by Sonali Dev
Then she really looked at him. Not her deer-in-the-headlights look, but a look from before everything had gone to hell. “I’m glad. I really am. And Jess was right that day, we shouldn’t have left you alone on that ship for so long.”
“You tried. I know how hard you tried. I’m sorry I shut you out. And I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me about the baby. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.”
She wrapped her arms around him. She had to do it sideways, navigating her belly and the fact that they were sitting down. It was a weird, contorted hug, but it wrapped him up exactly right. He tightened his arms around her shoulders, and all that was skewed between them seemed to slide closer to its right place.
“You’re here now, baby,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here now. I should have told you. You were the first person I wanted to tell. I was terrified.”
“I know. I know”
“Viky was terrified . . . is terrified. I thought he’d be all jubilant, but he’s been freaking out the entire time. Not that he’ll admit it.” She took a breath, and met his eyes more squarely than she had in a very long time. “Nikhil, if it happens, if I lose my mind, you have to take care of him, okay?”
He pulled her close again and spoke into her hair. “Lose your mind even more, you mean?”
She smiled against his shoulder. He pulled away a little and made sure she could see his face. “We’re going to watch you like a hawk, Ria. We’ll medicate you to death if we have to. You’re going to be fine.”
She squeezed him harder, and they sat there like that forever.
“I think I know why Jess didn’t want to do the blessing,” she said finally, letting him go. Twisting with that belly couldn’t be easy. “Do you mind if I go get her?”
He knew how Jess felt about Ria. He’d seen the way she watched her. He really should be the one to go up there and set things right.
“Please, Nikhil. Trust me.” She stood, or tried to. He gave her a push to help her along and they both laughed. Then she turned and waddled up the stairs before he could stop her.
Maybe Ria was the right person to go get Jess and not him. What could he say to her anyway, when he was feeling the way he was feeling? Nothing was clear anymore. Why hadn’t he leaned on his family instead of leaning on some stranger? But she didn’t feel like a stranger. What did she even feel like? What did you call what he was feeling?
Was there a word for this suspension between fear and hope, lies and truth, relief and regret? What felt like an abomination one moment, violently selfish and irrevocably damaging, felt like a ray of sunshine the next, like plastic wrap being peeled off his face, fluid being sucked out of his lungs, like a brace coming off a broken leg when it still hurt.
He hadn’t realized how much solace there had been in the pain. It had become his armor. He didn’t think he could give it up. He couldn’t be the person who left pain like that behind.
* * *
Please, not Ria Parkar. The last person Jess wanted to see right now was the blessed star. As in really blessed. Seriously, was there anything the woman did not have?
“Do you mind if I come in?” the star said, standing outside the room as though she was really waiting to be let in.
Jess could have prayed for mercy. But she needed to save that for later when she was going to have to pay for all she had done. It was the star’s room, after all; she was just mooching off it.
She shrugged. “Should you be running up and down stairs?”
“I’m fine. Please, I’m tired of everyone getting on my case. I’m pregnant, not sick.”
Okay. “Nikhil said there were complications. It’s . . . it’s a gift to have so many people worry about you.” Great, she was letting her mouth run all over the place again. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly.
Amazingly, instead of shooting her one of her patented icy-hot looks, the star seemed embarrassed. “No. You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound spoiled. But I did, didn’t I? I don’t have the best communication skills.”
“You?” Jess wanted to say. But Ria smiled, or tried to smile and failed. Which actually worked better than one of her camera-ready smiles.
“Can we start over?” The star held out some folded-up clothing. “I think these should fit you. I know you didn’t know we had a ceremony, so you probably didn’t bring something. It’s brand-new. I’ve never used it.”
Jess stared at the offering of clothes like an openmouthed idiot, taken completely by surprise.
“Take it, please, and come back down. I want you to do the aarti for the blessing. Everyone’s waiting.”
Jess stepped back. “I can’t. I . . . I don’t know how to.” This was a lie, of course. Aama had insisted on aarti blessings at every birthday and every festival.
“I can never remember the details of how it’s done either. Uma Atya will help you.” She smiled another tentative smile. “Actually, with the aunties, you’ll have more help than you need. They love telling people how to do things.”
Jess wanted to smile at that, but she couldn’t. “I’m sorry. I really can’t.”
“Jess, I know I haven’t exactly been nice, but may I say something?”
She paused and waited for Jess to nod. “It’s not true. What you’re thinking. What they’ve told you. It’s a lie. It’s not us but our circumstances that are cursed.” She tugged at Jess’s hand and put the salwar kurta into her hand.
“Giving birth to me triggered my mother’s psychosis and ruined my parents’ lives. I believed myself to be a curse on everyone around me my entire life. I know now how stupid that was. And don’t bother to deny it. Of course I recognize it in your face. It’s what you believe. But you’re wrong.”
“Ria, listen . . .”
“No. Let me finish. When you were talking about your son that day. Something about that, it changed how I saw my pregnancy. You made me want to be a mother. Everyone’s tried from the moment I got pregnant, but what you said that day when you talked about Joy, I don’t know why, but it changed everything. And then what I saw in Nikhil’s face today . . . Please, Jess, please be part of my ceremony. It won’t feel right if you’re not.”
