The Shaadi Set-Up

by Lillie Vale

  “So . . . thanks, but I’m going to pass,” I say between gritted teeth.

  One corner of his mouth lifts. “I didn’t offer you the job.”

  I scowl. “Your mother did.”

  “My mother doesn’t speak for me,” he counters.

  Mom raises her hand. “Rita’s mother does speak for her and she would definitely like to accept the job, Milan. With pleasure.”

  Pleasure and Milan should not go in the same sentence.

  “Also,” Mom adds, “I already told your mother she would.”

  “What? You can’t commit me to projects without even asking.” I stand up, scraping the barstool back. “You had no right to speak for me, Mom. This is not a playdate! You can’t just . . . just arrange things for us like we’re children!”

  Aji speaks for the first time. “If things were that easy, I’d arrange you a match on MyShaadi.com like that.” She snaps her fingers.

  Milan stares at me. “You’re on MyShaadi?”

  A beat. “Yes,” I bite out. “I’d love to meet some reliable men I can actually count on.”

  He flinches.

  Fierce knee-jerk victory shoots through me. He looks crushed. Fucking good. Now he knows there is zip, zilch, zero chance of us ever getting together again.

  He takes a step closer to me, face impossibly earnest. “Rita—”

  “Wonderful.” Mom claps her hands. “Rita is dead set on marriage, and Milan desperately needs the help, it’s decided. There’s no reason you two can’t work together, unless . . .” She lets the pause linger. “You still have feelings for each other?”

  I hold my breath, looking at him head on.

  If he looks sad right now, it’s not because of anything I said. Maybe that’s just his default expression. How would I know? It’s not like we speak anymore. Rajvee and her mom cater his office’s open houses, but ever since junior year of college when she made the mistake of telling me she’d seen him out with some other girl and I spent the rest of the semester stalking their Instagrams and fuming over every gooey caption, we decided that Raj’s acquaintance with Milan aside, she wasn’t allowed to tell me anything else about him.

  “Milan?” Mom prompts.

  He doesn’t say anything, just worries at his lower lip, which I guess says it all.

  Fine. Right. Okay. Whatever. It’s fine.

  If Mom knew the whole story, he’d be out of here faster than he could say “Auntie.”

  Aji’s WhatsApp dings, breaking the awkward silence.

  “That was years ago. I’m pretty sure we’re both over it. I’m up for it if you are, Milan.” I’ve avoided saying his name out loud for so long that my tongue stumbles, but I catch myself before he can notice.

  He looks at me a little helplessly, like I was his last chance to get out of this, and now he’s backed into a corner. “Well, I . . . I guess? I mean, if my mom already talked to you about it.”

  “Don’t you think for yourself,” I mutter under my breath.

  He doesn’t give away any sign that he heard me, but Aji smirks.

  Damn it, what’s the point of insulting him if I don’t say it loud enough for him to hear?

  “Vah re vah, kai good boy ahes tu,” says Aji, sneering so he knows it’s not a compliment. Not when all the praising words are at odds with the stone-cold voice that lands like a barb. Mom shoots her an odd look as if she’s trying to puzzle it out, too, but my grandmother ignores us and heads for the dining room.

  “Well, you do have the experience,” says Milan. “I hope you’re okay with this.”

  My heart starts to wrench like the KitKats we used to split. The last time I’d really heard his voice, it had been on that damn voicemail recording during the worst moment of my life, and he’d been so vehement then, so full of quivering desperation and righteous, finger-pointing anger.

  So different from his voice now—conscientious, tentative. The kind of voice that would take back the callous I think we should take a break if I wasn’t okay with it.

  I swallow. That’s why my mom thinks the love from before is still strong.

  Because I told them I would be okay. Because I didn’t know then that I wouldn’t be, not for a good long time. Because Mom thinks Milan’s always going to be the one who got away.

  To her, he’s my Amar.

  Here’s what she doesn’t know, can’t know, has no way of knowing: Milan can’t be the boy who got away if he threw me away first.

  So am I okay? Seriously, coming from him, the caring boyfriend act is hard to swallow.

