First Comes Like

by Alisha Rai

  Remember how you told me I should delete him and never see him again? I had drinks with him and smelled him instead.

  She chewed the PB&J and grimaced. She was doing her best to not think about him. Because it wasn’t her shame or wounded pride that was foremost when she did think about him. It was the heat, when he’d spun her around and placed his body between her and danger.

  Between you and a photographer. Girl, please, he wasn’t taking a bullet for you.

  She took a swig of her milk and grabbed her phone out of the kitchen drawer she kept it tucked in when she wasn’t working.

  Her first clue that something was wrong was all the notifications on her lock screen. Her second was that they were all from family members. Her mother and two eldest sisters, to be exact.

  Uh-oh. That wasn’t good at all.

  Her phone rang before she could navigate to her texts, her mother’s sweetly smiling contact photo popping up. She answered it with some trepidation. What had she done now? “Hello?”

  “Jianna.”

  Well. This was already bad, if they were at the name that was on her birth certificate. “Hi, Mommy,” she tried again, though she didn’t know what she was wheedling for.

  “Where have you been? I have been trying to call you for hours.”

  “I was working.” The joy of her parents not viewing her work as actual work. Her mom would never assume any of her sisters would be glued to their phone at noon on a weekday.

  “Video call me. I need to speak to you face-to-face.” Her mother hung up, and Jia flinched.

  She steeled herself as she sat on the couch and opened her laptop. Her worry grew as she found not one, but three pairs of dark eyes looking back at her with various degrees of concern and doubt and annoyance. “Oh good,” she said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, which wasn’t very much. “Salam. Everyone’s here.” Or at least, her two oldest sisters and her mother. “Where’s Sadia?” Her middle sister was one of her staunchest allies. If Ayesha had to be off the grid communing with nature somewhere, Sadia would be a good stand-in advocate for her.

  “We’re trying to limit what disturbs her.”

  Sadia was pregnant with her second child, and she was having miserable morning sickness, so that made sense, but the sentence ratcheted her anxiety higher. “What’s going on?” Jia shoved a cushion behind her back. Best to make herself comfortable while she got yelled at for whatever she’d done—or not done—now.

  What did I do or not do now?

  It wasn’t easy to be the black sheep of a successful family. When she was younger, Sadia had occupied the role, for running off to elope with a boy her parents didn’t approve of. Jia had seen the example her parents made of her sister—not talking to or about her for years, until their precious first grandson was born—so Jia had tried to toe the line. Until she couldn’t take it anymore and quit med school.

  “Jianna.”

  Again with the full name, yikes.

  “Why did I leave surgery to find no less than two WhatsApp messages featuring a photo of you wrapped around some man like a vine?”

  “The messages were from us,” her oldest sister, Noor, interjected.

  Jia was so preoccupied by how her mother said man, the same way she might say serial killer, that it took her a second to process the rest of that sentence. “Uh. What.” How.

  Noor crossed her arms over her chest. She was a miniversion of their mom, though her recent illness had taken some of her healthy plumpness away. “We are very worried about you,” Noor said severely. Noor was always severe. The eldest of the five sisters, she felt the weight of being the future matriarch very heavily.

  “You didn’t answer our calls.” Zara, her second-eldest sister, tipped her head and gave Jia a concerned look, the same one she probably gave to her psychiatric patients.

  “What kind of shenanigans are you getting up to in that city?” Her mother closed her eyes. “I knew you’d fall prey to the evils of Hollywood. Didn’t I tell you girls that?”

  Jia held up her palms. “I haven’t fallen prey to anything. I don’t know what you guys are talking about.” Don’t you? A pit opened up in her stomach, and it widened when Zara held her phone up to the camera. It took a second to focus, and then Jia had to swallow.

  There she was, she and Dev, against the brick wall of that bar. His face was slightly turned toward the camera while hers was away. It looked like they were hugging, perhaps seconds away from kissing.

