As he tried to get the waiter’s attention, Emma couldn’t help but notice how energized he appeared. It was as if the idea that he could resolve the differences between his brother and the rest of his family had changed something in him. Brightened the melancholy that had draped around him the past week.
And she was happy for him, but it was like a little bit of his melancholy had seeped into her. Like a little nugget had lodged in her chest. His brother had married outside the family, to an Indian woman, from another state, and his parents wouldn’t talk to him. Wouldn’t even let his name be spoken in the house. So the parameters that Rishi had set out for her marriage code weren’t as insane as she’d initially thought. He was trying to keep his family together.
And she, of all people, was the last one who could fault him for that.
CHAPTER 21
Rishi’s phone rang, and he picked it up. Almost eleven o’clock. “Shit.” He rarely slept this late, even on a Saturday, but he didn’t even need to ask himself why. He knew why. Sudhar. Sona. Baby Sejal. Marriage. Work. Emma. Conference. Too much making his sleep restless.
“Hello?” he answered, clearing his throat.
“Why didn’t you call us after you met Radhika? Your father ran into her father at a shop this morning, and it was very embarrassing that her father knew and your father was blindsided.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t called them. He’d thought about it, but he just wasn’t sure what to say. “Yeah, we had coffee last week.”
“Last week? Why didn’t you call?” She made a clicking noise in the back of her throat, a pure sign of disappointment if he had ever heard one.
“I’ve just been busy. Work has been crazy.”
“You can’t work like that when you’re married. When will you have time to give me grandchildren?”
He didn’t even bother protesting at this point. It was early, and the flow of the conversation could play on repeat, they’d had it so many times.
“I just work hard for you and Appa.”
That always dropped the impending marriage-work-too-hard-I-need-grandchildren-now conversation. And she technically already had a grandchild she was refusing to see. But it was way too early in the morning for that conversation.
He’d done a video call that week with Sudhar and Sona so he could see his new niece. She was small and perfect and far away in Delhi. He wanted to find a time to go visit them, find out if what Sudhar had said about the failed investment was real. If his mom would just give them a chance. Emma’s advice had made so much sense, and he just needed to figure out how to bring them all together.
“I know.” She sighed, like she was sad and proud of him at the same time. Then Amma 2.0 took over. “So did you like her? What was she like?”
“Yes, she was very nice,” Rishi said.
“Her father is a good man!” his father yelled into the phone. “His brother too. They said my experience in accounting could be an asset to their textile business.”
Rishi could picture them on the ancient mobile phone they shared, hovering over the tiny device like ostriches, waiting for any morsel of information to escape from the speaker they could gobble up.
A job for his dad, who had retired early because he’d thought they’d had enough set away for old age. Until they didn’t. “That’s good news for you, Appa.” Rishi had said “good,” but he started to feel ill, a wave of nausea seeming to creep into his limbs as well as his stomach. A dull ache coasted through his core.
“Yes, very good news!” his mother said, the excitement in her voice evident. Her normally somber tone had somehow lifted into one of a jubilant young woman. The news that Rishi had found someone he’d found “nice” had buoyed their spirits into ecstasy. “Dharini will move out, and I’ll need a new daughter. Someone I can share our traditions with, someone who will take care of us. Take care of you. Does she seem like someone who will fit in well with our family?”
Rishi sank into his bed. Radhika would probably be the perfect daughter-in-law for his mother. And her family could get a job for his dad? Unreal.
She seemed sweet and kind; he could feel it radiating off her. She was the kind of girl who would want to help, would want to make her new family happy.
How could he destroy their dreams, just for a bright spot of lust in his life? A feeling he couldn’t even trust.
“Yes, I think she’d fit well. She meets all your criteria. You can meet her and see for yourself.” Rishi couldn’t ignore the hint of snark he’d just given to his parents. He’d also created that criteria, but things just felt different now.
His mother muttered something under her breath. So she had caught his little passive-aggressive undertone.
“We will call her parents and see when we can meet in person,” his father said.
He could only imagine how his parents would translate his words to her parents. But he couldn’t keep delaying. He couldn’t keep bouncing back and forth like some kind of indecisive kid who didn’t know what he wanted but still wanted everything at the same time. “Okay.” He swallowed hard.
He hung up the phone and sat staring into the emptiness of his tiny apartment, numb. A tsunami of emotions pummeled him until he didn’t know how he felt. His father’s job. His parents’ happiness. The need to get married. Tradition. Religion. Radhika.
Marriage would determine the rest of his life. He and Radhika would likely get along, but would she challenge him, question him, demand more of him as a man? She was beautiful, but beauty faded. Maybe she was too nice. She was a fawn in the jungle, rooting out the best leaves to eat. Rishi was a tiger, low and stealthy in the grass, wanting substance between his teeth. He didn’t want a fawn for his mate. Tigers devoured fawns. He wanted another tiger.
A tiger? Maybe he was overthinking it. He just needed to get to know her more. After all, people grew into love after marriage. He couldn’t expect the sparks to fly off each other after one meeting, or even a month, could he? Like with his ex—they’d known each other at university for two years before they’d become an item. Before she’d electrified him, set his heart on fire, and then turned it to ash.
