yanked him back to earth, the disorientation of it, yanking other things inside him out of place. For one ugly second, it wasn’t India’s hair gripped in his fingers, it wasn’t her lips saying his name. He squeezed his eyes shut and brought himself back to this moment, but inside his belly was the nauseated swirling of whipping across time.
She stroked his hair, his jaw, he could tell that she sensed the confusion inside him but she couldn’t articulate it into a question. As they walked back to where the guests were dispersing he wanted to do something to put her at ease, to put everything back. Taking her phone from her, he’d called himself from it and then saved the numbers on both phones. She told him where she lived but he’d always known. Her family’s yoga studio was next door to his uncle’s restaurant.
In that moment it felt as though they’d always been aware of each other, homing devices in search.
His family was leaving for Sripore the next day to celebrate Nisha’s wedding at the Sagar Mahal, their ancestral palace.
“I’ll see you after we get back,” he said, looking into her hope-soaked eyes, her fingers tangled in his, hating that suddenly the coming week felt like a lifeline. Too long. Too short.
Letting her hand go felt like a premonition. The weight of things he’d let out into the light started to wrap around his throat again, heavier and tighter.
“You’ll come, right?” She borrowed his words from last night, confusion at the sudden storm she sensed inside him too clear in her voice.
As much as he’d wanted that kiss, the struggle to hold on to the beauty of it took up too much energy. “I’ll try my best,” he said, borrowing back the words she’d said to him in return.
He’d never gone. Never called her.
What happened in Sripore the following week changed everything, brought back the things he’d let himself forget when he met her. After returning he’d allowed himself to wonder fleetingly if she would call. But of course he knew she wouldn’t, not after she heard from his sisters about his being with Naina. Then he’d put it away and never let himself think about it.
It had felt like a dream. He told himself that was all it had been.
THINKING ABOUT NISHA’S wedding all these years later was a mistake. Yash knew the shooting had weakened him. Keeping his thoughts well leashed and where they needed to be was his superpower. Even the enormity of what had happened in this gazebo with India had been no match for his focus, because twenty-four hours did not define you.
An hour with her just redefined you.
He had to stop this. He had to get out of the gazebo. He needed to feel things again.
Feeling things gave him something to control. But the emotions had stopped again the moment he’d stepped out of that glass-paneled turquoise door.
“Penny for your thoughts.” Nisha made her way into the gazebo and sank down next to him.
“Why do people say that?”
“For obvious reasons. Everyone wants to get rich, and people zoning out on you seems a plentiful enough resource.” She smiled her worried smile. “It could be a profitable enterprise.”
He grunted in response, and she elbowed him in the ribs. “Yash! You know the best thing about you is that you focus on people. You’ve always made even us, your annoying younger siblings, feel like we mattered, even when we pestered you.”
Turning to her, he made eye contact, hoping it was his usual. “What makes you think I’m not focusing on people?”
She widened her eyes in a very Nisha way, infusing the action with more censure than most could withstand. “Trisha and Ashna were saying you’re not returning their calls either. Rico said you’ve basically been hmmm-ing through your briefing calls. And you’re sitting here in the gazebo when everyone is gathered upstairs.”
“So I can’t take a moment to myself? Every waking moment I need to be this robot everyone wants me to be. All the damn time.” His tone was so sharp she flinched, and he should have felt terrible, but there was the little problem of his feelings being lost.
“You can totally take a moment to yourself. Is that what you want me to tell Ma and Aji? Our mother and grandmother have been worried and waiting with everyone for the past half hour.” Nisha held up her phone.
He squeezed his temples. “Why the hell is everyone in this family so manipulative?”
That made