“Babe,” Sonny said, her eyes burning with gratitude, “I’ve never been important to anyone in my life,” she said in a low voice. “Thank you,” her voice shook with sincerity.
“You have had relationships before, right?” Lara quizzed, surprised.
“Yes.”
“More than one?”
“Three and one almost, so half.”
“How do you have half a relationship?” Lara was derailed from her train of thought, which was asking Sonny about how her previous relationships had played out. Lara needed to know what made Sonny so tentative and low on self-worth within a relationship.
“When you are not devastatingly emotionally invested but are having sex and it goes on for months, I suppose,” Sonny said going a little red and looking away.
“What? Sex without emotion? You told me you don’t do that!”
“I don’t. But well…that happened. It wasn’t like there was zero emotion...so okay, it might be easier to tell you about it. I was in India in the late nineties. Pinku was about ten or eleven years younger than me and her parents were looking to get her married. We got involved…very involved, always knowing that it was temporary. In fact, very weirdly, I was the one who convinced her about the guy she eventually got married to. So yeah, that was a strange one where we were involved but it was never meant to go anywhere.”
“And love never happened?”
“It was some kind of very contained, bounded emotion because there was no expectation of tomorrow. When she was seeing all these guys for her arranged marriage, she’d wake up every morning with me and after…ummm…you know…”
“You’re shy saying sex,” Lara’s eyes twinkled with amusement.
“Yeah…well….”
“Aww, you’re adorable,” Lara kissed Sonny on the edge of her lips.
“Do you want to hear this or not?”…mock indignation.
“Of course, I do,” …squeezing closer.
“So after…you know…every single day she’d say, ‘I love you so much…I don’t care how much older you are…I’d have married only you if you were a guy.’ It was the nineties. It was India. She was sure she wanted to follow the acceptable and accepted norm. And I was kind of into her but knowing there was an end soon, I don’t know, it didn’t feel like love exactly. But you know, I still felt she left me in the end. It’s rather unreasonable because we both were clear on that score, but I felt unimportant. Temporary.”
“Which means, you’ve had an affair that was essentially friends with benefits,” Lara proclaimed, eyes twinkling with laughter.
“More like acquaintances with benefits.”
“Fuck buddies…and that too way before it was a thing,” Lara giggled. “You’re quite a trendsetter,” she rubbed her nose against Sonny’s smiling.
“When you put it like that…can I say, I really like the sound of it?” Sonny gave a pleased smirk.
“Tell me about the other three…” Lara sobered.
A cloud passed over Sonny’s face. “A married man, a woman and a younger guy. The last, John…it was tragic for him because without planning it that way or realising it then, he was just an emotional crutch for me to somehow get ahold of all my millions of pieces after having been dumped very, very badly. It was unforgivably selfish on my part.”
“And you were in a million pieces because of…?”
“Kiran. Her name was Kiran. It was my second relationship, but first love. It was unbelievable to me. It was mid-nineties. I was with this huge entertainment conglomerate launched by probably the biggest star ever in Bollywood. One of their initiatives was discovering and training new talent. I was actually handling the PR Department, but then handling the twenty selected wannabe actors and actresses was also assigned to me. Kiran was one of them.” Sonny fell silent as she journeyed backwards.
“So you have this thing for actresses, hmm?” Lara joked, when Sonny seemed to be getting lost.
“She was nineteen. I was thirty. But she came on to me. You already know I am awkward, shy and have zero game. She first declared she loved me – in a meeting, no less. She kissed me first. She initiated the sex.”
“How?”
“We used to stay are each other’s a lot and used to snuggle. She took my hand and put in on her breast.”
“Wow! That was badass.”
“Can I tell you something that is terribly embarrassing in hindsight?”
“Please do,” Lara grinned. Internally Lara was jumping with joy. Sonny was willing to tell her embarrassing things about herself despite her sensitivity to teasing. Sonny was actually exposing herself to Lara was not only allowing Lara to laugh at her but inviting her to do so. This was HUGE and Lara knew it and appreciated it. This was Sonny making herself vulnerable to Lara. This was Sonny trusting Lara to take care of her. This was unbelievably precious.
“She’d kissed me a couple of times before…as in very chaste and quick kisses,” Sonny rubbed her forehead almost like she was trying to cover her face.
“On your lips?”
“Yes.”
“You realise how huge that was right? In India kissing on the lips is still a very big deal…and this was decades back! What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing!? Seriously?”
“I wanted it so bad that I didn’t want to read anything into it.”
“Sonny! The girl was kissing you. What could be more obvious?”
“Right? See I told you it was embarrassing.”
“I’m so glad you didn’t do that with me…I think I’d have spontaneously combusted,”…Lara hit the perfect balance between acknowledging Sonny’s embarrassment, not rubbing it in too hard and expressing herself.
