The Shaadi Set-Up

by Lillie Vale

  The pressure builds to fill his silence. “I’m sorry about before,” I stumble out.

  He’s starting to tidy away the kitchen, taking the used glasses to the sink and sweeping crumbs into his palm. “What do you mean?” He isn’t looking at me when he starts the tap.

  “It wasn’t fair to expect us to finish a conversation when our parents were right outside,” I say. I wish he would stop rinsing and just look at me. “It’s just that you seemed to take what I said in a totally different way than I intended, and I—”

  I get my wish. He twists around, expression eerily detached. “I don’t think I did, Rita,” he says, voice calm. He sets everything upside down in the draining rack and rubs his hands dry on his pants. “I think I heard you loud and clear. Despite the fact that I’ve known and loved you for most of my teen years and all of my adulthood, you still think—somehow—that we’re ‘jumping into things,’ ” he says, with air quotes.

  “Milan, when we’re together, you know how easy it is to slip back into old habits,” I plead. “And I love that. I love that so much about you, that you’re my best friend who I can just fit back into, no matter what. But that’s also what scares me.”

  Hurt flashes in his eyes. “I scare you?”

  “Yes. Because I’m scared we’ll fall into all our old habits. The ones where you don’t tell me what you need from me and pretend you’re fine when you’re not. Where I don’t even know to ask how you are because you don’t let me see you faltering.” My voice cracks. “Because you think you need to be strong for me instead of letting me save you sometimes, too.”

  “You have saved me. You saved me with the house I couldn’t sell and you saved me again with this place.”

  “Anyone with a bit of knowledge could have done what I did,” I fire back.

  With a disbelieving scoff, he spreads his arms. “How can you say that? You are in every room in this whole damn place. I’ve walked into rooms you’ve left and followed the scent of the perfume in your wake like some kind of hound.”

  “But you have to face it,” I say. “You didn’t reach out to me. Our mothers came up with a way to get us in the same room again—not you. If they hadn’t set us up, who knows how many years would have passed before we saw each other again? Another six?”

  His stance changes, becomes defensive. With his arms crossed and jaw set, I can tell he’s a second away from butting in with a “Well, actually,” so I race ahead, nearly spitting the words.

  “Milan, you can’t take credit for me being back in your life. I’m here in your house right now not because you wanted me, needed me, couldn’t live without me, but because your mother opened the door and my mother pushed me through.”

  The silence screams loud.

  “I want to be with you,” I say. “But I’m not ready to jump into a commitment without getting to know you again. We can’t keep playing house and pretending that this is how our life would have played out if we’d never broken up. You’re ready to let our parents know about us, but what if we break up again?”

  “We won’t,” he says fast, like he was coiled for an opening. “I swear we won’t. I get what you’re saying. I hear you. But we can’t be so afraid of the past that we rule out having a future together. Throwing away a second chance for love because you think we haven’t been punished enough is—”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Yes, it is,” he says, louder. “Because you’re not scared to be with me because you think we’re doomed to make the same mistakes again. You’re scared because you’ve spent the last six years blaming me. But the truth is that you’re equally as guilty of letting the time pass by, Rita.”

  “What?” I stare at him.

  “Six years,” he says, enunciating each word an unholy amount. His heated gaze lasers into me. “Six years that you could have come to me. Yes, I was wrong in assuming the worst and letting you go without a fight, but you make it sound like it was only on me. It wasn’t. I was here all those six years, Rita. It’s not like you came running, either. You’re being unfair.”

  “Oh my god, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say! Neither of us took the first step.”

  His laugh is humorless, so sure he’s right.

  I try not to scream, but it still comes out jagged and sharp. “How is it unfair to want to see where things go before we tell our folks? We fit as a holiday couple, maybe, seeing each other on weekends. But day in and day out? We haven’t had that in more than six years and, honestly, part of me thinks that, at this rate, we won’t even last six months.”

  It’s the wrong thing to say, even if it felt right flying out of me.