  While they’d been avoiding one photographer, another had caught them with a nice wide angle lens. And, apparently, he or she or they had known who they were photographing.

  “Legend’s Grandson Romancing His Way Through America,” the headline read. Jia squinted, trying to make out the text of the article, but it was too blurry. “Ahhh . . .”

  “It doesn’t name you, thank God.” Zara put the phone down. “Of course, I recognized your scarf right away, I gave it to you last Eid, and then I looked closer at the profile. This is definitely you, isn’t it, Jia?”

  Her shoulders sagged in relief. She hadn’t been named in the press. That was something. At least her extended family wasn’t blowing up her mom’s phone about why her youngest unmarried daughter was going around doing something as scandalous as smelling a man. “It’s me, but this isn’t what it looks like.” She paused. “By the way, what do you think it looks like?” Just so they were all on the same page.

  “It looks like you are kissing a man at a bar!”

  Her mother said it with all the scandal of someone else saying, “It looks like you are murdering a man at a murder house.” “That’s not what kissing looks like, Mama.”

  “Don’t get fresh with me.”

  “I’m not being fresh!”

  “You are nuzzling, at the very least.” Zara tossed her hair.

  “Nuzzling is worse than kissing,” her mother announced.

  “How . . . ?” Jia rolled her shoulders. It was no surprise how tight they were. “We were both avoiding photographers. Clearly not well enough.”

  “Avoiding photographers? Is that what they’re calling it nowadays. Convenient,” Noor said dryly. She readjusted the nasal cannula under her nose. Jia felt a stab of worry, as she always did when she saw the device. While she’d been sick in California, Noor had been battling the same illness in their hometown in Western New York. Jia had recovered without long-term side effects, but Noor hadn’t been so lucky. She didn’t need supplemental oxygen all the time—she could do her rounds at the hospital as an ER doc without it—but she still depended on it when she was home.

  Nothing had made Jia feel more homesick or helpless than being sick all the way across the country, except for knowing her sister was sick and she couldn’t help out. Her sisters might be annoying as hell, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love them fiercely. “Look . . .”

  Zara sighed. She was always stylish and glowed with health, and today was no different, though she wore a sweater instead of a suit. “Jia, I’m sorry, but the jig is up. I told Mom and Noor.”

  “Told them what?”

  “I overheard you speaking with Ayesha weeks ago. I know you’ve been talking to this man.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  The rare swear could be forgiven right now. Jia had told Ayesha about Dev, but only because she told Ayesha everything. Of all the conversations for Zara to overhear . . .

  “Imagine my surprise to find out my youngest daughter is going around with a boy and I know nothing about it,” Farzana announced, hurt dripping off her words.

  “I’m not going around with him.”

  Her eldest sister snorted. “You are clearly talking to him.”

  Talking to was the euphemism all her sisters had used for dating until they got engaged or married. Their mother got scowly at the thought of her daughters engaging in American dating, what with its premarital sex and all.

  Except Jia had literally only been talking to the Person Formally Known as Dev. She opene
d her mouth, but her mother continued. “I would not have been opposed to this, Jianna. It is time for you and Ayesha to settle down. And obviously, Devanand Dixit, well . . . he is not the star his grandfather was, but clearly he is from a good family and well-off. You did not have to hide him.” Farzana’s mouth turned down in a frown. “Am I so scary you could not tell me?”

  Yes.

  Jia rubbed her hand over her forehead. But that wasn’t the issue right now. She hadn’t told her mom because there had been nothing to tell. “It’s not about that . . .”

  “Despite his wealth and family, he’s still an actor,” Noor said, but it wasn’t with the same level of accusation as when the call had started. She liked to be on the same page as their mother. Noor’s eyes turned calculating. “I bet the wedding would be bonkers fun, though. The Dixits probably know how to throw a party.”

  Wedding! “I’m not marrying Dev Dixit,” Jia blurted out.

  Zara rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure you’re not. Then why were you squealing over how sweet he was with Ayesha?”