Sonny looked at Lara, her deep chicory eyes overflowing with worship as she leaned in and kissed Lara. Lara cupped the side of Sonny’s face as she deepened the kiss and they melded together. They slowly eased out of the kiss. Lara ran her tongue across Sonny’s lips in a lush swipe before moving an inch away and drawing her own lower lip into her mouth, breathing heavily. “God, Sonny! The things that happen to me with you,” she sighed.
“Want to hear the more embarrassing thing?” Sonny asked with a half-smile.
“Even more than that…bring it on,” Lara grinned.
“The night she put my hand on her breast, I only caressed it through her bra and didn’t do anything else. Again for the same reason.”
“You’re unbelievable!”
“Yeah…the next morning she actually said I hoped you’d at least put your hand inside the bra!”
Lara collapsed with uncontrollable giggles.
“Yeah…and I actually said, ‘Not without asking you’.”
It was now full-on laughter from Lara.
“What can I say? I guess I’m a little dense and control is my super-power.”
“A little dense…of course,” Lara spluttered and had tears of mirth in her eyes. She looked at Sonny’s watching her with affection and enjoying her mirth, and felt an explosion of emotion. She tenderly traced Sonny’s features – eyebrows, nose, lips, cheeks – with the tips of her fingers. “Sweetie, stay with me tonight,” Lara looked into Sonny’s eyes letting all her emotions spill out of her gorgeous blues.
“Are you sure?”
“Umm-hmmm. I want to sleep in your arms,”…softly.
“And what if I can’t stick to only holding you?”
“Control is your super-power…I’m not worried,” Lara giggled before leaning in to place an open-mouthed wet kiss on Sonny’s lips.
“There is that,” Sonny conceded with a self-deprecating wry smile. “I’ll need to go home and get a change of clothes.”
“I’ll give you something to wear.”
“Babe, I’m six to eight sizes larger than you. Nothing you own can come anywhere close to fitting me.”
“Tay has all sorts of clothes in all sizes stocked here. We’ll find something,” Lara assured.
************
&nbs
p; Lara woke at six as usual, surrounded by Sonny. Sonny’s arms ensconced her holding her close. Lara smiled in satisfaction as she nestled closer savouring the novelty of waking up in someone’s arms. Arms that made her feel not alone. Protected. Safe. Complete. She hummed softly with pleasure.
“Good morning,” Sonny’s low voice was a rumble in Lara’s ear.
Lara nuzzled Sonny’s shoulder apologetically, “Did I wake you up?”
“That’s okay. You got to get up for your frantically active morning?”
“I should, but I don’t want to. When do we leave?”
“Anytime we want to. I just got to tell Carlos an hour in advance.”
“Is it okay if I don’t exercise today?”…well, this was the first time in her disciplined life that Lara felt this way. She had never even considered things like lolling or laziness. Her hyper-focus had always been unshakable.
“Your daily exercise is important, right?”
“Wrong answer. What I want to hear is that it’s alright to skip it for a day.”
“It’s okay to skip your regimen for a day,” Sonny said dutifully. “In fact, I’ve heard that it is important to take a day off once in a week.”
Lara laughed softly, “Thank you. But I still have to get up to use the bathroom.”
******
Since they both were awake, they left by eight in the morning. Lara was infinitely gorgeous in her short white shorts and a white sleeveless top offset with printed hiking shoes, hair in a neat French braid, head covered with a wide brimmed floppy hat. Knowing that they’d have a rigorous trek around the still-being-excavated ruins of Odysseus’ palace and Homer’s school, they’d packed a change of clothes.
Carlos’ boat, manned by Carlos and three of his cousins, was beautiful with three levels. The entry-level had a lounge and kitchen along with the steering. The middle level had two beautiful bedrooms with three walls of Plexiglas and the top level was a covered open area with tables and chairs for dining and couches for lounging.
“How long will you be in Paris?” Sonny asked as they lounged on the top deck enjoying the endless blues around them.
“Four or five days, I think. There will be meetings with the producers, finalising terms, dates…maybe a read-through of the final script.”
“Your team will be joining you?”
“Yes…my manager, agents – Indian and international – and secretary are already in Paris.”
A comfortable quiet fell between them, each in their own thoughts but somehow very much together.
“Sonny, ever since I met you, I’ve stopped running around in circles…I find myself able to move on. So I’ve been thinking about what I want to do next.”
“And?”
“You know, even without this whole fiasco, I had just another four – maybe five – years left, at best, before I’d be deemed to be too old to be a leading lady.”
“That can’t be right.”