He had to rely and trust in the romance of commitment, of binding himself to someone he found attractive, who was good on paper and would fit into his family. He had to do it for his sister and his parents, and in the end, it would be best for him.
He got out of bed and stumbled across the room to make coffee. He didn’t mind sacrificing for his family with his tiny apartment. When his roommate, John, had gotten married and moved out of their old place, Rishi technically could have afforded the larger two bedroom they’d shared, but at the same time, his parents needed the extra money. So he’d found the rare studio apartment and moved in. Besides, he was barely here, and he didn’t take up that much space. And with the multitude of restaurants and Emma now forcing him to eat out all the time, he didn’t have to cook much.
He laughed to himself as he put instant coffee into a mug and boiled some milk on the stove. Emma would have been horrified at him making instant coffee. He could imagine her lecture now. Your grandmother would roll over in her grave if she knew you were making instant coffee! The woman hand roasted her own beans, and you’re basically a traitor to her memory! Hand roasted!
Then she’d get that far-off look in her eye, huff, and cross her arms like she always did when she was pissed at him. And then he’d say something to try to surprise her.
But Emma, we don’t bury our dead. She can’t really roll over in her ashes.
Emma would be horrified instead of laugh. She’d give him another one of those looks, one he’d labeled shock and awe, and chastise him by saying his name as a whisper. He couldn’t deny that the way she said his name like that made him imagine how else she’d say it. In the dark. Moaning it in his bed. Playfully teasing him as she slid under the sheets. Nuzzling him in the morning.
He had to stop it. Although he had to imagine that if his grandmother had been able to meet Emma, they would�
��ve gotten along. Two women who didn’t take shit from him and gave him the exact same knowing look when he fucked up.
His phone buzzed next to the bed, and he took a big drink of coffee, almost burning his tongue. If it was his mom again, he needed just a few moments of peace before launching back into her matchmaking game.
He slouched on the bed and picked it up. It was Emma.
Rishi, I’m in the need for green. I’m homesick for trees. Lots of them. Preeti suggested I go to the botanical garden, but she has some family thing. Do you want to go? If you’re not busy of course?
I’m not busy. I’ll come pick you up. Give me 30?
He wrote that fast enough.
Awesome!
He’d been looking at his day full of just sitting around, maybe trying to see one of his friends for a beer, and then Emma sprang into his life again. He chugged his coffee, jumped in the shower, and was off on his bike in record time.
After picking up Emma, Rishi drove to the botanical garden, a place he had only been to once before, when his parents were visiting. It felt like the kind of place you would only go to on a date. Or take your family. Intimate, but still in full public view.
But in what world would it ever be possible that he and Emma and his family could all be together in the same space? Emma had cared so much about his family reconciling, but why? She didn’t know them. She didn’t know how his parents had treated their own son, his brother. And yes, it was complicated. And yes, Emma was right. They all needed to talk. But even getting them all in the same room would be a challenge.
Why did she care so much, or was she just offering advice because she liked to order him around?
A smirk spread on his face as he waited at a red light. But she didn’t really order him around, did she? They were more than that now. How they’d met had put a cloud over them. Well, more like a storm. But it was all blue skies now, like this day. Blue with the occasional hazy cloud, and those clouds were more aligned with his parents’ nagging than with anything having to do with Emma.
“Do you think I’m nuts to want to go to a garden?” she asked, her breath on his cheek. It matched the heat from the arm that was wrapped around his waist. He couldn’t ignore how natural she felt holding him. He tried not to read too much into it. In the US it was probably completely normal to hold on to the other person’s hip on a motorcycle.
He shook his head. “I get it. Seattle is very green. And all the green in the city here is covered in dust. So it’s like a brown green.”
“Yes! Exactly.” She clutched at his shoulder with her other hand, and it made him sigh.
They pulled into the botanical garden gates, and he parked amid the dozens of bikes there.
“I know what it’s like to be homesick a little,” he said as he took off his helmet and helped hers off as well. “I was only in Seattle for a month, but I had some dark times.”
Her left eyebrow rose up, and her lips turned down. “Your parents?”
He laughed. Trying to escape them by moving halfway across the world wasn’t really dark; it was more ridiculous desperation. “It was the food, honestly.”
A hum buzzed out of her. “Oh yeah, I can totally see that. Well, aren’t you lucky I’m forcing you to take me to all these fantastic places to eat?”
“Most definitely.” He was lucky, although he’d never say it to her unprompted. He’d somehow developed a new taste for the food he’d missed so much. But now, instead of just missing it because he’d grown up with it, he seemed to be developing new taste buds to detect the flavors she was moaning about at every meal. “Does your friend with the food blog miss you?”
Emma sighed as they walked up the path. “Oh yeah. We talk on occasion, but she’s so busy with work and her fiancé and eating without me. It’s mostly envy-inspiring comments on Instagram.”
“It’s hard to keep in touch when you’re so far away sometimes. But hopefully our little stops around the city will make up for it. And you get to go to Kerala soon.”
