by Sonali Dev
Ellie looked at her mother’s face and burst into giggles.
Chicken makhani was Yash’s favorite food and Ashna’s was unarguably some of the best in the world. When everyone was done, Rico and Yash broke off pieces of roti and used them to wipe clean whatever was left in the serving dish.
After dinner, the women moved to the living room with their wine and Rico and Yash cleaned up. It gave them a chance to finish reviewing their media strategy for the upcoming weeks.
“Naina’s doing the press conference with me tomorrow,” Rico said loading the last of the glasses into the dishwasher.
“And you think I should be the one doing it. I mean, I’m fine. I’m here with you all, so, as someone who the public is trusting with their futures, I should be able to be with them too, right?”
Rico turned on the dishwasher. “They love Naina, they can’t get enough of her. Right now it’s more important for you to focus on what you need to do to get back to normal. Fast.”
If he’d meant to comfort Yash, he failed.
“Do we have to involve Naina in the campaign?” Yash asked.
Rico studied him with that blank face people put on when they were trying to figure out how to handle you. It was Yash’s least favorite face. “Are you trying to tell me something, mate?”
“Just that Naina was never supposed to be such a large part of the campaign. We were never supposed to get involved in each other’s professional lives.”
The only good saying that accomplished was to make Rico drop his kid gloves. “The public is literally obsessed with your relationship right now.”
Why? How was Naina and his relationship anyone’s business? Also, why was calling it a relationship feeling like such a grotesque lie?
Because that’s exactly what it is.
Rico folded his arms across his chest and pinned Yash with a look. “Please, dear God, please tell me you’re not naive enough to think your relationship should be kept private during the campaign. You are fifteen points—by some polls, twenty points—ahead of that asshat. That’s not an advantage we could have dreamed of when we started this. And it’s because Naina’s pain over your shooting was one of those real things that get captured by a camera once in a very rare while. Your relationship with Naina is why we have an almost sure shot at this.”
Yash had no doubt of Rico’s role in making sure that photograph had taken over the consciousness of the world.
“That’s bullshit, Rico. Abdul taking that bullet and that fucking shooter’s bigoted anger. That’s why I have an almost sure shot at this. My relationship with those two, that’s what you should be pushing at the public.”
“Raje.” Rico held his gaze. “I took this gig on because I believe in you. Because I hadn’t believed in politics or politicians until I heard you speak and met you. I—every single person on your team—we all believe you should win because you are going to change the future of this state. Finally make us carbon neutral, do something to make housing fair and equitable, get every single person affordable health care. Don’t treat me like I’m some sort of PR hack who’s selling you cheap.”
Yash dragged his hand through his hair. It was overgrown. He’d had a haircut scheduled for the day of the shooting. Now he wanted to shave it off entirely, so he wouldn’t have to be bothered with not touching it the way Nisha and Ma wanted him not to.
“That’s not what I meant.” It’s exactly what he had said, though. “I’m sorry.” He started pacing the kitchen. Laughter wafted in from the living room. He stopped at the window and willed himself not to stare across those trees again. His own reflection sat between him and where he wanted to be. White shirt buttoned all the way to the top, overgrown hair, the beginnings of a stubble—something he’d never had in his life. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Are you and Naina having problems?” Rico asked.
That made a laugh burst out of Yash. A cloud of breath collected on the glass and obscured his reflection. There is no me and Naina. But he wasn’t at liberty to say those words. He shouldn’t even want to say those words. “Naina and I are . . . we’re fine. We’re always fine. That’s the whole point, right? We stay out of each other’s business and all my focus stays on my work, and she does the same.”
Of all things, that made Rico look panicked. Not like an employee, but like a family member afraid for Yash’s wellbeing. If the words Holy shit had a facial expression equivalent, Rico’s face right now was it. Not that Yash didn’t feel every bit of his panic.
Instead of articulating all the reasons why he thought what Yash had just said made no sense, Rico folded his arms across his chest and fixed Yash with his coach-before-the-final-game look. “Whatever is wrong, Raje, you need to fix it. Now. The debate is next week. We’re out of time.”
Before Yash could respond—not that he knew how—Ashna sauntered into the room.
“Are you guys washing down my entire kitchen?” She studied their expressions and kept her reaction discreetly contained. “All well?”
“Yeah,” both Yash and Rico grunted in unison. This did not at all help erase the worry on Ashna’s face.
Yash was so tired of carrying the burden of everyone’s worry. Tired of having everyone carry his burdens through their worry. He was fine. Or he would be soon. There was nothing to worry about.
“Is it okay if I leave? I’m . . . I’m . . .” He was exhausted, but he couldn’t say the word, because he had accomplished less this past week than he usually did in half a day and there was no good reason for him to feel like he was buried under a mountain and breathing through a straw.
Ashna came to him and stroked his arm. It should have soothed him. It didn’t. “Go.” She threw a speaking glance at Rico when he looked like he might say something. “Get some rest.”