  Did her sister have bat ears? “We did talk about Dev, but I’m not dating him.”

  “So you’re just kissing him in public? Sorry, nuzzling. Full mouth to neck action.” Noor’s lips puckered up, like she’d eaten something nasty.

  Jia’s neck went pink at the attention. “He didn’t have his mouth anywhere on me!”

  Farzana gave a small growl, like she hadn’t heard Jia at all, which wasn’t unusual. “That, I will not tolerate, Jia. What would people say?”

  “We weren’t doing anything—” Jia was interrupted by Noor’s coughing fit. She watched helplessly as her sister bent over almost double from the force of it.

  “I’m coming over,” Zara said to Noor, when she subsided.

  “No, it’s fine.” Noor cleared her throat. “When I get too worked up or emotional, it’s like my lungs can’t quite keep up.” She said it in a detached, almost clinical way. Her sister’s job as an ER doc required she be clinical.

  “There is nothing to get upset over,” their mother said soothingly, her manner completely changing. “Everything is fine. It’s okay, Jia.” Her mom sniffed. “I will forgive you keeping this from me for who knows how long. Dev is an actual good prospect for you. I did not think you would find someone so eligible.”

  Well, ouch. She felt that backhanded compliment like a slap to the face.

  Jia twisted her fingers together. She hadn’t seen that beaming look of pride in her mother’s eyes in a long time, and she hated that she had to ruin it now. She was going to tell them the truth—that she’d been catfished. That was exactly what she was going to do. She could anticipate their reaction.

  Hollywood has ruined you.

  You must come home.

  Typical Jia.

  It was the last one that was the worst. Typical Jia, flighty and unpredictable. Someone who had to be kept stuffed away, lest she embarrass the family. The disappointment.

  She was going to tell them everything. Except then Noor gave another slight cough, and what came out of Jia’s mouth was “Yes, he’s a good guy.”

  Uh-oh. Whaaaaaat.

  “Of course, we’ll have to meet him to be sure of it,” her mother mused.

  “What?” Whaaaaaat.

  “Oh yes.” Farzana waved her hands. “I’ll talk to your father about this. You know how protective he can get. We’ll try to come out in a few weeks.”

  Her father was protective of his daughters, but he was a pussycat compared to her mom. “Wait, you probably won’t get to meet . . . Look, this is all still new. I haven’t been talking to him for long, nothing’s determined. Imagine if things don’t work out, you’ll have made your trip for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing. We haven’t seen you in over a year. I told you we’d visit as soon as we were able. Don’t you want us to come there?”

  “Of course I do, but not to meet some guy.”

  “This will kill two birds with one stone,” Farzana said briskly. “We see you, we meet this prospective groom for you.”

  Was it her imagination, or was it hot in here? Jia unpinned and unwound her head scarf and dropped it next to her, taking her stretchy net underscarf off next. She didn’t bother to fix her hair, which was sticking up everywhere. “He’s not my prospective groom.”

  “Fine, fine, the boy you are talking to.”

  Jia’s hands clenched in her lap. Oh dear. Tell them the truth now. They would be so much more disappointed when they got here and there was no Dev.

  What if there was?

  Wait, no. That was impossible.

  Or is it?

  It was.

  Or, hear me out . . . is it?

  To what end, though? Even if Dev was willing to play along, she’d have to tell her family eventually that she and Dev weren’t dating.

  “In the meantime, please be discreet. It won’t do for your aunts and uncles to recognize you in any photos. No need for anyone to think you went off to California and started acting wild once you were away from us.”

  Jia raised an eyebrow. That was the first time she’d heard her mother speak of her career with any semblance of pride. Or look at her with that level of approval.

  Actually, her sisters were looking at her with approval too. It was like a drug, making her feel heady and invincible. Is this how it felt, for people whose families believed in them?

  “I am so proud of you, Jia.”

