Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

He pointed at Trang. “How do you feel about this?”

  “I’m—”

  And at Lilly.

  “Ah—”

  Then at Arik. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Arik held both hands up. “Backing away, Dev, because you’re upset and I’m not sure what’s going on here. Lilly suggested laser tag and we’re all cool with it. Trang said it was no problem for him. We discussed it together, you know consulted, took a vote. It’s more fun than bowling but look, if you don’t like it, we—”

  “You discussed it?” He looked at Trang who nodded, and at Lilly who smiled. “And you all agreed?”

  He got a chorus of yesses.

  He’d fucked it up. He should’ve had Reid take a swing at him so he could step into a flying fist before he put his own foot in his mouth. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I overreacted. Arik, I’m a dick for yelling at you. Laser tag. I hope Lilly kicks your asses. Go do what you need to do.”

  The team backed out of the lab, but Arik stayed. “Are you okay, bossman?”

  He fired an imaginary pistol into his temple. “Control alt delete. I’m fine.”

  Arik looked at him as if he might need a reboot. It wasn’t a bad idea. “You like, used a serious swear, and so, not okay, right?”

  Not okay. In dire need of getting his shit together. “Sorry. No excuse.”

  Arik made a duck and cover movement. “For a minute there it was like you were channeling Reid.”

  Dev scrunched his face. The comparison to Reid was awful but apt. “Please take that back.” In manner, in behavior, in brilliance he was nothing like Reid, but in shouting at his team he’d acted like Reid on a bad day.

  Arik snapped into a soldier’s crouch, arms up to cradle a rifle. “Maybe you need to shoot something up. Ack-ack-ack-ack-ack.”

  That was Dev’s problem. Felt like he’d been shot, filled full of misgivings. He needed to suit up, and go talk to Sarina, make things right between them. But not while he was infested with this conviction she was making the wrong call. She was selling herself short. She was young enough to wait, young enough to meet someone to share this with, to give her kid two regular loving parents.

  He made a throat-slash gesture to get Arik to shut up. “Lilly and Tina are really okay with laser tag?”

  “Lilly is on the wall of fame at the place for the most takedowns in ten minutes. I am gunning for her and she’s going to school me, I can feel it. But Dev, I’m bummed you thought I’d be total dudebro and not consider everyone.”

  If Grandma Patel could see Dev now. His hundred-year-old gran could probably smell the karma from eight thousand miles and two oceans away in Mumbai. He wasn’t okay with Sarina planning a baby without him, he wasn’t okay she didn’t consult with him, and he was gunning for her because of it, and until he could sort that out in his head, he was the dudebro who didn’t trust his best friend.

  He avoided people and hid out in the lab for the rest of the afternoon, half expecting Sarina to hunt him down and confront him. Hoping she would, because then they could sort this out. They’d never had a major disagreement before. He’d never had reason to feel she’d shortchanged their relationship until now. But the coward in him was strong, Obi Wan, so he stewed instead of doing anything productive, and well before his usual clock-out time he was sitting in Gita with her top down, warming her engine. He’d go smack things at the gym like Arik suggested and then cook Sarina a special meal. The way to Sarina’s heart had always been food she didn’t have to cook herself.

  He hit the gym and hated it less than usual, bonus. His workout was more inspired and it cleared the angry birds from his head. He’d feel it tomorrow in his legs and arms, but that wasn’t a bad thing, he’d go soft around the middle like Dad if he didn’t take care. The two of them enjoyed cooking and eating too much for there not to be consequences. He shopped, got flowers with the groceries, because that felt right, and then he drove to Sarina’s.

  She wasn’t home.

  He sat in Gita and sulked. On any other day, he’d let himself in with her key, but that felt presumptuous given the whole dudebro thing. He answered his cell without looking at it. Shush’s ringtone, Beyonce’s “All the Single Ladies.” She’d programmed Justin Beiber’s “Sorry” for him in her cell. He hated that song.

  “Hey,” she said. “Have you seen the sign up for the cricket teams?”