Yash didn’t move. “I don’t want to go out and say bye to everyone and I don’t want Brandy to ride with me.”
Ashna pushed his hair off his forehead. Then she went out to the front and brought him his shoes. “Go out the back. I’ll send Brandy home. But listen, just get in your car and go home. Please. If you get hurt, you know I’ll never be able to live with myself.”
Yash pushed his feet into his shoes and dropped a kiss on her head. “You’re the best, Ashi.” Then, instead of making his way around the house, he walked straight through the thicket of woods to the gate in the fence and came out in the parking lot behind the restaurant.
Shutting the gate behind himself, he leaned back on it and looked up at the studio.
A crinkly face was pressed against the upstairs window. Chutney tilted up one ear when she noticed him standing there in the light of a lamppost. He waved at her, and the pug promptly started wailing in response. Before Yash could move, as he should have, India’s face appeared above Chutney’s. For a moment she just stood there, that long bare neck tilted at an angle in surprise, studying him, as he studied her. Then she pulled the window open. “Yash?” she called in a loud whisper.
“India?” he loud-whispered back.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why do people keep asking me that?”
She pressed a hand to her heart, then made a circling motion with it. “Do you want to come inside?”
Do you want me to? “I can’t go home.”
She looked like he’d punched her in the heart. Some more spinning of that hand followed, as though he didn’t know that he’d have to walk around the restaurant to get to her door. It wasn’t like he could fly straight up to her, no matter how badly he wanted to.
“Come on. I’m opening the door.” With that, she was gone from sight and his feet moved, because he had to have her back in his sight again.
Chapter Sixteen
India’s hand shook when she opened the door. Her hands never shook. She was India Dashwood. She was unshakable. Her emotions were unshakable.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m standing at your door.”
She waited. Hoping her f
ace said the Aand . . . ? she was thinking.
“I was craving the overnight oats. Can’t stop thinking about them. Or about the sweet pus nectar.” His smile was tired. So tired.
Her lips pursed, but she moved aside and let him in. He looked terrible. Haunted. Every trace of luster gone from his golden aura. Those quicksilver eyes sunken behind shadows, that usually clean-shaven jaw starting to show stubble. Okay, that part wasn’t exactly unattractive. His usually meticulous hair was tousled by his own fingers, his shirtsleeves rolled up, but not in their usual let’s-get-to-work way, but in an I-feel-trapped-inside-my-clothes way. Those unfair forearms on full display.
Had it been just a few hours since she’d seen him?
“Yash?” she said, her tone weary with questions.
“India?” God, his eyes. Why was he letting her see so much?
“Why did you say you can’t go home?”
“I’ve been living at my parents’ house since the shooting.”
“That makes sense.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.” The Rajes were the most tightly knit family India knew, and no family should let someone who’d been shot out of their sight. “You shouldn’t be alone.” Would he be alone, though? Where was his girlfriend in all this? Why was he here right now instead of with her?
Why was India letting him in?
Because she helped people. That’s why.
“I just can’t go back there,” he said, making her heart squeeze. She needed to get him on his feet and out of here. Fast.
Turning away, she walked to her office. He followed at a distance. Careful not to get close, but not careful enough to hide how hard it was to do.
“Sit. Are you really hungry?”
He shook his head. “Ashna just fed me to within an inch of my life. But I didn’t lie. I am craving the oats.”
That made her laugh, but his eyes were so tortured she sobered again. The man was a master at sticking to truth on a technicality, at Yudishtiring it. How badly he wanted to not lie, that was the part of him she couldn’t look away from.
“Why don’t you want to go to your parents’ house?” She dropped down in the chair across from the couch.
His pause was long, his struggle to find words painful. “The last time I lived there was after my accident.” His hand went to his hair, then pulled away. “Most of my sophomore and junior years in high school I was fighting to get out of a wheelchair. My senior year was spent relearning how to walk. By the time I felt like myself again, I moved to UCLA.” Unlike the rest of his family, and her, he hadn’t gone to Berkeley. Now she wondered if it was because he’d needed the distance. “I’ve only been back for overnight stays every now and again. But . . .”
“Being sick and having everyone fuss over you brings back memories.”
He looked at her like she’d found an exposed nerve and plucked it. He didn’t respond.
“What about your apartment?”
“I don’t . . .”
“Never mind. You don’t want to be alone.”
Suddenly he smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re actually answering questions for me,” he said, still smiling, and she realized that she was. She was giving him answers he should be coming up with for himself, but he’d scared her with those haunted eyes.
“What is it you need from me, Yash?” she said, somewhat harshly.
I need you, his eyes said, and if he said those words she was going to scream. “I need your help.”
Springing off the chair, she went to her bonsais. One of them was out of alignment with the rest and she straightened it.
“But you don’t have to help me,” he said behind her, his voice falling on her skin like a caress. “I mean that. If this is a problem. Just say the words and I’ll leave.”