  “Yeah. It’s fine.” I can hear how rigid my voice has become. “But let’s get one thing straight, okay? I’m not doing it for the money, although, yeah, money’s nice. So I hope my mom was right that this will be paid, because if not—”

  “No, yeah!” he says in a rush. “It’s in my budget.”

  “Oh. Okay. So then we’re . . .” I swallow back my tirade about fair pay. “All set.”

  Mom busies herself in the fridge again, coming out with a half-full bottle of her favorite prosecco. “Ah, Ruthvik. Finally. Wine with lunch?”

  I turn around. “Hi, Dad.” My six-foot-two dad comes through the sliding-glass doors, wearing a Seahawk’s cap and a big grin that fades when he sees Milan there, too.

  Relief whooshes through me. His creased brow and tight jaw tell me one thing—he may have let Mom know I was coming over, but at least he didn’t have anything to do with tag teaming me. It’s another reason I don’t love coming home. I hate being reminded my parents aren’t in love with each other. Going through the motions. Making do.

  “Hi, chinu-minu.” Despite the softness of the endearment, his mouth takes on a hard set as he takes off his cap. He’s not exactly Milan’s biggest fan, either. “What’s going on here?” He shoots Mom a you-had-something-to-do-with-this-didn’t-you look.

  “So I should probably be going,” Milan says, edging toward the hallway.

  “Nonsense,” Mom says crisply, ignoring Dad’s fixed stare at Milan’s panicked face. She gives herself a generous pour of prosecco, then fills up Dad’s glass, too. “We haven’t seen you in years and you’re here now, anyway. We can all be adults, can’t we?” She makes sure to widen her eyes at me, implying I’m the one acting childish. Well then.

  “Milan can do what he wants,” I say with a shrug. Then, quieter but not quiet enough he can’t hear, I add, “He usually does.”

  Milan stops moving. His eyes narrow. “Yes, Auntie, clearly we’re all adults here.”

  “No need to be so formal, it’s Esha,” Mom reminds him.

  His smile is mostly wince, but with the trademark good manners I remember from high school, he helps Mom carry the heaviest CorningWare dishes of food to the dining room.

  Dad slings his arm around me while using the other to down the wine. “Sorry about your mom, kiddo. She means well. She just wants to see you happy.”

  I know she does. But how could she think for a second that I’d appreciate her interfering in my life any more than she appreciated Amar’s mother intruding in hers?

  How could she not see that just because her heart was in the right place, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t breaking mine?

  Even though I hadn’t actually crashed my car this morning after seeing Milan’s face, it still feels like I’m walking away from an accident.

  Dad reads the misgivings on my face and sighs, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “It’s just one lunch,” he says, using his soothing doctor voice, his let’s-see-how-bad-it-is-first-before-you-start-catastrophizing voice.

  It doesn’t have the intended effect. I’m not nine-year-old Rita who broke her arm climbing the tallest tree in the neighborhood to knock a crowing bully off his pedestal. I think I may have actually cried less when that happened.

  Because when a bone breaks, it can be set, mended good a
s new.

  Hearts? Not so much.

  Chapter 5

  When lunch was over, Milan was able to dash off a quickly mumbled thanks before he made his escape, while I was stuck there longer, letting Mom talk at me. While we cleared the table, during the dishwasher’s rinse cycle, even following me out to the workshop, all the while keeping up a nonstop stream of one-sided conversation outlining Milan’s good qualities.

  She can list all the pros she wants; they’ll never outweigh the seen-from-space con.

  Dad, who had already snuck out to the workshop during the boy talk—something he’d never been that comfortable with—takes one look at my pained face and wordlessly begins cutting the large sweeping curves for my end table legs, the powerful blade of his band saw making quick work of the blocks of wood.

  My phone dings, lighting up the screen.

  “Who is that?” Mom tries to peek at the screen, making no secret that she’s hoping it’s Milan texting to set up our collaboration.

  “No one,” I say. “Raj.” I whisk the phone to my chest before she sees Neil’s message.