She gave Jess’s hand a squeeze and turned around and headed for the door. “They’re all waiting downstairs. I’m not doing the ceremony without you.” With that she was gone.
* * *
From the very first time Nikhil had met Jess, the one thing that had struck him was that quality about her that defied happiness. As though she wore a raincoat and happiness were raindrops that try as they might couldn’t permeate. It was how he had felt too, and recognizing it in someone else had somehow made it easy to accept it in himself.
Over the past two weeks, he’d seen every shade of pain cross her face. He’d seen pleasure too, when she was in the throes of ecstasy she’d had to fight so hard for. But never happiness. He’d seen her reach for it over and over and then draw back as though it were too hot to touch. When she had spun on the ice she had stretched herself toward it with everything she was, a tornado of wanting. But it had stayed just outside her reach. When she talked about Joy, he saw glimpses, but they kept getting lost behind worry.
The glaze of moisture in her eyes as she moved the aarti platter in circles around Ria’s face wasn’t happiness either. But it was the closest he had seen her let it get.
“How pretty you look in that color,” one of the aunties said, and he realized that he had never before this seen a speck of color on Jess.
Her kurta was a soft beige with splashes of darker pink. The exact color of her cheeks when she blushed.
She caught him staring, and the slow glow of happiness she had been fighting flashed harsh and bright. But only for a second. Yet again he had no idea what to do with it. It sat in his chest all evening, even as it waxed and waned in her face as she let the tide of his family carry her along in its celebratory spirit without letting herself drown in it.
When the aunties started to leave, ev
eryone hugged and kissed him as though he had magically turned into someone other than the man who had come home mere days ago. Her gaze lingered on him being coddled and loved, unreadable and yet too readable for him to go on doing nothing about it. When was the last time someone had taken care of her? Shown her she was precious enough to be taken care of?
He found his feet running up the stairs, hungry to see her. Hungry for something, and he slipped into her room with no more than a cursory knock. She was standing there, her own clothes clutched in her hands, ready to go back to her all black. Her gaze crashed into his. So much in her eyes he couldn’t interpret, so much he didn’t want to. He walked to her and his hands grabbed her face.
Her eyes. God, how did her eyes mirror everything inside him?
He devoured her mouth, falling into her, falling back into himself. He kept on going until the rough edges of his wanting smoothed and then furled again and again because she wouldn’t let him go.
“Why did you leave?” he asked against the tiny dancing dimples at the edge of her mouth.
She didn’t answer.
He pulled away. “Why didn’t you do the aarti blessing for Ria when Aie asked first?”
She looked indignant, her eyes punishing him for asking the question. “I did it, didn’t I?”
“After Ria made you. But before that. Why didn’t you? Tell me.”
She shook her head. No.
“You never refuse to do a blessing; why did you refuse?” He had to know what had stopped her with such force, what had made all that heartbreaking happiness seep into her eyes when she’d actually done it, and what made her so afraid now?
“It’s nothing. I just don’t believe in it.”
“Bullshit. What was it?”
“Ria’s pregnant.”
“So?”
Fear spiked in her eyes. “Accursed people don’t bless anyone, Nikhil. What if something happens to Ria or her baby?”
“Don’t say that.” He studied her face. “Who says you’re cursed? Who even believes in this superstitious crap anymore?”
She pushed away from him and turned away.
But when he went to her, his arms going around her, she leaned back into him.
“What did Ria say to change your mind? Tell me.”
“No. You should be downstairs. Everyone will wonder where you are.”
He didn’t care. This was where he wanted to be. With the mix of emotions warring inside him, the one thing he knew was that he couldn’t bear to let her go. “I don’t want to go down. I want to be with you. Come with me.”
“Okay.”
But he couldn’t move, and she didn’t either. “I’m lying. I don’t want to go down there.” There was a storm in his heart. Of longing, of everything he wanted, of everything he couldn’t bear to let go of.
“Okay,” she said, her voice as still as the most placid waters, not a ripple of demand. It made him crazy.
“Jess, back at the apartment. I should never have said that. I lost my temper at Vikram. I didn’t mean it. Not one word of it.”
She twisted in his arms, the strangest energy propelling her, and went straight for his lips, taking his words with a desperation he recognized only too well. Taking the apology that would acknowledge how low he had fallen and reaching past it to the thing between them that set their world the right side up.
* * *
Nikhil’s skin was silk. No, not silk. Silk was too cold. He was like some sort of living, breathing fabric that emanated such warmth, such strength, she couldn’t stop touching it. This skin on skin, this intimate right to touch someone as if he belonged to her, she’d never had this before, and it brought her into herself exactly the way holding Joy in her arms had. It unlocked a part of her she had never dared to let out.
She skimmed her fingers over the devanagri script tattooed onto his chest. Two tiny squiggles with a line holding them together. “Gain.” She knew that wasn’t what the letters were supposed to spell. Even if Nikhil hadn’t told her how the tattoo artist had misspelled Jen’s name, she would have known that he wouldn’t let any other word permanently stain his skin.
