Dil or No Dil

by Suleikha Snyder

  Dil or No Dil

  a story collection

  Suleikha Snyder

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  Top Shelf

  Jesse’s Girl

  That You Dare to Dream

  Giving Him Fitz

  Secured

  The Spin Cycle

  Opening Act

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Taste of Blessings

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Dear Readers,

  Welcome to Dil or No Dil, which is basically a cross between a Greatest Hits album and a bootleg full of B-sides.

  Stories like “A Taste of Blessings,” “Opening Act,” and “Jesse’s Girl” rank amongst my most popular and most recommended—a fact that never ceases to thrill and amaze me. And then we have stuff that you haven’t even heard of! “Giving Him Fitz,” for example, is one of the first stories I ever contracted for publication. It’s been out of print for quite some time, and I felt like it needed an update before I re-released it. Meanwhile, “The Spin Cycle” is a silly and quasi-hostile short I wrote in 2016 to work out my issues with an annoying neighbor—suffice it to say, Dusty and Trev find a much more satisfactory resolution than I did in real life!

  I hope you enjoy this collection and check out 2017’s Ishq Factors, too. And, yes, because I can’t resist punny titles and I can’t stop writing short stories and novellas, there will be a third in the series—Prem Numbers.

  xoxo,

  Suleikha

  Top Shelf

  He was sweet, the lanky, bearded boy with the pretty eyes. Each time he passed in front of her she thought of peaches, of biting into tender, juicy flesh. She didn’t know precisely what it was about him that screamed “edible,” but oh did she want to eat him. To feast all night until she was sated…and, even then, she’d still want more.

  She watched him go from kitchen to bar and back again, flipping over checks and delivering pint glasses brimming with IPAs and flutes of sparkling wine. The glances they traded were shy, almost silly, like a bride and groom’s ceremonial first look at a Hindu wedding. Of course, marriage was not what she sought from him. Just submission.

  She knew how this night could end. With his pale body spread before her like a banquet. Wide shoulders. Narrow hips. Dark hair lightly furring his chest. Do whatever you want, he’d tell her with his smile, with his wrists crossed above his head. I’m here to serve you.

  She also knew how this night wouldn’t end. Like that. Because she came in every week with these thoughts, and every week she left with them alone.

  He was young. He’d barely lived. And she’d survived lifetimes. A failed marriage. Three careers. She wore the years in streaks in her hair, in the lines around her mouth and eyes. Her belly and thighs were weighted by days and months and hours. She’d made an enemy of time. She didn’t want to make an enemy of the boy as well. So she watched him. She tasted his sweetness with nothing but her gaze.

  They knew each other’s names. Anton. Vidya. She knew the general details of his life. That he’d graduated college. That he was single. That he looked mouth-watering in tight t-shirts. They always traded pleasantries. “It’s really hot out today.” “Mhmm. Makes you want to do nothing but sprawl on your bed without a stitch on.” It was the only kind of exchange she’d allow herself. Hints of impropriety wrapped in propriety.

  Now, she sat ramrod straight at the bar. Fourth seat from the door. Close enough to the high-tops to feel the air move when he passed by and close enough to catch the edge of his mouth tilted up in a smile.

  She’d forgotten what it was like to flirt so simply, to revel in just this—with no anticipation, and no expectation, of how he’d look on his knees before her. She’d never before behaved so chastely, never been so innocent. Anton, she knew in her bones, had fumbled putting a Homecoming corsage on a girl’s wrist. He’d been to Prom, danced with a date to pop songs Vidya would never recognize. He’d likely lost his virginity in the backseat of his first car.

  She’d never found hers to begin with. She’d been born jaded, under an unlucky star—wed quickly in another country to a man who barely knew her, much less understood her needs. She’d been a wife, an artist, a poet and failed at each endeavor. She’d never really had a chance. But sitting here in this bustling restaurant a few times a week made her wish for one. It made her wish for a great many things she couldn’t have.

  “Why not?”

  It took her a moment to realize the words were real, not phantoms at the bottom of her martini glass. Anton stood by her elbow, a black-clad sylph at her shoulder, the routine of his work momentarily paused. His dark blue eyes were half-hidden by his hair but no less piercing.

  “Why not what?” she echoed carefully, each syllable as brittle as a dried bay leaf. Had she missed something? She could not recall a conversation, a preamble, leading to this. Except for the way their gazes had murmured in passing.

  The lovely boy—a beautiful man, really, if she were honest with herself—laughed quietly. And he whisked her empty glass from beneath her stiff fingers. “Why not give something new a try?” he suggested.

  Oh. Of course. He’d noticed her finished drink. He was an attentive waiter, always polite and helpful. She tried not to register the odd feeling in her chest as disappointment. There was, after all, no room in her life for trivial things like hope.

  “I like my usual,” she assured him. “It’s never served me wrong.”