  I’ll help you move the dresser over to the neighbor’s house before dinner.

  A sweet offer, even though I can do it myself and never expect my boyfriends to do the “manly” lifting.

  Then comes a barrage of notifications. Every sentence is its own message.

  And don’t think you’re off the hook, Reets ;)

  We really should pick up the conversation from yesterday . . .

  If we’re not going to be honest with our parents, where is this even going?

  Plus, I’m pretty sure Ma doesn’t even know or care about what happened . . .

  My dad loves her.

  Of course his mom wouldn’t care. She won.

  My mom was the one left behind.

  The distinction seems lost on him, why his mom doesn’t get to be the one upset.

  I promise it won’t be weird if our moms meet?

  Indians don’t do Jersey Shore catfights hahaha.

  My right eyelid twitches the way it hasn’t done since finals week in college.

  I leave him on read, swiping away the notifications.

  “What’s Raj saying?” Mom asks, leaning forward to peer at the screen I’m angling away.

  “Nothing.” I stick my phone in my back pocket.

  Her smile turns cat-who-ate-the-canary pleased. “Is it Milan?”

  “No! I told you, it’s Raj. Dad, here, let me do the next leg.”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  Hurt flashes over Mom’s face. She feels excluded from the hobby that had me spending so many hours of high school learning from Dad. Like every other emotion, she wears this one on her sleeve, too. “I’ll just pack up the food I made you,” she says, blinking fast. “I already set aside extra daal.” She turns away hurriedly, heading back to the house.

  Dad looks at me. “Go easy on her,” he says, and it’s not quite a rebuke, but also it is.

  Aji cajoles me into staying for tea and digestive biscuits before I head home with leftovers from lunch: a mixed vegetable korma, and piping hot onion and mirchi pakoras.

  Even as I accepted Mom’s Tupperware I knew I wouldn’t be digging into her food tonight, no matter how delicious it smelled the entire car ride home. It was a small, childish rebellion, but it was the only one I could let myself get away with.

  And maybe I felt a little guilty, too.

  Back home, I got to work mounting the new legs on the end table and painted its first black coat, leaving it to dry in the garage while I started to make my favorite comfort food, masala mac. I vented to Raj on speakerphone about the total absurdity of Mom’s scheming with Milan’s mom to set us up—they were both watching entirely too many Bollywood soap operas if they thought I’d fall back into his arms after all this time. After years of forbidding Raj to mention his name in my presence, “Milan” fell from her lips with a dizzying, pseudo-unpleasant regularity.

  My chest was still heaving from my rant when my phone chimed with Neil’s apology text. He wouldn’t be home in time for dinner, but would try to get away from work at the earliest opportunity. For once, at least, his ma wasn’t the excuse.

  Too hungry to wait for him, I went ahead and started scarfing down a bowl of masala mac while making my side salad. But right after mixing in the dressing, Paula’s husband, Rick, knocked on the door to ask if I needed any help delivering the dresser. By the time I loaded it up on my truck, dropped it off, and came home, I knew there would be nothing crisp about my Caesar.

  Just as I step back through my door, my phone dings.

  On the way reads Neil’s text message. I leave him on read because he’s not on the way, probably not even heading to the parking lot; he only spells it out when he’s still spinning in slow circles in his office chair at work because something came up and he knows he’s going to be late.

  His tells are easy. If he was really on the way, his text would have read “On my way!,” the predictive shortcut of “OMW” that he uses when he’s already behind the wheel, because he knows I hate it when he texts at length while waiting at stoplights. Normally I’d tap back a thumbs-up, but I’m fresh out of understanding tonight. Not when he stuck around at work—I check the time on my phone—two hours later than he needed to be, missing the dinner he promised to be there for and the delivery he offered to help me with.

  Just as expected, by my return the romaine leaves are soggy, the thin radish slices have bled pink into the dressing, and the croutons squish into pulp with the tiniest pressure of my tongue.

  If I’m waiting on Neil, anyway, might as well have another bowl of masala mac to change the bad taste in my mouth. But no, better not. If I have even one more scoop, dinner will be too heavy in my gut and I won’t feel sexy enough to be on top tonight.