  Stunned hurt splashes over his face. “Right,” he says, hoarse. And no, it’s not right, none of this is right, but the breath is sucked out of me. When I say nothing, he says, in a voice devoid of any emotion, “This is it, then.”

  No, we’re not done here. We have to work this through. We have to be better than before.

  But by the time I pry my lips apart, he says, “Let’s just get back to the work at hand. We’re pretty much done here. We can just . . .” He swallows. “Go back to our lives.”

  Our lives without each other. Again.

  “If we rally, we can finish the last touch-ups and catch the ferry home,” he says.

  Home. In a way that Bluebill Cottage can never, will never, be.

  A hot tangle tightens in my throat, drops into my stomach. And then keeps going, plummeting like the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride at Disney World, until I can’t feel my body anymore.

  This house, filled with all my beautiful finds and memories of Milan in every room, turns into a mausoleum the second his eyes flick away from me. His back muscles ripple as he wipes down the counter, putting way more shoulder into it than he needs.

  We haul the last new mattress upstairs, rip it out of its plastic, and lift it onto the bed without saying a word. He disappears as soon as the job is done, taking with him the old mattress I slept on, leaving me to straighten crisp white sheets snug over the mattress corners and to lay one of the quilts I bought at Luke’s antique mall at the foot of the bed.

  When I see him next, he stinks of bathroom cleaner and hands me my packed toiletry bag. The toothbrush I’d offered him this morning—oh god, was it only this morning that things looked so full of promise?—is nestled inside, taunting me.

  By some unspoken agreement, neither of us wants to spend another night on Rosalie Island. I pack up everything I brought with me, folding up my used sheets and wrapping them around my crockery for safety, setting each item into my weekender duffel.

  We walk to the ferry, still not speaking. My feet drag, the finite clicking of the lock as Milan closed up the house playing in my head over and over again.

  His profile is devastatingly handsome, but whenever I look at him, he’s not looking at me. So when tears prick at my eyes, I let them fall. Tears will dry. They always do.

  “Guess you found him,” Ken in the ferry’s ticket office says with a cheerful smile when he sees us walk up.

  “Yes,” I say, swallowing past a lump in my throat that’s about six years and a few odd months’ old. “I did.”

  Tickets in hand, we wait with the other day-trippers and tourists.

  Yes, I found Milan.

  But then I lost him again.

  Chapter 27

  The next three mornings I wake with the rush of the sea in my ears and the kiss of the salt in the air. But I’m not on Rosalie anymore. I’m back in my own house that smells like the reheated idli sambar and spicy chicken Alfredo Mom brings over, and overpriced scented candles that are a pale imitation of being by the coast.

  The fourth day I shake myself out of my funk long enough to return Paula Dooley’s voicemail. Miffed at being ignored, she plays hard to get until I get sick of phone tag and go over there myself with a plate of warmed
-in-the-oven store-bought cookies we’ll both pretend I made from scratch.

  We sit next to the window at her kitchen table with her fancy Keurig coffee and the raucous shouts of her children coming from the backyard. She glances outside, frowns, then taps the glass sharply to catch the attention of whoever is misbehaving.

  “I was going to be mad at you for another day or two at least, but you caught me on my cheat day and I haven’t had sugar all week,” Paula explains as she sinks her teeth into a cookie. “So are you home now? For good?”

  It’s so weird to think of this as home. I mean, it is, but it isn’t. For two short months, it felt like Bluebill Cottage was my would-be home. But now it’s just a dream I wake up from, drifting away before I can cling it tight.

  “Yeah, I finished my other project,” I say, tasting sawdust. “It’s finished. All of it.”

  She nods and blows on her coffee. “What happened to Scrunchie Hunk?”

  “The job’s done. The house is already listed.”

  She gives me an arch, amused smirk. “I meant what’s going on between you two?”

  When I busy myself with a long gulp of Seattle’s Best Toasted Hazelnut that’s too scalding hot to swallow, she adds, “Things seemed pretty intense, from what I remember.”