More than anything she wanted him to leave, to leave her home, to leave her thoughts. Turning around, she walked back to him. “Of course I’ll help you.” She sat back in the chair, because since when was she a liar? “I will always help you.”
That seemed to hit him even harder, which made her angry. Why did that surprise him?
“Why? Because you help everyone who needs it?”
How dare he ask her that?
“That certainly has something to do with it.” That was about as much as she was going to give him. Because obviously him needing to ask why was telling. “I saw that you canceled your public appearances.”
“Only for the next week. I have to get back to it before the debate.”
“And that’s why you’re here, because you think I can help you get back to it?”
“That certainly has something to do with it.”
She wanted to tell him to stop playing games, but she knew he wasn’t playing games. He didn’t want to be here. He was only here because he felt like there was nowhere else he could go for help right now.
“Is the studio always this quiet?” he asked.
“It’s late. We’ve been closed for hours.”
“It was empty this evening too. Did you . . .” He studied her, in that guarded way where he was thinking about how to say what he wanted to say. “Did you cancel appointments because you thought I might need to come over?”
She wished her smile wasn’t so bitter. “You have a very high opinion of yourself, don’t you?”
“No, I have a very high opinion of you.”
“Yash.” She hated saying his name. Every time she said it, a physical ache squeezed in her chest. Craving gathered in her belly. “Please.”
But suddenly he seemed in no mood to back off. “Why is it so easy for me to talk to you?”
“Is it?” Because she was in hell talking to him.
“I haven’t been able to tell anyone else that I’m not sure I can do this.”
“This?”
“I’m not sure I can go through with it.”
She waited. If he could indeed only verbalize things to her, then he had to prove that. It was the only hope she had of helping him, which seemed like the only way to get rid of him and get back to her life.
“I’m not sure I can run anymore.”
“You’re not sure if you want to run for governor anymore?”
“That’s what I said.”
No, it wasn’t, and she had to make that distinction for him. “Are you thinking about dropping out of the race?”
“That makes it sound like a conscious decision. It’s more like the part of me that was running, the part that had focused on nothing but that one thing, winning, that part is dead. Not lying in a coma but dead. He’s gone. And before you make me close my eyes and go back anywhere, I’ll tell you that part of me was alive and well and firing on all cylinders until I woke up in that hospital.”
“Was it when you woke up? Was that when you noticed that he was gone?”
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the couch. His Adam’s apple pushed against his throat where his stubble tapered off. His shirt was always buttoned all the way to the top. The urge to unbutton him, to strip him down to the man underneath, it was hot lava inside her.
For a long time he was silent, and miles away. “The thing I haven’t told you. The thing I haven’t told anyone is that I can’t feel anything. Not unless I’m with . . .” He closed his eyes and went silent again.
This explained so much. It explained why he kept coming back. She waited.
“Thinking back to waking up in the hospital, the only thing I remember is not feeling anything at all.” His eyebrows pulled together. Pure agony tightened his face. “Did I tell you that Abdul fell on me when he was shot?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“After he took the bullet for me.” A tear danced at the edge of his closed eyes. “I remember him pushing me out of the way and hitting his head on the podium with the force of it. When I sat up he was sprawled across my legs, blood was spurting from his neck, it was like a spring. I couldn’t get it to stop.”
“Y
ou tried to stop it.”
“I don’t know if what I did qualifies as trying. I don’t know.”
“What did you do?”
“I got my jacket off and pressed it against his wound. There was no way to stop it. Everything was soaked, my hands, the jacket.” The tear slipped from his eye and disappeared behind his ear.
“How is he doing?”
He sat up and opened his eyes, thick spiky lashes damp at the edges. “A new doctor just saw him. But no one can figure out why he won’t wake up.”
“Did you find the doctor?”
“I had to do something.”
“That’s good. That you got to do something.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anger sharpened his words.
“Should it mean something?”
“India, Please! Just say what you’re trying to say.”
“Okay. What do you think I’m trying to say?”
He grunted. “God, I hate this.” She wondered if he would get up and leave again. He’d run out of here once and she’d pushed him out once. They were one-for-one.
“Are you saying that finding the doctor was for me, not for Abdul?”
“I’m saying that I hope the doctor can help Abdul.”
“I know that. But you’re trying to get at something. You’re trying to tell me that I didn’t lose that part of me when I woke up in the hospital. You’re trying to say something.”
A giant lump was lodged in her throat. All she wanted was to give him that answer, but she knew he had it already.
“It’s when they took him away on that gurney,” he whispered finally, the sound coming out raw.
She swallowed.
“That’s when I lost the part of me who thought he could win. They took Abdul away on that gurney and I knew there was nothing I could do.”
“Nothing you could do for Abdul?”
“No, for anyone.”
Those words hung there, eating through the silence in the room, until the sounds outside the window came back into focus. The rustling of the wind. A stray whirring of a car.
“Why do you think you can control everything?” She was the one to break the silence.
“I don’t.”