Dil or No Dil

by Suleikha Snyder

  She was all wrong for him. That much was clear. Sure, that kiss would’ve knocked her socks off if she’d been wearing any, but they were too old to be spinning fairy tales out of one lusty lip-lock. She’d go back to Chicago Tuesday morning. He’d go back to his bigwig biotech consulting. Over and done. No looking back.

  Tiya sighed, shifting against the wall, glad for the dark hiding her face and the thoughts that were no doubt scrawled across it. And then she heard a footfall on the stair, a weight settling beside her. Fuck. Her belly tightened and her breath caught. Her body knew Arnav so well already. Like they were in sync. And for a moment, in silence, they were. Sparks flowing in the inches between them. Heat. Longing. Anticipation.

  He spoke, of course. It was inevitable. The low rumble of her name on his lips. His hand twitched on the painted-over plaster—an involuntary movement, not an invitation to hold hers. And she thought of last night’s cocky quarterback. Now he was a freshman second-string on his first date with the offbeat art chick from second period Algebra.

  It was stupid to entwine their fingers with seats full of people just a few feet away. Anyone could turn and see their outlines. Apparently Tiya was hooked on stupid because she did it. Took his hand. It swallowed hers up. Big. Safe. And not safe at all.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. She didn’t have to ask for what. “I’m not,” she wanted to say, even though it was only half true. She did regret their timing. Their circumstances. If they’d met at a function in Chicago, she’d be fucking him in a bathroom right now. He’d hike up her sari, petticoat and all, and press inside her from behind as she gripped the sink. Careful not to muss her hair or smudge her makeup. Determined to shatter her in every other way.

  She must’ve made some sound, let a moan escape or canted her hips, because Arnav’s grip tightened and she heard him inhale sharply. Like he knew the fantasy she’d conjured up and was in it with her. Had he moved closer, or was that her imagination, too? The slight pressure of his leg against the intricate folds of her clothes? His breath ghosting her cheek as he exhaled? If he was sorry, why was he here? If she had regrets, why didn’t she move? Tiya couldn’t explain it and didn’t want to.

  They both watched the stage, where the cute kids from Kentucky had been replaced by some Indiana blowhard who thought he could sing, and pretended that what they were dancing around wasn’t the real show.

  What would everyone say? What would Mom think? Good Bengali daughter questions were supposed to be at the forefront of her mind, but Tiya just went back to that forbidden place where Arnav was deep inside her and it was perfect. Her nails scraped his palm. He squeezed her fingers. She was ridiculously turned on, nerves jangling and senses on fire. This was the best sex she’d never had.

  And it had to stop.

  “I have to go,” she said, lurching away from the wall, snaking out of his grasp and stumbling up the steps that lined the sides of the auditorium. She hadn’t come in very far, so there wasn’t very far to go. He followed her, because maybe he was hooked on stupid, too.

  They emerged in the brightly lit hallway, blinking, and Tiya turned blindly down a corridor full of lockers and closed classroom doors. All blue for Blue Ash. Not exactly a creative stretch. She’d had A&P in this wing. Bio, too. And the memory raised the sudden, crazy, urge to use a lab bench to dissect Arnav’s pants.

  No. She was stopping. Even though they hadn’t yet begun.

  He shadowed her as she tried all the doors and found them all locked. Finally they got to a dead end, a trophy case filled with decades of accomplishments, far enough from the puja that they were well and truly alone.

  Tiya took a deep and uneven breath, so much air that her blouse fought against the paltry front hooks holding it together. Exhaling made her a little lightheaded, but it was nowhere near as dizzying as Arnav’s proximity.

  “What are we doing?” she demanded, balling her hands into fists. Stopping just short of pummeling him. She was still wound tight from that interlude in the dark. Desperate. Wild. On edge. If she touched him again, she might fall apart. She wanted to touch him again. She wanted to fall apart.

  He looked like she felt. Dangerous and helpless at once. “I have no idea,” he admitted, before more confessions tumbled from his lips. “I want to take you to dinner. Dancing. Whatever you want. I cannot think of anything but being with you. It’s mad.” He slipped into Bengali, his pitch going half a step higher, more melodious but no less bewildered. “So many years I put it aside. I didn’t let myself think. And now…”

  “Now we can, but we can’t,” she finished in English. “My mother would never forgive me.”