  “Let’s just say I’ve learned my lesson about mixing business and pleasure.”

  Paula rolls her eyes as she swishes her cup. “Rita, business should always be a pleasure. We wouldn’t be small business owners if we didn’t believe that in our hearts. We’d be back at our soul-sucking multinational marketing jobs.”

  I cough on a sip. “You used to work at a—”

  “In another life, when climbing the corporate ladder was all I aspired to,” she says, waving a hand. “I had a ten-year plan and everything. God, I wasted so much of my thirties. But after I met Rick and had kids, we decided he made enough money for me to pursue my dream of being a YouTuber. It took a few years but now I have my own skincare line that’s going to pay for my kids’ college.”

  It’s hard not to gape at her. “You were—in your thirties—” She looks like she had her kids when she was eight. A tiny bit scandalized, I lower my voice. “Paula, how old are you?”

  Her lips twitch. With an arch tone in her voice, she quips, “A lady never tells. Still on the fence about my moisturizer and serums?” Without missing a beat, she adds, “So I guess you’ll be looking for something new to start working on.” She eyes me over the rim of her cup.

  She’s being more subtle than usual.

  “Yes,” I say. “So I thought, if you’re still interested—”

  “When can you start?”

  So much for subtlety.

  But it’s so familiar and so Paula that, on impulse, I reach out to touch her hand.

  “I can start right now,” I tell her. “I mean, if I’m going to buy your whole line of products, I’m going to need some money coming in.”

  She gives me her sunniest smile. “Good, because I know just what I want.” She pats both palms against the kitchen table. “I want that mural-style table you made for the beach house you put on your Instagram Stories. The Before and After was just phenomenal. I mean, how did you even come up with that? All those little details . . .”

  I shift in my seat. She’s still talking, waxing poetic about how much she loves the trestle table, but all I can think of is that I’m leaving it behind. A piece of me. I’m leaving memories behind, moments that are precious and meaningful to no one but me and Milan.

  Before being reunited with him, it was like pulling teeth to sell special pieces. In the midst of falling back in love with him, in the cocoon of that new-crush feeling, I forgot myself. Allowed myself to think that Bluebill could be mine. Ours. The place where we’d raise our children with his get-out-of-jail-free tongue and honey eyes and endearing dimpled chin.

  And for the most part, I’m okay with letting go of almost everything in that house.

  But not him.

  And not that table.

  After leaving Paula’s I get started organizing my Pinterest boards, putting together the country-chic kitchen she has in mind and creating a checklist of places where I plan to source everything from. Interior decorating comes easy the third time around.

  No taped-together sheets of computer paper this time. I set out to impress with a trifold project board, layered with Polaroids of furniture and art from Lucky Dog Luke’s and other nearby antique and flea markets, wallpaper samples, fabric swatches, and 3D room renders made in SketchUp, a recent gift from Mom. Well, I call it a gift. An investment in your future is the way she put it. Dad and I have faith in you.

  Enough to let me take a whack at your house? I’d teased.

  Her face blanched at the idea of me ripping apart her recently renovated French country–style house, replacing the soft whites, muted mauves, and cool grays with my own bold taste. Y-yes she’d managed to get out, uncertain if I was kidding but trying so hard to show her support.

  Maybe we won’t ever be as in sync as Raj and Una, and maybe a day won’t ever come that Neil will be an anecdote that brought us closer together, but even if we aren’t there yet, we’re getting somewhere. And that’s the important thing, trying.

  On day five, Mom stops by with Dad, Aji, and all the fixings for vegetarian tacos in tow. It’s a squeeze in my tiny house with four humans and two dogs underfoot, but the hubbub is a welcome respite from the zombie-like monotony of the last few days. Aji casts a critical eye over my somewhat untidy housekeeping but doesn’t say a word—Mom must have coached her on the way over.

