by Tara Pammi
Close enough for me to inhale the sweet rose scent of her skin. And yet far enough that I couldn’t touch her with my fingertips.
I knew this because I’d tried it on the second day. Faking that I was in deep thought over another complex problem – as if I was capable of deep thought – I’d played with the pencil, rolling it up and down between my fingers.
The obedient pencil slipped from my fingers and rolled towards her hand on the table. After making a suitably irritable noise in my throat, because this rolling pencil was disrupting my concentration, I had sent my fingers on a journey across the hardwood. As she was a leftie, Farah had the habit of pushing her elbow across the table.
My short stubby fingers had barely reached her wrist when her gaze landed on the pencil, and my fingers, and me. Without a word, she’d rolled the pencil back in my direction. But I’d seen her mouth twitch at the corners. My chest expanded as if I’d been awarded the Nobel prize for math.
I had a vague feeling that she was waiting for me to touch her. Waiting for me to tell her what I wanted, ever since that day in the coffee shop. Damn, she was good at waiting. I knew beneath that stillness of hers, there was...excitement. And longing. But I also understood her wariness to begin something between us. I hadn’t forgotten for a second how crushed she’d looked when she’d talked about her mother.
My heart started its upward trek as she came back to the kitchen and reached for her chai. Even in my misery, I’d remembered to make it for her the way she liked it.
I waited, following her every movement with my hungry gaze. If I wasn’t drowning in the yawning pit that was math, I’d have made my move. Maybe. Not that I had moves.
But it was hard to be the confident, sunny person I usually was when most interactions between us were now colored by her trying very patiently to explain to me concepts I had no chance of getting. When she saw me at my stupidest...ugh!
“You haven’t practiced the dance in a few days,” she said, eying me over the rim of her teacup.
“I have to study,” I said morosely. I waited for her to give me some motivational speech about how all I had to do was give my best.
Instead she surprised me with, “Where are those gulab jamuns you made for today’s video?”
“Huh?”
“Pink balls dipped in syrup,” she said with a mischievous grin that tugged one corner of her mouth up and dug a dimple in one cheek.
I made a retching sound. “How can call such yummy sugary goodness that horrible name?” I grinned. “It was the twins again then?”
“No, this was me.”
“You?” I said, more and more curious.
“I have met Javed and Salim a few times when they came to India for summer holidays. They are the most…naughty rascals you can ever imagine.” Her eyes danced with rare pleasure when she spoke of the boys. “When I arrived at their house – my father’s house I mean – a few months ago, they maintained this formal distance between us. As if they were polite boys. As if I was a fragile piece of precious art they had to tiptoe around. They were all ‘Farah Aapa do you want to watch a movie?’, ‘Farah Aapa can I help you?’ It not only bored me, because I really like their company, but I felt as if they pitied me.
So one day, when their mother sent me to their rooms to call them down for dinner, I knocked on their room and said it was Salim’s favorite for dessert – pink balls dipped in syrup. They were shocked at first and then they started laughing.
Ever since then, they keep sending me all kinds of A jokes. I’m glad to have disabused them of the notion that I was some goody two shoes from India who had never heard a dirty joke in her life.”
“A jokes?” I repeated, unable to even turn my gaze away from her face. When she smiled – which was so rare, Farah was truly stunning.
“Adult jokes.”
“So you’re one of them now?”
She nodded.
I looked away, knowing that I was staring.
“So where are they?”
I turned to her. “What?”
“The pink balls dipped in syrup. I know that you made them today.”
“You watched the video already?” I asked, my heart racing. This had been a live vlog I’d done first thing this morning.
“Yes.” A straightforward answer. No embellishments. No shying away.
“How do you know I didn't just recycle an older video and put it up there?”
“Because I have seen all of your videos. The only other time you made gulab jamuns was four years ago with your Ammamma. She used to make them for you. After she passed away, you stopped.”
My pulse raced. Excitement and anticipation played baseball in my stomach. “Oh.”
“Can I have them please? I spent the last three hours waiting to taste them. They are my favorite dessert.”
I laughed at her enthusiasm. “Yes, of course. They’re in the refrigerator.”
She was moving before I finished talking. “You didn’t eat any?”
“Nope.”
She shot me a stunned look over her shoulder before filling two bowls with two jamuns each. Then she took a different ladle and scooped out some more syrup and drenched the ones in the bowl. I made a sound that was a cross between lust and hunger combined. Without even knowing it, I realized I was waiting for Farah to do something that would put me off. That would make me remember she’s leaving in a few weeks.
But she kept hitting all my buttons and some I didn’t even know I had. Lathering more syrup onto deep fried sugar balls was so hitting that button hard.
She brought the bowls to the table, and shut my laptop closed with a decisive click. I indulged in saying no for a nanosecond.
“No test is so important that you neglect pink balls dipped in syrup, Star Bells.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I took a bite of the dessert.
Farah popped the entire thing into her mouth. Head thrown back, she smacked her lips loudly, making me laugh. “That melted in my mouth. How could you put them away without even tasting?”
“I don’t usually,” I said, showcasing my nicely plump figure with a wave of my hand.