  And yet, I’m not sure even solid B+ sex is better than the cheesy, creamy homemade macaroni spiced with diced tomato and onions sautéed in chili powder and garam masala.

  I send the picture of my second bowl to Raj and the family WhatsApp group: a judgmental “baap re, so much cheese” and shocked cat face from Aji; a thumbs-up and heart-eyes from Dad; a reproachful “then how come you didn’t like the tomato Maggi noodles I made?” to which the only possible answer is “that was a crime against instant ramen, Mom.”

  Which is followed by “Have you and Milan fixed a time and date, yet?” Yellow heart, red rose, emoji with heart eyes, cat with heart eyes, giant red question mark.

  All she’s missing is the engagement ring.

  I send back a string of vomit emojis. The only rational response, obviously.

  Later, Raj messages me a flurry of shocked cat-face emojis and tongue-out emojis right as I get in the tub for a soak with a fizzy bath bomb and even fizzier Moscato d’Asti.

  IT’S MEAN TO SHOW ME WHAT YOU’RE EATING IF YOU’RE NOT SHARING IT WITH ME!!!

  Talking with her always brings on the rush of serotonin and endorphins of a full-body, gut-busting laugh.

  I relax in the tub with my wine until the water cools and my glass runs empty. By the time I’m out, most of the tension has ebbed away like the remnants of the bath bomb on their descent down the drain.

  Cheeks flushed from my scrub, eyelashes wetly clumped, shampooed hair clinging to my neck and coiling over large pinky-brown areolas, I look nothing like the self-conscious teenager who pretended not to hate taking her bra off to have sex with Milan. As I gather my hair into a fist to squeeze out the excess water, I brush a nipple, sparking arousal down to my belly.

  I let my hand trail lower. My skin is soft and dewy, and I wonder what Milan would say if he could see me like this.

  Confident. Proud. Sensual.

  Then I think, Oh god I absolutely do not want Milan seeing me naked. So I splay my palm over my torso, imaginin
g Neil pressing close, and twist side to side to find my best angle, indulging in a tiny having-sex-while-watching-ourselves-in-a-mirror fantasy.

  Now should be the moment he comes home, wraps his arms around me from behind, and takes me. I stare at the steamed mirror like I’m willing him to appear, like a hero emerging from the fog of the moors, dark overcoat flapping open to reveal a shirt with a deep V neck and a slim but toned chest I can run my lips over.

  Thick brown hair blowing away from his face. Thin lips crooking into a smile full of wicked promise. Bright honey-brown eyes that could draw a bear. A cute butt-chin where I could nestle my thumb when I cupped the side of his face, drawing him closer . . . closer . . .

  Mouth dry, I almost jump at the soft scraping against the bathroom door.

  Lightning-rod anticipation shoots through me, heading straight between my legs. My heartbeat slams in my ears. For one unnerving second, I don’t know who I expect to be on the other side of the door.

  But then I hear a plaintive woof, and I drop my hands from my body, slumping with disappointment. It’s only Harrie.

  I try to grasp on to the moment of arousal again and discover it’s well and truly left the building. Like dandelion fluff floating away before I can remember to make a wish, it slips between my fingers.

  I need something to grab on to so I don’t float away, too. My fingers clasp the stem of my wineglass nestled in the corner of the tub and backsplash. I toss back the dregs. I’m such an idiot. The only man I’m sleeping with who has the keys to my front door is Neil.

  Your boyfriend, Neil, remember?

  Deliciously shivery from the chilled wine and still warm from the tub, I slip into a black allover-lace panty, forgo the bra, and wear an oversize flannel so soft and old that the inside collar’s more pill than fabric, fastening only the button above my navel.

  I consider my reflection, wondering if there’s part of me that should feel guilty that Neil wasn’t exactly the leading man in my fantasy. I read somewhere once that when we fantasize about people it’s not necessarily them we’re seeing, but aspects of ourselves. So maybe I’m just horny and need to own that.