  It would please Dad to Mumbai and back if he fronted at the upcoming annual Silicon Valley Bombay Cricket Club charity carnival. “Are you going?” If Shush was going, he really should. “Every year I say it’s the last time.”

  “You’re kind of a celebrity.”

  “D-grade.” But it was true. “They only love me for Gita.” He was the golden child, the son done good. He got a dozen awkward requests for seed funding that he turned down, embarrassed himself on the pitch; couldn’t bowl, couldn’t bat, mostly struck out for a duck without scoring and Vikram Patel still thought it was marvelous he played.

  “I was going for F-grade.”

  “Brat.” But he was grateful to Shush for not making this awkward. He hadn’t spoken to her since before Sarina’s practice date. Since the last time they’d agreed not to have sex again.

  “Of course you’re going. You wouldn’t let Vik down.” And Shush wouldn’t let her dad, Tavish, down either. She’d be there in her uniform ready to captain the women’s team, ready to hit it for six. She was a much better athlete that he was, a great UX architect, and a very decent cook.

  “Cucumber sandwiches and tea with lemon. I’ll see you then,” he said.

  “Actually, I was wondering what you were doing tonight.”

  Enjoying that sexy suggestive purr in Shush’s voice too much. Cooling his heels, worrying about the shrimp defrosting. He could call Sarina and find out how long she’d be. Unless she was with the practice date again. She hadn’t said anything about that not still being part of her have a baby on my own plan. God. He’d like to take a bat to the practice date’s head, a cricket bat could do some damage. Take a guy’s head off with a cricket bat if you swung it right.

  Month of Sundays, where were these violent thoughts coming from?

  “Dev?”

  He looked at the empty Gallo house in time to see one of the timer lights come on. Sarina wasn’t expecting him and she’d probably eaten. He still didn’t know what he wanted to say to her other than please eat my food, be my friend and don’t shut me out, even though I hate what you’re doing.

  “Dev?”

  “I’m not doing anything important.” He could be doing Shush. He could cook her the shrimp dish and lay her out on the bed and feast himself on her. That’s probably what Sarina was doing, enjoying some man’s hands on her, his lips. He dropped his forehead to Gita’s varnished wooden steering wheel and bounced it there once, twice, then said, “I’ll be at your place in fifteen.”

  “I’ll leave the door open.”

  That meant . . . they said they wouldn’t . . . “Shushmila Singh, what are you doing to me?”

  “Same as you’re doing to me?”

  Which was what exactly? “You only love me for my Puran Poli.”

  “Tavish loves you for your grandma’s chickpea dhal. I love you for your French bean curry and dumplings. I would crawl on broken glass for your dumplings.”

  He sat straight, checked the rearview in case Sarina was on her way home. “Shush, we said we wouldn’t do this anymore. I don’t love you in that way.”

  “I know, crazy boy. I don’t love you in that way, but I love the way you feel when we’re naked together, when you make that little come hither motion inside me and you—”

  His face was hot. Other parts of him were heating. “God on an elephant, Shush.”

  “You coming hither or not?”

  He put his forehead back on the wheel.

  “No pressure, but I am naked and it’s just sex, Dev. I know you like it. I don’t know why you’re all uptight about it. It’s not like ou
r families have to know.”

  “Our families would bliss out if we were together.”

  “Imagine our dads. The ultimate Indian bromance milestone for two men who’ve been friends all their lives.”

  “I was hard and now I’m not.”

  “I was wet and wait till I check, yup, still am.”

  He groaned, eyes flicking up to check the rearview again. He started the car. He’d be at Shush’s in twenty minutes. But he was a lead foot, pedal to the metal, he was there in fifteen because there was no traffic. Everyone was home with Netflix or hanging in their offices and incubators with bad pizza, body odor and dreams.

  He parked and sat in Gita with the engine off and her roof back in place. It’d been a crap day and he was bumping up against a thick wall of tired, topped with a barbed wire of disappointed, but if he went inside to Shush he’d get a second wind. If Shush really was naked, or wearing something flimsy over no underwear, he wasn’t going to be able to resist getting close to her. But it wasn’t the comfort he was looking for.