“But it is,” Lara smiled at how horrified Sonny sounded. “I’ve been around thirteen years. I’m already an old face. I’ll be thirty next year and in India that is time to be put on the shelf. Let’s say I could’ve pulled on for another three years or so because I’m just that good,” Lara laughed at herself – acknowledging and embracing her celebrity but completely unpretentious about it, “but by thirty-three or thirty-four, Bollywood definitely retires its heroines. Hollywood is a little kinder plus there are good roles for older actresses too. Which was the reason why I wanted to get an in with that whole Shahid Khan gang.”
Sonny kept quiet because she knew Lara needed to speak out at her own pace because she was actually thinking out loud. It was obvious that Lara was running these ideas for the first time. Sonny was gratified that Lara chose to think aloud with her. This was Lara completely embracing Sonny into her life. “This French film is exactly what I needed right now…in many ways. But I’m wondering…what if I do more than just act in it?”
“Meaning?”
“What if I become a financier? Or maybe a co-producer?”
“So you’re considering getting into production?”
“Maybe. And maybe I could also produce movies in regional languages in India…in languages that don’t have much of a film industry. Maybe Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese, Marwari…”
“And at the same time expand your international base?”
“Exactly.”
“Would you act in all of them?”
Lara turned to her, took off her shades so that Sonny could see her ‘do-you-think-I’m-so-vain?’ plus ‘don’t-be-ridiculous’ look. With an internal start Sonny realised that Lara was the least vain person she had ever met. She was completely unpretentious and down-to-earth. It was remarkable that Lara had not let all the endless accolades go to her head in the least. Sonny felt a sense of deep admiration for the person Lara was. Pulling herself back to the conversation, she put up her hands in surrender, “Right. What was I thinking? Sorry…but are you confident about producing?”
“Fairly…yes. I’ve been around long enough to have learnt it all. I just need a team of good people to start off. This is right now only a germ of a thought…but I’d like you to let the thought marinate for a while and then tell me honestly what you feel about this idea.” As soon as Lara said this aloud, she realised just how safe she felt with Sonny. She just knew that Sonny would have no vested interest in whatever she told Lara. It would be only what she thought would be best for Lara.
******
They were joined by another half a dozen of Carlos’ cousins in Ithaca so Lara and Sonny had a nine-person guard of honour of chattering and laughing girls and boys aged between fourteen and twenty to guide them to the hard-to-reach and not-easy to navigate sites.
Despite the crowd, Lara experienced the trip as being only with Sonny as they wove their own tales about the Odyssey, Penelope, made the tale into a Bollywood movie fitting in songs and dances into the narrative and being utterly silly.
******
“You know, I’ve never done this,” Lara confided as she and Sonny walked on the sidewalk along the sea, licking their gelatos. They were back in town by early afternoon and all the cousins had melted away. Lara and Sonny had had all manner of food for lunch – of which rice stuffed in olive leaves was the star – and had then decided to indulge and have gelatos. Lara surprised Sonny by not mentioning calories or protesting about eating all that food even once.
“Never had a gelato?” Sonny asked in bemusement.
Lara clicked her tongue and wrinkled her nose at Sonny. “Never had a holiday,” she said, “Never just experienced and enjoyed a place. Never been a carefree tourist.”
“What?!? But you’ve been around the world!”
“Yes…I’ve been on sets, in hotels, on carefully designed and choreographed photo-op stops.”
“Glad to be your first,” Sonny grinned.
Lara stopped and held Sonny’s hand, “Sonny, you’re my first for everything. You are my first for actually living,” she said, her eyes intent, exuding a sincerity that went beyond words. Beyond that moment.
“Back atcha…about that living thing,’ Sonny said awkwardly. “Not joking, Lara,” she added with the same sincerity she was receiving, “you’ve moved me from ‘content’ to ‘happy’…for the first time in my life, I’m happy.”
They let the gravity of what was not being said settle and seep in before they continued walking silently, fingers entwined, hearts thudding, feeling electrically peaceful.
******
Lara walked up to the top deck to find Sonny standing by the railing, leaning against a pole. They’d decided to use both the bedrooms and the en suites to bathe off the sweat of the day as they sailed back to Kyse. Feeling refreshed after the bath, Lara had changed into a loose, deep-necked, spaghetti-strapped geometric printed dress that fell just above her knees. She’d put up her hair in a messy bun. Escaping tendrils of hair made her look young, fresh and alluring drawing attention to her swan-like neck. She wr
apped her arms around Sonny and nuzzled her neck and was rewarded with the feeling of Sonny pressing back into her. “Hi,” she said softly.
“Hi,” Sonny rumbled, turning around. She looked at Lara’s fresh, scrubbed face without a hint of make-up. She placed a hand around the poetry of Lara’s neck and ran a finger along her hairline. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispered with awed reverence.
Lara blushed like she’d never been complimented about her looks before and gave Sonny a shy smile.
“Can I ask you something, babe?”
“You know you can ask me anything, sweetie.”
Breathless Page 9