“You are perfect as you are,” she said with an emphasis that I loved.
“I know.”
Our gazes met and held. Heat stole into my cheeks and this time, I refused to look away.
“Isn’t the performance soon? For the new year’s party?”
“Yep.”
She lifted the spoon to her lips and licked at it. A slow burn started under my skin. If I didn’t know her, I’d have assumed she was teasing me.
I cleared my throat. “There’s a bit at the end with my partner. He’s out of town so there’s no point in me doing it. And I suck at it. I suck at everything right now.”
“Oh pshhh. I’ve seen you dance and you are ...”
I raised a brow, folded my arms and waited for her to finish.
Pink streaked her cheekbones. “You just need practice. Come, I’ll stand there and you can use me as a–”
I dove in there so fast that I was hardly breathing. “Use you as what?”
Her blush deepened. “As your dancing partner, okay?”
“Have you danced before?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Hmm. I might have to see some moves,” I said in an airy tone and pushed my chair back.
I tapped my foot and sent my gaze on a long, leisurely journey from her eyes, to her sharp nose, to her mouth, to her chin. And then down to her neck where her pulse fluttered. She swallowed.
I was tempted. Man, I was so tempted to continue my appreciation of her, but I wasn’t a glutton for punishment. I didn't want to do this solo. I wanted her to want me to look at her. I wanted her to want me. As desperately as I wanted her.
I sent my gaze back up and saw the flash of something in her eyes. She was good at hiding her feelings. So damn good. But this time she wasn’t hiding it.
Her mouth twitched. “You’re enjoying this
, aren’t you?”
“Looking at you?” I asked, misunderstanding on purpose. “Absolutely. You’re hot, babe.”
Her breath hitched. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and then dug her teeth into her lower lip. “Tara, you are–”
“Should I stop?” I asked, my own breath now suspended at the edge of a cliff.
“No. Do not stop.” Her words were a whisper spoken in a rush. They landed like a landmine in one of those video games that Zen was obsessed with. “Do not ever stop.”
I nodded, feeling like my heart was going to explode out of my chest. Momentum built inside me, as if every cell in my body was piling on each other to tackle her to the ground. But I was scared and I was greedy and I...wanted more from her. I wanted just a bit more from the girl I was fast falling for.
“Why are you offering to help?”
“Because I...” another dig of those front teeth into her lower lip turned it pink. “I don’t like seeing you... I want to be of some use to you.”
“If you say it’s a payment for the ginger chai, I’ll never make it again.”
“It is not.” Another swallow. Damn it, how did she make even that sexy?
“This isn’t like solving one of your equations,” I said, lording it over her, tilting my chin up.
She laughed. A full-throttled belly laugh that stroked over my skin like a caress. “Fine, Drama Queen. I can at least catch you so that you don’t fall on that adorable behind again. How about that?”
She thought my behind was adorable? Hallelujah!
“You know it involves touching and all that, right?” I pushed, feeling incredibly naughty. This is huge, the voice inside my head shouted. She wants your company. And not just for food.
Her gaze met mine and held. This stare-off was different from all the other stare-offs. In fact, this was not a stare-off. This was...gazing at someone. With interest. If one was the type to exaggerate, it could even be tucked under the umbrella of adoration. Shelved under the aisle of open longing.
“Yes. I know. Now, do you want my help or not?”
I pushed up from my chair so fast that it went grating back against the floor. Suddenly, I felt incredibly nervous as she handed me my iPad. I cast the choreography video onto the TV and Nalini Akka and a bunch of the dancers looked back at us. I turned to find Farah standing a foot from me.
“You can begin it, Star Bells. When the bit with the partner starts up, I will move into position.”
I licked my lips. “Okay. So you know when and where you show up?”
“Yes. I have watched the video a lot of times. I think I can do it.”
So I played the video and the rhythm of the song helped me get over the strange anxiety. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen me move before.
I tried to focus and got through the first two minutes without completely forgetting the steps. Not practicing for six days straight meant I fumbled through the movements. I wasn't a natural dancer, even though I’d been at this for four years now. But my love for the rhythm took over.
When the song progressed to the part where we were supposed to pair up with the partners, I paused it. Rewound it. I went through the steps a few times before muscle memory kicked in and my transitions were not so clunky. I was breathing hard, sweat beading up my forehead.
Farah stood there, watching the video and me alternately, her eyes skimming all over my jiggling body parts. Tapping her foot, shimmying her body softly to the beat. This time, when the song segued into the long solo, she moved to stand behind me.
There were at least five seconds where we got into positions. I could feel her breath on the nape of my neck. Her hands slowly descended to my waist. I jerked at the contact and our legs banged awkwardly. My butt backed hard into her belly. I cringed and whispered, “Sorry.”
“Not a problem,” she whispered right back.
I could feel her body heat caress my back, the scent of her coil around me like a silky whisper. God, I wanted to hold her, so much.
The duet steps took off. Surprise superseded my awareness of her. Standing behind me, she moved to the rhythm of the song with perfect timing. When I turned my head left, she was there, looking down at me from the right. When I went right, she went left. When I leaned back, her arm came around my midriff and held me. Her hands landed on my ribcage once. And then my neck. Once around my belly. Staying still was hard when I was buzzing with awareness and mounting awe.