  He grinned, and there was as much pain in it as there was humor. “Your father would never forgive me.”

  “None of them would,” she added. “The mashis would never let us hear the end of it.”

  There it was. Everything they had to lose.

  They stared at each other for a minute that seemed to stretch into infinity…and then they fell into each other’s arms anyway, for what Tiya knew had to be their last kiss.

  This time, Arnav was the one that took. No, that wasn’t true. She gave freely. Enthusiastically. Welcoming his tongue. Welcoming all of him. The heat and the need brought her back to the cliff’s edge, clouding her judgment and slicking her inner thighs. He pushed her back against the glass of the trophy case. She crossed her wrists behind his neck, cradling his head and stroking his hair. It felt so good. It felt so right. Like she’d had to be almost forty, kissing her share of frogs and then some, to find this man and his masterful mouth. He sucked at her bottom lip. She nipped at his upper one. They teased and tortured until she tore herself away, gasping for breath and sanity as she put several feet between them.

  This wasn’t what she’d come home for. But she felt, too deeply, just how much she wanted it. She wanted to scream. To yell. To cry. To launch herself at him again. She did none of those things. “This could be something,” she whispered as she tried to get a hold of herself. “We could go to dinner and dancing. I want to know more about you than how you taste. But…” She shrugged, blinking back furious tears.

  “But,” he echoed, quietly.

  This time, he didn’t follow her. He let her go.

  Chapter Ten

  Dashami – Worshippers bid farewell

  to the goddess, and prepare to

  send her back to her heavenly abode

  Arnav couldn’t help himself. He watched her pick flowers out of her hair after the last evening arathi and pushpanjali―though the offerings were collected in foil trays and poured at Ma Durga’s feet all at once, some rebels still liked to throw their handfuls of marigolds and carnations, nailing unsuspecting worshippers en route. And, consequently, Tiya looked like a forest sprite who’d rolled in a field of blooms. He itched to sift the petals from her short cap of hair.

  No, he itched to do more than that. He could no longer pretend nobility or play at self-restraint. He’d smashed through those gates when they’d kissed that second, glorious and devastating, time. And his hands still shook from the want of her. So much so that he let a surprised―and delighted―Niku drive them home.

  Night driving was new, but it was only twenty minutes, and Arnav did not currently trust himself in the dark. As if Tiya would appear on the road ahead, and he would swerve to miss her. Perhaps he’d been swerving for fourteen years to avoid such a collision. For all the good it had done.

  “What’s with you, Dad? You’ve been weird all day,” Shainik observed, breaking into his mental self-flagellation.

  “I’ve been weird for your whole life,” Arnav countered, gaze flicking to the road then his son’s hands on the wheel. “Mind the car,” he added in Bengali.

  Niku made a face, but dutifully glanced in his mirrors before flicking the turn signal to enter their subdivision. “Don’t change the subject,” he said, once the feat was completed. “Vik and I are worried about you.”

  Hai Ram. Oh, God. He exhaled on a huff. W
hat had he become that his boys were concerned for their dear old doddering dad? So desperate? That pathetic? “It’s just puja,” he lied as they pulled up to the split-level house he’d bought with Sumita a decade before. “Always something going on.”

  “Mhmm.” The noise of disbelief was all his mother. Shainik had also inherited her fair complexion and her double-jointed fingers and toes.

  He’d loved his wife. No doubts about it. With the enthusiasm and devotion of a young man…and then the deeper commitment of a husband and father to her children. Twenty-five years together couldn’t be erased in four apart. He would always see her in their sons, hear her in their voices―not to mention when they spoke on the phone once a month, awkward and not quite strangers.

  But with Tiya…here was something else entirely. Passion. Potential. So many new discoveries to make. He was already missing what they could not experience together. Wistful. Grieving.

  It was a blessing that Shainik didn’t prod him again, instead concentrating on pulling the car into the garage. Once in the house, they went their separate ways, stumbling to bed like the zombies on their favorite Sunday night TV program.