  Pulling his cell out, he checked messages and alerts. A few irritating things and nothing from Sarina. He thumbed up her number, her icon appeared. It was Sarina in cartoon form. She was drawn like an avenging pixie, but not in sexy leathers, in thigh-high animal skin boots and soft swirling robes that gave her the air of a wise woman. The staff topped with a crystal ball she held helped that impression along. She had wild blue and pink hair and pointed ears to match her pointed chin. Her eyes, drawn so they looked like worlds, took up half her face, and there was a permanent quirk to one pierced brow. She didn’t wear that piercing anymore but there was a tiny indentation either side of her eyebrow to show where it’d been.

  The same girl who’d drawn Sarina had done him as well. His avatar was less truth warrior and more mystical guru. His figure was barefoot, denim clad, shirtless but for a fringed vest, sitting cross-legged on a magic carpet that floated off the ground, a nod to Gita. In his lap was a glowing diamond-shaped tablet and he was surrounded by jungle creatures drawn in hyper-real style with exaggerated features. A raven wearing a flack jacket sat on his shoulder, a blue panther with its paw on a computer mouse lay at his feet, a monkey with a camera strapped to its head clung to the underside of the carpet and there were butterflies with wings made from zeroes and ones all over the place.

  He started on a text, and backspaced his where are you away. Because if she told him she was with a practice date, it’d crush him.

  He got out of Gita, locked her, ran his hand over her smooth, still warm bonnet and down to the scratch he’d not yet had buffed out. The thing with a fully restored American classic car like a Hudson Hornet Hollywood Soft Top is they never let you down. Once you brought them back up to standard, they weren’t fickle, they didn’t tease. They were solid, dependable. But for all that, they were misunderstood. People called them muscle cars but they were older and from a more leisurely time, when the full effects of automation had only begun to improve ordinary people’s lives.

  Gita was his reminder that not everything pre-digital lacked value. He couldn’t see the scratch clearly under the streetlight, but it was deep. A little to the left and he might’ve lost a headlight to whatever had hit Gita. Parts like that were impossible to find and had to be custom-made. Gita would’ve been off the road for months. She was rare and valuable and maybe it was time to stop using her as his everyday transport.

  Time to face up to the fact things were changing in his world. But not necessarily improving.

  He could call Shush and tell her something had come up and he couldn’t make it. He could drive back to Sarina’s house. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d crashed on her couch, waiting for her to get home. Trouble with that was Sarina didn’t want him there. He wasn’t her everyday mode of transport anymore. He’d just be taking up space because Sarina was out changing her world and being comforted by someone else.

  He retrieved the bag of groceries, turned his phone off and went inside to Shush, where he was sure of his welcome.

  SEVEN

  Mom, Brian, Rowena and a woman Sarina hadn’t met were in the kitchen when she arrived at her parents’. The woman had to be Ro’s latest sweetheart, which Ro confirmed seconds later.

  “That is my sister, Sarina.” Ro said, her hand on the other woman’s arm. “This is Fabiana.”

  “Fab,” said the woman with a wave. “Nice to meet you, but don’t worry, I know you’re doing a family thing, I’m not staying.”

  “But you can.” Ro pouted.

  “Absolutely,” said Mom to Ro and Fab, and to Sarina, “I don’t know where your father is, late. I’ve got a roast on, it’ll be ready in an hour.”

  “Fab can stay, Sarina, right?” said Ro. “Unless you’re about to announce you have a hideous disease and you’re dying. It will make a difference to, oh look, I made another mil.”

  Trust Ro to throw shade. “Fab should stay in case we share rare tissue type and I need an organ donor.”

  “Don’t even think that,” said Mom, holding up a large serrated bread knife. “I would personally cut out Ro’s heart if I thought she had one and you needed it, darling.”

  Brian took the knife out of her hand and sliced into a big cob loaf. “Ro is all heart. She can’t help it that it’s black.”

  Sarina flashed a smile at Fab. Hang out at the Gallo’s and this is what you got. “You should stay for the laughs, Fab.” She refocused on Mom. “Is Dad still seeing Carole?”