The letters were beautiful. Sharp edged and sure. So much like Jen. She pressed her cheek against his chest, sinewy muscle stretched over ribs. “Thanks,” she whispered into the name of the person she had taken so much from. And then, “Sorry.” She said it soundlessly, terrified of waking him.
He had pulled her leg across his thighs, his fingers clutching possessively at the intensely sensitive skin at the back of her knee. Just thinking of where she was warmed her cheeks, but it wasn’t embarrassment, it was reverence, a deep fullness that flooded her body. She used every cell, every pore, to draw in the feel of him, to memorize their touching. This was what being alive felt like. What they had just done was what being alive felt like.
“That’s what I am now,” he had said to Vikram. “Someone who needs to fuck to feel alive.” He might have said it in anger and she might have waved it away as a manner of speaking, but it was the truth. Except, if she knew anything at all, she knew this was so much more than that ugly word. This hadn’t been fucking.
What he had said was killing him. He kept apologizing. It had torn her heart out to hear him say it, but if she let him open that vault of worms, they would have to examine what they did mean to each other. What was the point of that? She could see him struggle against whatever he was feeling for her. What was the point of that too?
For her, there was no struggle. She knew in the very depths of her being that this—what she was feeling with him—this was never going to happen for her again. What she had already taken from him, what she was sucking up now like a leech, it was all she would ever have.
The scar she had let them cut across her chest, and the leather-bound diary at the bottom of her bag, every word of which she had consumed with such hunger, knowing full well it was theft—those things alone snuffed out any chance they had, no matter what feelings either one of them admitted to.
Even if he made it past the vows he had always believed could be made only once in a lifetime, no one could forgive what she had already done, let alone what she had no choice but to do when they found the evidence.
Warmth prickled behind her eyelids. But if she moved, if she dripped tears onto his chest, he would wake up and this moment would be over and she could not let it go yet.
She tried to push the tears back, begged her body to comply, but the trickle of warmth slid across the bridge of her nose and spilled over. Moisture pooled where her face pressed against his chest. She tried to hold herself still, but her chest hiccupped to hold in the sobs.
“Jess?” He stirred beneath her and lifted his head, emerging from sleep with an unguarded vulnerability that was going to haunt her forever. “Shit, are you hurt? Did I hurt you?”
The question! The way he asked it, the way his voice turned raw over the fear that he might have hurt her. As though she were something precious. As though she mattered. She snuggled close to him, tucking her chin and pressing her forehead into his chest, refusing to let him see what she wasn’t strong enough to keep off her face. He tugged her away, trying to get a look at her, but she shook her head and pressed her wet face into his chest.
Please don’t pull away from me. She couldn’t say it.
She didn’t need to.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” He gathered her in his arms, pressed his lips to the crown of her head. His warm breath so tender on her scalp it intoxicated her. He rocked her. His breath turned to kisses and slid down her hair, down her face, licked at her tears, traced her jaw, nipped at her throat.
His eyes soaked her up, his gaze gathering hunger. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” His lips consumed her, stealing her breath even as his words stabbed her heart.
A ragged sob burst from her.
“What is it?” He pulled away again, searching her face with eyes too perceptive, too invested. “Shit. You hate it when I call you beautiful.” H
e pulled her close again. “I’m such an ass.”
And in that one moment of realization, she knew that he saw everything that word did to her, remembered every time he had used it and ripped her to shreds.
“Sweetheart, look at me. I’m sorry.” He sat up, taking her with him, and sat her down, eye to eye. He cupped her face in both palms. “It’s not your body, it’s not your face. It’s you. It’s the peace that is you, the strength that is you. You’re beautiful the way—” He searched for words. “You know that brand-new skin that grows over wounds, that threads together a surgical incision? It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. It looks fresh and delicate, but it’s stronger than anything. That’s the way you’re beautiful. Just like that.” His serious eyes crinkled into a smile. “Shit. That was a terrible analogy, wasn’t it?”
Despite herself she smiled. “Terrible.”
He leaned close. “You’re beautiful because you’re you.” His words were a caress on her lips. His whispered wonder filled her up.
Her body had brought her horrors; now it brought her what she had never hoped to have. It had always felt separate from her, like a cloak. His wonder soaked it into her being, wove it together with who she was. In this moment, in this precious breath of a moment, it gave him to her even as it gave her to herself.
She climbed into his lap, straddling him, her wanting an inferno, not caring about what she was doing, who she was, caring only about this man under her, so open to her, how could she not pour herself into him? How could she not give it all to him? Not just the skin and the limbs that entranced him. Not just the peace and strength that enticed him. She knew that was what he hungered for, his heart unavailable, but she gave him everything else too, everything ugly and scarred and hot and wanting and terrified and hopeful. Ripping past all she hid under, she took him into herself and she gave him everything.
“Jess,” he said, panting in her arms, their entangled bodies slick with their joining. “What are you doing to me?” He was breathing as though he had run until his lungs exploded and flown into a leap and found that he could fly. As though there was nothing beneath his feet. There was nothing beneath hers either.