  Long after he’d settled into bed, reading glasses perched atop his nose and work BlackBerry within reach on the nightstand, the land phone rang. Though Niku was crashed out, dead to the world, Arnav still plucked up the receiver as quickly as possible. Who could be calling this late, on the other side of midnight? An emergency from India? Or the Bay? “Hello?”

  “Uh. Hi.” Tiya. Even as his pulse calmed―thank God, no bad news―it also leapt. She was hushed. Tentative. There was a hint of slumber in her voice. “I looked you up in Baba’s Bong phone directory. Is that okay?”

  It was more than okay. Even while it was a monumentally bad idea. Instead of giving voice to that thought, he chose humor. “Bong Phone? Is that like Bat Phone?”

  She giggled with obvious relief. “Yeah. When you use it, all the area Bengalis show up to your house to watch cricket and drink cha.”

  Arnav laughed softly, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he leaned back against his pillows. “Cha, red wine, and eating all your food also,” he added. “Beware of Bongs.”

  He could nearly hear her smile through the telephone lines. And then she sighed. “Tell me all the things you’d tell me on a date.”

  A date. Only on the other side of midnight, speaking in whispers, could they even contemplate such a thing. As if they were star-crossed teenagers grounded by unfeeling parents and not full-grown adults just trying to protect their families. His chest tightened, lungs constricted. “I like the Rolling Stones,” he told her when he could breathe again. When he could speak. “My favorite color is blue. I love roti and my mother used to tease that I was a Bihari baby switched at birth with their real, rice-loving son.”

  This drew another giggle from her―she sounded so young―and he heard rustling as she moved about in her own bed. “I majored in English and went to grad school, but I really wish I could’ve skipped it all and traveled the world,” she confided. “I like roses even though they’re cliché. And I sing along to Taylor Swift songs whenever they come on the radio.”

  Now why did that sound familiar?

  “You and Viku have that in common then,” he observed with a chuckle.

  “It’s why we get along so well,” she agreed. But then her tone softened, going from silly to serious. “Your boys are great, Arnav. I’m so happy to know them…glad that Shauvik even wants to hang out with me in Chicago.”

  “You are also great. They’re lucky to know you…I’m lucky.” This he admitted more quietly. As if imparting a secret.

  He heard her sharp intake of breath as if she was cocooned in his arms and not miles away in another bed. “Arnav…”

  It was 12:43 a.m. Surely he could be a little reckless at this hour? He was a man in his fifties, not a boy to quake in his boots. “What would happen?” he demanded, roughly. “What could they really do to us? To my sons? Niku and Viku are almost grown. They are not children. We are not children. We are so afraid of ‘what if?’ Could the consequences of trying be so bad?”

  “Am I a coward if I don’t want to find out?” Tiya sighed heavily. “Look, I get it. I hear you. We’re adults. We’re not Romeo and Juliet. In a sane world, we don’t even have obstacles.”

  He closed his eyes. Thumped his head against the headboard. “But we do not live in a sane world.” They lived in one where an unmarried woman of nearly forty was a thing to ridicule. Where you constantly fought between too much culture and not enough. “It is easier to take the path of least resistance.”

  “It’s easier not to take a path at all,” she murmured, almost to herself. “You know I’ve never brought a boyfriend home to meet Mom and Baba? But I never really wanted to either. It never felt right.”

  It was unwise to ask the question at the tip of his tongue. He asked it anyway. “Does this feel right?”

  Tiya was silent for a long time. He listened to her breathe. Felt his own respiration begin to mirror hers. Perhaps his heartbeat as well. “It feels like it could be,” she finally said.

  And then he was left with the dial tone…and the bittersweet knowledge that the day ahead would be a goodbye to more than one goddess.

  Chapter Eleven

  “What would happen? What could they really do to us?” The questions haunted Tiya for hours after she hung up the phone, chasing her into sleep and then dreams and then dogging her heels after the sun rose. “Does this feel right?” Arnav whispered when she showered, the murmur trailing down her spine like his fingertips. As she dressed in a borrowed sari of Mom’s―ocean blue, rippling like waves as she moved―she could almost feel him tugging at her aanchal. And she knew he would be the kind of boyfriend or husband who came up behind her as she tried to put on her heavy earrings, kissing her neck and distracting her from the task at hand.