  “No. She moved to Chicago for her firm. Sad really. He misses her terribly. He’s not seeing anyone else.” She took the bread knife back from Brian. “Actually, that’s wrong. I think your father and Brian are having a thing and trying to keep it from me.”

  “It’s only fishing,” said Brian.

  “And golf. I’m a double-digit golf widow.” Mom put the knife back in Brian’s hands. “How did that become my life?”

  “Can I help it if I like your husband?” Brian conceded.

  “Maybe more than I do.”

  “More than you do what, Isabel?”

  Dad was home. Tom Gallo dumped a scuffed briefcase on the floor and reached for Sarina, planting a kiss on her forehead, moving further into the room to do the same with Ro, putting a hand to Fab’s shoulder on his way around the island bench, where he smiled at her mother’s lover and then took Mom’s face in his hands and kissed her on the lips.

  Sarina had seen that I’m home kiss a trillion times. Her father bent his head, her mother tilt her chin up, her hands going to his chest, their bodies brushing, their closed eyes, and that moment of stillness that shut out the rest of the world, made it redundant. It’d meant so many different things to her over time. Security as a child, before it became wallpaper, easily ignored until she was old enough to be embarrassed by it. Eurgh, kissing. Then there was confusion when other lovers became part of their family mix, followed by reassurance that despite having separate lives her parents were still very much together.

  Tonight she saw that kiss as something different again. It wasn’t habit or possessiveness or public performance. It was love. Tom and Isabel had loved each other since their college days. That love had grown and changed and morphed with them to encompass careers and kids, to fight Isabel’s cancer, to withstand Tom’s workaholic nature and constant travel. It’d beaten back financial difficulties and meddling in-laws, survived the cot death of a baby brother and a separation neither Sarina or Ro had known about until after it was over.

  Since then there’d been the other lovers. Some who were fleeting and others who’d been as much part of the family as the easy to get along with in-laws. Sarina couldn’t imagine a significant family occasion without Brian and until now, Carole. And she never doubted her parents were a solid couple, but watching that kiss made her eyes sting.

  She didn’t have that. She might never.

  She glanced at Ro and saw a reflection of her own longing in her sister’s face. Fab was younger and attractive in a don’t need
to try way, but that tension on Ro’s brow told Sarina Fab was just the latest fling.

  “I guess I should put it out there now that we’re all here.” That way she could enjoy the meal without the discussion hanging over her head.

  “Don’t let it be the need for a new body part thing,” said Ro.

  “Ro, don’t be awful,” said Mom.

  Dad pulled a kitchen stool up alongside hers and sat. “Don’t let it be anything bad about Owen? He’s not using again, is he?”

  “Owen’s doing well. Reid is fine. Dev is great.” He hadn’t tried to see her after the disaster that was this morning and he hadn’t called and she might hate him a little bit for both those things right now, but otherwise, Dev was just great. “I’ve decided to have a baby.”

  “You’re pregnant.” Dad almost dragged her off the stool with his hug.

  “You’re pregnant.” Mum was instant tears.

  “First grandchild,” said Brian and his mouth stayed open.

  “Holy shit,” said Ro.

  Oh God, she’d practiced the phrasing, tried to learn something from the way the guys had reacted, but this is what happened when you dropped unexpected news on people, they misheard it, their brains choosing to fill in a blank to create a picture that made best sense.

  She shrugged out from under Dad’s arm. “I’m not pregnant, but I’ve decided I’m going to have a baby by artificial insemination.”

  “Why?” Ro practically crawled over the countertop saying that.

  “I should go.” Fab tried to kiss Ro who dodged her lips but jagged her arm and Fab stayed.

  “Where is this coming from?” said Mum, wiping at her eyes.

  “From being thirty-one and counting.”

  “That’s not too old.”

  “No, but it’s the beginning of the window where I’ll get too old unless I act. I’ve thought about it for a while, and years of dating, trial-partner juggling makes me feel sick. I want a baby, probably two. I want a family of my own, but if I don’t take responsibility for building one myself, the chance might pass me by.”

  “Good things come to those who wait, sis.”