  She nearly whimpered at her mom’s words. She could do this. She didn’t have to tell them the truth right now, and she wouldn’t have to do it when they came here. She could maybe even keep this charade going for a while, until she figured out a way to make them so proud of her in other ways that they didn’t care that she wasn’t marrying a Bollywood legend’s grandson.

  “You are finally getting your life together, MashAllah,” Noor remarked.

  She’d had her life together. Kind of.

  “Keep this up, and we’ll all worry about you less,” Zara said cheerfully. She was holding her phone and moving through her house. Her daughter, Amal, was screaming something in the background. “I’m off. Noor, we’ll be over in ten minutes.”

  “I don’t need—” Noor began, but Zara winked out. That was the way in their family; state the intention and then disappear.

  Noor sighed. “I have to tidy up. See you later.” She hung up.

  Her mom gave Jia a bright smile. “Wait until I tell your father. He’ll be so happy.”

  Jia almost whimpered again. She was lying to her dad too? About this fake man they’d never meet? Oh God. Was she catfishing her parents? “Dev’s very busy and . . .”

  “I’m sure he’ll make time for your family,” Farzana said firmly. “He knows what’s expected. I’m very excited. You don’t know how much we’d all worry less about you if we knew you were settled with a good boy.”

  Jia licked her lips. “Cool.”

  Farzana glanced over her shoulder. “I have to go, love.”

  “Okay. Love you.” Best to be superagreeable. She hung up with her mom and stared at her wall. Then she sent a message to her twin. IF YOU GET THIS CALL ME ASAP PLS 911.

  Slowly, she collapsed back onto her couch. Had she truly invented a fake boyfriend to impress her family? One who was an international star she’d had no intention of seeing again, let alone producing to her family in a few weeks’ time?

  Welp. Someday she’d learn not to dig herself into a deeper hole while getting out of one.

  Wasn’t she still furious with Dev? Or had her anger at his offer of money and his family been drowned out by needing him now? Or by the faux nuzzle?

  Even if she could control her negative emotions, how was she going to get Dev on board?

  I wish there was something I could do to make this all up to you.

  Jia raised an eyebrow. Maybe that part wouldn’t be an insurmountable challenge, actually.

  Chapter Nine

  DEV RECLINED on the sofa in his trailer. His script
was in his hands, but his brain was a million miles away. Across the ocean, even.

  Legend’s Grandson. His inner ambitiousness was annoyed by that. He’d worked hard to make a name for himself. It was the main reason he’d chosen a completely different medium.

  “It’s actually excellent press,” John had explained to him earnestly over the phone earlier. “Chandu was concerned it might be scandalous, given the obvious differences between you and the girl, but people are really loving it.”

  Dev didn’t bother to explain that the differences weren’t as large as they appeared. As much as his grandfather had wanted to erase their background when he’d taken Rohan, at least, under his mentorship, their mother had been Muslim and quite middle-class.

  Dev wasn’t surprised Chandu was happy. If they were talking about Dev’s love life, they were talking about him. For the most part, Dev had never given people a reason to gossip, unlike the rest of his family. His father had run off with a woman, his uncle had died young, his grandfather had been a playboy. Arjun and Rohan had never met a drug, drink, or model they didn’t want to try.

  Meanwhile, Dev kept a low profile in his personal life. Wrongly, according to his team. It softens you, John had told him. Makes you more human. Plus, they miss talking about your family. It’s nice to get over the grief of your brother and grandfather’s deaths.

  People were quite human with or without relationships, in his opinion, but Dev couldn’t deny the public did feel an odd sort of possessiveness with his family. He remembered being bewildered when he’d come to live with his grandparents. Every morning, his grandfather and Arjun would go to the balcony and wave at the fans screaming outside. Rohan had joined them, a cute cherub-faced thirteen-year-old. Dev had been lanky and awkward and had never asked or been asked to engage in the morning greeting. As far as he could tell, the crowds had dispersed after his grandfather died.

  All the public had needed was a tiny crumb to get similarly excited over Dev, it seemed. And Jia had been that crumb.