  He shook his head just so. “No.” The air shifted between them. Full. Heavy. Like her breasts suddenly straining against the too-tight bodice of her dress. Like the curve in his jeans that she stroked with her eyes. Then he leaned in, his breath warming the shell of her ear like an intimate caress. “I mean me, Vidya,” he whispered. “You should give me a try.”

  “Oh?” She’d imagined this in vivid detail—come apart under her own hands to the fantasy. But the reality was staggering in its power. In her power. “And why is that, exactly?” She turned her cheek to his lips, accepting the barest brush of his kiss, then banded his wrist with her fingers and held the martini glass suspended between them.

  He filled it with five words and a thousand possibilities.

  “I’ll never serve you wrong.”

  Jesse’s Girl

  It takes you three weeks to work up the nerve. Three weeks of ignoring the whispers at church and the sympathetic looks from the girls at the Kroger checkout. Three weeks of planning. Scripting. Figuring out just what you need to say.

  “Listen, you can have your pick of men in town, but I can’t ever love again. He’s the only one for me. Leave him alone.”

  That was what you were supposed to say, right? Chapter One in the How to Confront Your Husband’s Mistress handbook? Because you and Jesse have been married since high school, and that was what you did. You fought to preserve the fumbling on prom night and the negative pregnancy test and the whispered vows you exchanged anyway. Even when th
ose vows shattered like the wedding china that slipped from your hands the first time you heard him say her name.

  Jolene.

  He hadn’t had the decency to say it in his sleep, to pretend she only owned him in dreams. He’d said it as you both sat down to the fancy meal-kit dinner you’d ordered on a whim: “Jolene, honey, can you pass me the kale?”

  It’s strange, but you hate kale more now than you do the other woman. Her. Jolene. Because in the month since discovering Jesse’s extracurriculars, you’ve realized kale is a lie people tell themselves. Like fidelity. It’s something you swallow because it’s good for you, not because you actually like it. Jolene, meanwhile, might be the most honest thing between you since Jesse came all over your Homecoming dress in the back of his daddy’s Buick.

  Jolene, whose smile is like a hint of spring and whose voice is like the rhythm of summer rain against a tin roof—Jolene, who you can’t possibly compete with. Everyone knows her and her people, of course. There’s no secrets in a town with just one Starbucks, and certainly no strangers. Especially not a woman who grew up out at the Carmichael farm and looks like a walking tourist brochure for Ireland. Complete with bright auburn hair and freckle-kissed skin.

  You’ve heard all the rumors since she’s been back, of course. That Jolene’s running a brothel out of the old house. That she tried to hit it big as a singer in Nashville. That she had some hotshot Hollywood producer wrapped around her pinky finger. That she’s a witch. The last rumor is probably the most believable, what with the spell she cast on Jesse.

  So it takes three weeks. Three weeks of tossing and turning and cursing under your breath, of imagining confrontations, of practicing in front of the mirror, of picking just the right dress to wear. A cute little red and white thing with a halter neck. You look like a trashy picnic tablecloth—an aesthetic you can’t say you mind after your man’s treated seven years of marriage like garbage and you’ve elected to only ever eat iceberg in your salads from here on out.

  When you finally go down to the farm, your hands are shaking on the wheel. You probably shouldn’t have knocked back that shot of Bulleit beforehand, but the drive is only fifteen minutes. And even if you get pulled over, the deputies all know your daddy’s the deacon at the AME and would probably look the other way just this once. On account of what they think you’re driving out there to do.

  After all, you’re supposed to be a good Christian wife—battling for the sanctity of your union, asking the shameless jezebel not to take your husband just because she can. As if he’s a thing she stole. An item on your wedding gift registry. Like the rice cooker or the towels or the cow-shaped salt and pepper shakers. Then, the whole town will pretend Jesse never went astray. They’ll act like he was never missing from his designated spot in your two-bedroom house. Small towns are wonderful at pretending all sorts of things. You know that better than most. Jolene does, too.

  She’s standing on the porch when you pull onto the dirt road, leaning on the rail as pretty as a picture. She smiles as you slam the door to the pickup. Like she’s been expecting you. And maybe she has. Since the first time she laid eyes on Jesse. The boy from church that you took to the sophomore spring dance because Mama wouldn’t let you take your best friend.

  “It’s about damn time,” she murmurs as you take the steps two at a time and plant yourself in front of her, tilting your head back so you can look her right in the eye. “I’ve been waiting for you to show up.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” you demand, hands on your hips and heels digging into the whitewashed planks of her granddaddy’s porch. You haven’t stood on this porch in a decade, but it’s like you never left. Like you stood here just yesterday telling her you couldn’t see her anymore. “Is this funny to you? Are you enjoying yourself?”

  She grins, her mouth all slicked red with gloss, and blows a lock of her hair out of her eyes. It’s falling out of her ponytail, but she manages to look charmingly disheveled instead of untidy. Once, in 8th grade, you told her she looked like a slutty elf. She didn’t talk to you for an entire weekend, even though you meant it as a compliment.

  “Jesse’s your husband,” she points out. “You know how sex with him is better than I do. You tell me if I’m enjoying myself.”

