in her chest.
Her fingers itched to touch her lips, where his lips had touched her. She’d felt the touch everywhere, still felt it. What had that even been? How was she still standing after that?
She waited for the horrible memory of other lips to erase his. But her mind wouldn’t allow it. Not yet. One of the posters in Joy’s school said TOUCH HEALS. The quote had always annoyed her. One of those lies meant only for posters with pretty pictures. Now she would give anything for one more swab of his touch against her raw self.
