that I’m considering not going back?”
“Not going back?” Their arrangement worked because they were never in the same place together. The whole damn point of the arrangement was that she could go wherever she wanted and do whatever she wanted.
“What if I told you that I’m considering staying in California for a while?”
“In California? For a while?”
“Okay, echo, you sound like my mom when my dad speaks. Except without the question marks you’re adding.”
“Why would you do that? I’m fine. I’ve come out of this as though it didn’t even happen.”
“Except with a ten-point lead in the polls,” she said, a smug smile splitting her face. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Thank you for being so distraught when you thought I might have died, by the way.”
She didn’t like that. “You’re my best friend, Yash. How would I not be distraught? I had no idea what I was going to do if . . . if . . .”
“If I wasn’t around to be your fake boyfriend.”
She went to the door and checked if anyone was outside, then shut it and glared at him. “That’s unfair. Our friendship is the most real thing in my life.” She spun a finger around his face. “How long is this brooding going to last?”
It was a question he’d very much like an answer to as well. There was an endless list of things to do, and brooding was putting a damper on all of that. The desolate, restless fog that wrapped itself around him when he thought about the yoga studio was no better than the cold nothingness it had replaced.
He apologized and she waved it away, her excitement returning. “Never mind all that, because I have something to cheer you up. Aren’t you at least a little bit curious about why I’m saying I want to stay?”
Curious would be one way to describe it. “I’m all ears.”
“You know how hard we’ve been working to get the foundation funded and it’s been like trying to fill a silo with pennies? Well, Jiggy Mehta called me this morning.”
Yash sat up. “Jiggy Mehta? The billionaire, Jiggy Mehta?”
“The gazillionaire, Jiggy Mehta.” She laughed delightedly. “Isn’t he one of your donors too?”
“Yes, he’s been very generous.”
“Well, you can say that again. He’s donating thirteen million dollars to my foundation. That size of endowment means we can put the plans we’ve been struggling with for a decade into action, no compromises.”
“That’s terrific, Nai.”
“Thanks. And you know what this means, right?”
“It means all the hard work you’ve done for all these years is going to come to fruition.”
“Yes! And that means the foundation gains the kind of visibility that can spell . . . it can spell . . .” She took a breath, so deep it made her look like she was going to explode. “The Nobel!” Reaching across the table, she took his hand. “Can you imagine what that means for us as a couple?” She squeezed it. “It means we’ll be unstoppable. We’ll be the ultimate power couple.”
Proud as he was of her, his hand felt heavy and cold in hers and he pulled it away. “But that was never the deal. We never meant to be a power couple.”
They had never meant to be any kind of couple, other than one who kept their parents from pressuring them about finding someone to be a couple with. A way to avoid her father from controlling her life. A way to avoid his own weaknesses from controlling his life.
“We meant to get what we wanted. I’m fully aware that I was the one who bullied you into doing this because I wanted to go to Nepal,” she said without a whit of guilt. “But we’ve both benefited from it.”
“You did bully me into it.” He tried to smile at her. The rebellious girl who’d stood by him always. Sticking it to her dad might have been higher on her list back then than rural microfinance reform, but right now Yash couldn’t quite manage the hypocrisy of judging her for it.
No one had ever told him he couldn’t do something he wanted because of his gender. No one had ever held his sisters back either. In all their bulldozing glory, his parents had pushed them all equally brutally. They weren’t like Naina’s parents. Subverting people like that, people who refused to evolve their views no matter the evidence, it had felt right.
It no longer felt right. Not when a private deception that was meant to help a friend was