  You scowl. Because she’s got you there. Jesse hasn’t really improved much since the premature ejaculation situation when you were both sixteen. But you taught him what you could. Any benefits Jolene’s been getting are courtesy of your above-and-beyond efforts in sexual education.

  “He can lick the chrome off a trailer hitch,” you allow, gaze flickering over her cut-off shorts and the denim shirt tied off beneath her breasts. She didn’t get the memo about the dress code for this showdown, but she looks beautiful just the same.

  “Why?” you ask her then. Because it just doesn’t make sense. “You could have anyone, Jo. Why him?”

  “Don’t you know?” She comes away from the railing then. Even barefoot—toenails painted as red as her lips—she towers over you. She always did. Bigger than life. Bigger than hope. “Because he’s yours.”

  It hurts. Not more than it ought to, but exactly the right amount. You abandoned her for Jesse. You left the Carmichael farm in your rearview mirror and never looked back. Your pretty little picket fence is clear on the other side of town. “So, what? You’ve been waiting this whole time to get back at me?”

  “No, honey.” She shakes her head. More of her riotous curls come loose. “I’ve been waiting this whole time to get back to you. And being that you’re so stubborn and all, I figured I’d just have to make you come to me.”

  All of a sudden you remember what it was like to thread your finger through those soft corkscrews. To have her grip your tighter, smaller, curls when you slid down the curve of her belly and buried your face between her thighs. You came to her and for her again and again. Before you even knew the words for it all. Before you even knew the words for who you are together. And after…well, after there was a whole span of years that went by. Dotted with postcards you never acknowledged and emails she never replied to.

  “Jo, this is ridiculous.” The laugh spills from your lips before you can stop it. It sounds like bourbon and regrets. “Y-you slept with my idiot husband…”

  “…for a taste of you,” she finishes, simply. “Because I missed you. I’ve missed you this whole time.”

  Three weeks, you realize now, was way too damn long. You could’ve said what you needed to say an hour after you swept the china shards into the dustpan.

  “I filed for divorce.”

  Her green eyes widen. Maybe she gasps. Maybe you gasp. Maybe it doesn’t matter because ten years and three weeks is enough time apart and you close the distance between you in seconds. You’ll be mad at her about the cheating tomorrow. She’ll get pissed right back about you marrying someone else in the first place. You’ll fight and you won’t speak for a week—or at least the whole weekend. But now you kiss her. You kiss her like you did at the lake when you were 12. And in the woods when you were 13. And in her bed a year after that. First chastely, then sweetly, then so hot it burns your tongue.

  “You’re the only one for me,” she tells you as you stumble together toward the porch swing. As you tug at her blouse and she flips up your skirt. “It’s always been you.”

  Her dream of singing in Nashville was real, you learn much later. The Hollywood producer was not. You can verify, after a personal tour of the farm and making love in nearly every room, that there is no secret cathouse on the premises. As for the witch…well, you had no idea that you could cast such a powerful spell.

  It’s one that just happens to last forever.

  That You Dare to Dream

  They steal the afternoon together. Stripping the lengths of his younger sister’s cast-aside sari from her body. Tangling in the mosquito netting as the ancient ceiling fan turns above them like the dials of a clock. The house is empty save for them, silent except for the sound of their mingl
ed breaths and the awkward slap and slide of skin against skin. The threat of discovery looms, but neither of them shows fear in these precious moments. These minutes where he is just Sanjoy and she is just Sapna and they don’t have to wear the mantles of Brahmin’s eldest son and pitiful poor relation.

  They fell in love in a similar fashion. Alone in the evenings while his father was away in Bangladesh and his sisters were busy with after-school tuition. Sapna would always be waiting for him in the tiny, cramped, kitchen, fanning flies from the gleaming steel thali that held his dinner. “You don’t have to do that. You’re not a servant,” he would protest, and she would duck her head so he couldn’t quite see the truth in her eyes: that she was happy to serve him, a boy she’d loved since she came to his family as an orphan at twelve years old, in any way that she could. With the coal stove steaming the air around them, they shared secrets and hopes and wishes and dreams. Then a touch. A brushing of right hands as she ladled more dal atop his rice.

  Sapna has never been to the cinema hall. She has only ever watched movies on the family’s television, sitting on the floor along with other girls from the village and ready to leap up and fetch snacks for Indrani-di and Supriya-di if they require them. But she knows what romance is. She knows what it is for boy to meet girl and for the music to swell. The melody in that tiny, dark, kitchen is one she’s never forgotten.

  The song now is different. No less innocent, no less pure, but the rhythm is earthier. It’s made of gasps and sighs and all of the harsh Bengali curses Sanjoy wouldn’t dare utter in front of his father or anyone else. She was his first. He is her only. They may never have tomorrow so they hoard today. His mouth on her breast. Her hands on his thighs. Each taste and each stroke a new revelation of desire, a line on the map of need. She cants her hips. He parts her legs. He moves into her and she welcomes it.