First Comes Like (Modern Love #3) - Alisha Rai Page 0,59

she almost whispered and got in the car.

“Night,” he repeated. He watched her drive away, wondering if that was his fate for the immediate future. Watching her drive away after she’d doled out a small crumb of affection.

He pressed his hand against his chest. He feared even if it was, he would take it.

Chapter Thirteen

Tuesday 1:25 P.M.

Jia: do you like magic?

Dev: Is this an American pickup line?

J: Ha, no.

D: Magic stresses me out. I spend all my time trying to figure out how they do it.

J: Ah

D: Why?

J: someone offered me tickets to a show

D: I’ll come with you

J: No, I don’t want to stress you out!

D: It’s okay if you enjoy it, I will enjoy it.

J: It wouldn’t work anyway. There’s too many people there. Cameras.

D: Okay, scratch that.

J: I’ll come up with something more remote before then.

D: Yes, we should get to know each other more. Before your parents come.

Thursday, 8:22 P.M.

D: What are you doing?

J: Working. What about you?

D: Also working. Night shoot downtown.

J: Cool. I love seeing shoots.

D:

You will have to come sometime.

What are you working on?

J: Trying to work up some pitches for various brands. My metrics have been slipping a lot lately.

D: I’m sorry to hear that.

Thursday, 10:45 P.M.

J: What did you do??

D: What?

J: My mentions started getting flooded, and when I traced it back, it started with your old costar tagging me and raving about one of my videos??

D: I simply told her my niece thinks you are cool. It’s not a lie. I did not ask her to promote you.

J: This is going to look suspicious. People will put two and two together.

D: They won’t.

People see what they want to see.

J: . . . that’s true, I suppose.

D: Are you upset?

J: No. This is sweet. One tag won’t get me back to where I was, but you met my weekly goal in about twenty minutes so thanks, haha.

D: Not a problem.

Friday Morning

Jia woke up to her phone ringing. She groped for it on the pillow next to her head, then sat straight up. Ayesha! Finally. “I’ve called you a million times. What have you been doing?” Jia hissed, as soon as her twin’s face popped up on her phone.

“What have you been doing?” Ayesha yelped. “I go camping for a couple weeks and come back to all hell having broken loose.”

“Maybe that’ll teach you not to go camping.” She and her twin had always been glued at the hip, but when Jia had quit med school, their paths had diverged. It was weird to see Ayesha in their old shared bedroom alone, but also a relief that she herself wasn’t in that bedroom.

“Um, trust me, I’m never going camping again for other reasons.” Ayesha scratched at an obvious mosquito bite on her cheek. She was dressed sedately, in monochromatic colors, a gray long-sleeved dress and a gray cotton scarf wrapped around her hair. Ayesha preferred things she could mix and match easily. She was too focused on other priorities, like her career, to care about clothes.

Jia was aware that Ayesha was about as close to a perfect Pakistani American daughter as could be, but she’d never felt any envy or anger at her twin for that. If anything, she’d tried to emulate her, as her parents had always told her to do. Unfortunately, that had always led to her eventually growing bored. A bored Jia wasn’t a good thing. It led to her starting a tiny empire in her bedroom, for example. “You didn’t enjoy it like you thought you would?”

“Worst rebellion against our parents ever. They were right, they didn’t cross the ocean so their daughters could go sleep outside.”

Jia’s lips curled up. “I can teach you better ways to rebel.”

“So I see.” Ayesha hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “Mom’s out here claiming that you’re practically engaged to Dev. When did you even meet him?”

“Ugh.” Jia scrubbed her face. That’s right. Ayesha didn’t know about the debacle of meeting Dev. “It’s a long story.”

“Stop touching your face,” Ayesha chided, ever the young doctor.

“Right, sorry.” She wanted to wail her news out to her sister. Ayesha had been the one person who had known everything: not just who Jia was talking to, but also how much she’d started to swoon over him.

Time is—

Nope, nope, she wasn’t going to dwell on a single one of those fake scripted words. Dev’s real words were way better. “First, make sure the hallway is clear.” She wouldn’t put it past Zara to be hovering out