“I’m so excited about seeing a new place. I just want to stuff myself with everything in this country before I have to leave.”
He swore she looked a little sad as she said this, and he laughed. “You’ve been here like two months. You can’t be sad at what’s happening almost a year away!”
She side-eyed him and looked amazed, possibly at herself. “I know, it’s crazy, right? It’s like I never really got the chance to leave Washington State too much, and now that I’m here, I just want to soak all the newness up.”
They walked past more plants than he could’ve seen in the entire rest of the city. Flowers on a peacock statue, flowers cascading out of pots like waterfalls, flowers shaped into an elephant. A crisp green lawn that you couldn’t walk on, with more flowers lined up in manicured rows.
“Is this green enough for you?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s pacifying my inner Pacific Northwest nature girl.”
“Is that a thing?”
“I think so. I was almost hungry for it, you know? Like I woke up today and looked outside, and there were cars and buildings, and I just needed some plants.” They’d reached the point where the trail led them around a lake flanked with trees. “Oh, and this is exactly what I needed.” She put her hands on her hips and looked out over the water.
“You can just pretend like you’re back in Seattle here,” Rishi said as they started on the trail around the lake. The trees overhead blocked out the sun, and while it was crowded with other people strolling around the lake, the sounds of traffic were muffled, barely audible from a distance.
“I guess I don’t want to pretend I’m in Seattle; I like being here. I love exploring and discovering new things. Sometimes I think I just get so caught up in working and making a living that I don’t stop to just feel and live. Does that make sense?” She shook her head at him.
“Yeah, totally. I think we all do.”
“And when you take a minute to just breathe and take in your surroundings, all the stuff that feels like it should matter doesn’t really matter as much as we make it out to. Like, I’m always so worried about being good at my job and being successful so I can pay my rent and pay off my student loans. But in reality, if I step back and just remove myself from everything, I realize I’m not going to get fired. I will still pay my bills, have a roof over my head, and all that.”
“You worry about that?” Rishi asked. This was a shock to him. Emma had the same money concerns he did, but she’d just come out and admitted it. “So do I.”
“And you’re so good at your job!” She half laughed and smiled at him. He felt warm, even though the sun was still hidden away behind the branches. “Doesn’t it all just make sense now?”
Rishi didn’t have to ask what she meant. He knew. She was talking about how they were so much the same, and yet still so different. How they both wanted job security and success and had been willing to fight tooth and nail for it. Even fight each other.
It felt so natural to take her hand at this moment and walk down the path, feeling like they had reached the end of something. But instead of the end, it felt like something new.
CHAPTER 22
Emma hadn’t seen Rishi for a few days, other than in their requisite team meetings and a few hallway conversations about the project. In fact, if she hadn’t known better, she would’ve thought he was avoiding her. And that just couldn’t happen. They were like comrades in arms now. Friends. And maybe some weird sexual tension had been lurking up inside her, flooding her veins and making her want to do inappropriate things like feel his skin, kiss him, stroke his face, smell his neck, slide her hands up his chest and maybe inside his pants . . .
She blew out a breath. They were still friends. And coworkers. And he was still looking for a wife. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t hang out. He was standing by the coffee machine when she went to get a cup.
“Hey,” she said, oddly feeling like they’d had a fight and she was trying to slink back into
his life.
Rishi’s eyes looked like they were awake, but something in them was dull. Those shimmering gray gems had a coating of dust on them. Something was going on because his sad-face mask was back on. “Hi.”
They both sort of stared at the machine. Emma had to do something. “Hey, we don’t have any more meetings today. Let’s go get coffee. Like real coffee. At the café down the street. My treat.”
He looked like he was thinking over some internal debate in his head, and then, coming to a conclusion, he gave a resigned nod. “Okay.”
She wanted to tell him to not sound so excited, but she resisted. She was there to coax his inner Rishi out of this life sack that had once held him. He stretched his arms behind his neck, his biceps small mountains on his arms. A chiseled life sack.
She sighed. “Come on, let’s go.” She backed away from him, but her hands were outstretched, beckoning him as her fingers fluttered. Yeah, she looked like a goofball, but if that’s what it took . . .
“You look nice, by the way.”
She froze in the corridor between the cubes and looked down. She was wearing one of her Preeti-approved purchases, a bright-blue salwar with some sequins that made her feel like a fancy peacock. She kept telling herself everyone dressed like this, so it was fine. It was fine that she couldn’t find black and gray outfits. Rishi had seemed to like the last one she’d worn, and she couldn’t deny that something about his compliments had urged her to wear another one. “Thanks.” It would help if she couldn’t feel herself blushing.
They walked to the coffee shop down the street, small clouds of exhaust puffing at them from auto-rickshaws, the loud honking from cars, the small beeps from scooters, the roar of the occasional motorcycle engine as it revved up to squeeze through some narrow passage, all creating the soundtrack for their short journey. Why Emma felt like they should be holding hands on this weird walk was beyond her. It was like the same kind of naive tension she’d felt with a boy in middle school. Naive was exactly how her brain was behaving.
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