  It was startling, how clear and perfect that image was. So much so that she dropped an earring back and had to hunt for it amidst the knots of her bedroom carpet. Even with the search, which occupied several minutes, she was still the first one downstairs. Today’s puja was only a half-day, giving those who’d driven several hours and stayed in area hotels time to get back home before the Monday work day. So a ton would be packed into just five short hours. The Dashami services, a last round of arathi and pushpanjali offerings, and then everyone wishing each other “Happy Bijoya,” celebrating Ma Durga’s victory over evil.

  It was joyous, not sad…but Tiya couldn’t shake the melancholy during the ride back to Blue Ash High. Baba drove. Mom kept up a running commentary of snark and dish from the front seat. Apparently some member of the Mashi Brigade was still dressing twenty years too young. And Indira Chakraborty’s bratty kids had knocked over a set piece onstage during one of the final evening performances. Baba passed no judgment, instead contributing that he thought Barun Sen and Anu Dutta might make a nice couple.

  “Where’d you get that idea?” Tiya couldn’t help but wonder, leaning forward from the back seat. Who knew her father had a matchmaking streak?

  He shrugged, grinning as he peered through the windshield at the sign for the school ahead. “Arnav mentioned something to Barun. Karthik Mukherji overheard and told me. I think it is wonderful!”

  And men claimed they didn’t gossip like women? She laughed, glad to have something to lift her spirits. She only knew Barun-da in passing. A skinny, shy man with glasses. He hadn’t been in the States that long. But it was beyond sweet that the guys were all banding together to get him married off. “I think you’ve found your second career, Baba. You can start a desi dating service.”

  Her mother clicked her tongue. “The first client should be you. Did you not meet anyone nice yesterday?”

  Wow. Mom had waited an entire 12 hours before asking. Tiya was amazed that she’d kept a hold of that question during their car ride on the way home last night. And this morning over tea. “When would I have time to meet
anyone new?” she fired back. “I was too busy helping everyone I already know!”

  And too busy kissing Arnav Biswas in private corners. Her cheeks heated at the memory and her palms tingled. By the time they got inside the school and got swept up in one last round of puja volunteering, the weight of Arnav’s questions was back on her shoulders like a mantle. And she found herself looking for him everywhere. Shainik, too. She even kept her phone nearby, in case Shauvik texted for updates…not that he’d be awake yet, if he was any kind of sane college kid.

  When all else failed, Tiya relaxed against the bleachers―which were folded up to allow as many people to sit on the floor and worship as possible―and watched the crowd as they filtered in. The day after tomorrow, she’d be driving to the Cincinnati airport and then flying back to her condo and her job. A pile of edits. Queries to sift through. She’d be helping other women plot their happily-ever-afters. That was reality. That was every day. Not this. Not the bright-colored saris and the cacophony of voices. Not the gleaming statues at the front of the gym ― Durga, atop her lion and spearing a demon, flanked by her four children. Lakshmi. Saraswati. Karthik. Ganesh. The elephant-headed god was the remover of obstacles…but there were some things even he couldn’t fix.

  She knew what Liz would say. “Quit moping. Since when are you a mope? Make things happen or cut your losses.” She’d text for confirmation of the advice but, again, Chicago was an hour behind and Lizzie probably wouldn’t appreciate the wakeup whining. The bonds of friendship only went so far. Calls before 9 on a Sunday needed to involve fire, bodily harm or a hookup with Idris Elba or Chris Evans. Preferably a hookup with Idris Elba and Chris Evans.

  Tiya continued to scan the crowd, spying her mom up near the front, helping a bunch of the other women arrange flowers and sweets. Once a priest’s wife, always a priest’s wife. She wore a biscuit-colored sari…classy but also practical and easy to clean. The festivities today would end with all the married women engaging in shidoor-khela, where they anointed each other with vermillion powder. It was like a mini-Holi, and that red powder inevitably got everywhere.