  While Harrie lolls on the living room rug begging for scratches and cuddles from Dad, the three generations of Chitniss women sit around my kitchen table with steaming, fragrant chai (“Made the right way,” Aji couldn’t resist pointing out) in my prettiest mugs. My latest Etsy purchase: Tuscan-yellow glazed ceramic with a honeycomb texture and a bee perched on the handle. And unless I line up some more projects and sell more of the furniture I already have, probably my last purchase for the foreseeable future.

  Then we get to work: Mom mixes the taco seasoning and garam masala to marinate her homemade paneer cubes before stir-frying; Aji steals my apron to chop onion and roasted green and red bell peppers; I start the sauce, blending a huge cilantro bunch, a whole bulb of garlic, jalapeño and serrano peppers, lime juice, a hearty dollop of mayo, and cotija cheese.

  Over the final whir of the blender, I call out “Who’s ready for aji verde?”

  My grandmother scowls.

  Dad catches my eye and winks.

  The green Peruvian sauce, aji verde, is our favorite for paneer tacos: bright, tangy, and pungent. We explained the name—and the fact it’s correctly pronounced ah-hee—to Aji several times, but she constantly forgets and thinks we’re making fun of her somehow.

  It’s turned into a running gag for me and Dad, but this time, Mom lightly scolds, “Not funny, you two.”

  No one’s more surprised than Aji, who turns away to wipe her eyes with my pug-patterned apron when Mom’s not looking. “You put in too many spicy chili peppers, Rita,” she complains in a crotchety voice that’s at odds with the smile not quite hidden behind the fabric.

  I sling my arm around her shoulder and kiss her cheek. She makes a sound at the unfamiliar gesture, then relaxes. “I love you all,” I say to the whole room.

  “We love you, too,” says Dad. He gets up, brushing dog hair off his jeans, and heads over to join Mom at the stove, where she’s charring corn tortillas on the burner. Harrie whines and follows, acting like he’s starved for attention when we literally just met Luke and his pups at the dog park this morning. Freddie’s content to stay in his bed with his favorite plushy and watch us.

  “Need any help, Esha?”

  She’s got it, but she smiles and nods, handing him the tongs.

  They stand ne
xt to each other, just like that, Mom passing him a tortilla from the packet while he turns it side to side over the burner. Two people doing the job of one. Mom puts her right arm around his waist, tips of her fingers tucked into his front pocket.

  It’s a quiet gesture, so soft and so intimate that it could easily have gone unnoticed.

  See? say Aji’s lofted eyebrows and pointed stare. Is this not love also?

  * * *

  —

  “Ruthvik, why don’t you take the boys for a walk?” Mom suggests as we finish the washing up. Aji’s already left to gossip with Mrs. Jarvis about gardening and grandchildren, and Dad looks like he’s ready for a nap, so I can only assume she wants to talk to me alone.

  I help her out. “Harrie could definitely burn off some of that endless energy.”

  “Taking over my mother’s agenda of making me and Freddie get some exercise, huh?” Dad rises from the couch and holds his hand out for the leashes I give him. “But Freddie’s got to carry his own weight. I’m getting too old and decrepit to lift him,” he jokes.

  “Nonsense, you’re in your prime,” Mom says crisply, turning off the tap and drying her hands. “And take your phone with you to count your steps.”

  When he leaves, Mom fixes me with the kind of stare that only a parent can. “Now, am I finally going to get a real answer out of you as to what happened with Milan?”

  I give her the same answer I gave Paula: It’s over.

  “Now that,” says Mom, “I don’t believe for a minute. You both still love each other.”

  There’s a sizzle of resentment under my skin. She’s never talked with me candidly about Amar, woman to woman, not even last week when she came to Bluebill, but she expects me to bare my heart just because I’m her daughter? Doesn’t it go both ways?

  “Mom, it’s my life.”

  “And you’re my daughter,” she counters. “You’re my life.”

  “Why does my second chance matter to you so much?”

  She blinks at the edge in my voice. “What do you mean?” she asks carefully.