She mirrored my movements perfectly even though this was the first time she was doing the steps herself. At the final pose, I banged into her and she caught me. Even this was because I’d got it wrong, not her. I untangled myself from her and replayed the video.
This time, we went through without banging our legs. When the music built up to the final pose, our arms went around each other, our bodies and cheeks pressed together, while we looked at the audience. I remembered too late that I was supposed to wrap my leg around my partner’s thighs.
I hitched my leg around Farah’s. Miscalculated the momentum in my rush to complete the move. I wobbled first and then she did. And then we went toppling to the floor. Just like they did in some of my favorite Bollywood songs.
Now if only I could convince her that rolling around on the floor with me was a good idea too.
Eight
Farah
Farah had never in her life imagined she would be happy to fall to the ground. But then she’d never imagined gorging on sweets or crying her heart out or waiting with bated breath for Star Bells’s hungry gaze to land on her.
If the thud of landing on the ground, limbs tangled around each other's, jarred Farah, it only lasted a few seconds. They ended up on their sides, as if this was a choreographed move too, the thick carpet offering more protection than she’d expected.
Star Bells ended up wrapped around her like Christmas lights wrapped around the giant tree in the Mathematics department lobby, lighting up every nerve and cell in her body.
“Sorry, sorry. I did that too late, too fast,” Tara whispered frantically. “Ugh, I should’ve just let it go. Are you hurt? Farah, are you hurt?”
Farah opened her eyes to find Tara’s face close to her own. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead. The dance routine had given her skin a dewy, damp sheen, making her hair stick to her forehead. Her eyes danced with that inner glow that made something in Farah vibrate. Her full lips turned into a grimace and Farah ached to touch them.
Ached to lose herself in this lovely girl.
“Not hurt. I am okay. You?”
She blew out a breath that hit Farah like a caress. “Nothing but my ego bruised. But then it’s not like you don’t know how I suck at various–”
Farah pressed her finger to Tara’s mouth. “Shhh....Star Bells, take a breath. Nothing happened.”
Tara nodded and closed her eyes, giving Farah all the time to drink her in, without those lovely brown eyes catching her in the act. And Farah did just that. She took in Tara’s thick eyebrows, the cute rounded tip of her nose and her bow-shaped lips. With her eyes closed, her lashes fanned out towards her plump cheeks.
A pang of longing moved through her. Star Bells was only nineteen. There was so much promise in her face, so much life jolting through her veins. And Farah realized how desperately she wanted to be a part of it.
“Can I open my eyes now?”
Farah pulled away her hand that had been air tracing every curve and slash of Tara’s face. “Yes.”
Brown eyes flicked open, a wealth of emotions in them.
“You have pretty eyes. With curved lashes, Star Bells,” Farah said, releasing the first thing that came to her. The words surprised her just as much as they did Tara.
Star Bells stilled, her gaze jerking upward to meet Farah’s. Then she grinned, that naughty twinkle turning those eyes from simply pretty to breathtaking. “Sorry I tripped us.”
Farah reached out and pushed away an unruly strand of hair covering Tara’s face. She pulled her hand away slowly. Not bec
ause she regretted it but because she wanted to talk first. Before she assumed things. Tara was the only one in the entire universe who made Farah want to talk. Keep on talking so that she could make her smile. “I did not mind falling.”
Star Bells’ grin widened. “Do you get the feeling that we’re in one of those cutesy movies?”
Farah thumped Tara’s forehead with the base of her palm gently. “You and your movies? This is better than any movie I have watched.”
Tara’s grin went from relief to naughty in a nanosecond.
“Did you do it on purpose?” Farah asked, grinning. Their legs were still tangled, one above the other. The press of Tara’s thighs against hers was a delicious weight. Farah had a sudden vision of Tara pressed into her all the way and her pulse raced.
Tara’s other palm lay flat on the curve of Farah’s hip. Slowly, those fingers fanned out, as if they wanted to span more and more of Farah’s flesh. Their breasts grazing but not touching. Just yet.
Farah’s entire being felt like the strings of the veena Mama used to play. Ready to be stroked. Vibrating with life and joy and every emotion known to man, even in stillness.
“I wish. Not that clever,” came Tara’s husky reply. “Or I’d have banged into you during one of my practices. Tackling you to the floor did spring to my mind a few times.”
“What stopped you?”
Her eyes wide, Tara laughed. “Seriously? You’ve got a ‘don’t mess with me’ vibe going hard.”
“That is just how I–”
“Not judging you, babe. Plus the kind of tackling I had in mind needs permission.”
“Then you have it. Blanket consent.” Farah rushed into the silence, her words and thoughts piling on each other. “For everything and anything you might wish to do, StarBells.” To me. With me.
Shock and pleasure vied for dominance on Tara’s face. But she didn’t quite jump into the fray. Her uncharacteristic quietness made Farah swallow. She didn’t want this to end before it began.
Her and Star Bells and this magic between them.
“You can blame my clumsy limbs for this,” Tara said, cutting through the building awkwardness.