The Shaadi Set-Up

by Lillie Vale

  I wasn’t thinking about Milan, obviously. He was just . . . there. Like the new growth of mildew in the grout between my bathtub wall tiles. Appearing anywhere that’s susceptible to, uh, excess moisture. My cheeks burn. God, it’s hot in this bathroom.

  Better open the door and air it out. The steam coating the mirror has already started to dissipate, revealing the “Hey Sexy!” with a generously proportioned penis stand-in, the infamous eggplant, that I drew on the fogged-up mirror days ago, but which Neil hadn’t even noticed.

  I sigh and scrub it away.

  Harrie lightly growls as I pad back into the bedroom, attuned to my mood as ever. He’s like the best friend who’s always prepared to no-context hate the same guy you do.

  “It’s okay, bud,” I say with a sigh, scratching him behind the ears and ignoring his whine to join me on the bed. If he gets comfortable, by the time Neil gets here, Harrie will have very definite ideas about whose space this is. I can deal with only one boy pouting tonight, not both.

  Freddie’s read my mind because he ambles into the room with a knowing expression before circling his favorite spot on my rag-rug and elegantly folding his limbs under him.

  Unlike Harrie, who flops on his back, arms and legs akimbo, and tongue out. His eyes beseech me: I’m cute, Mom, take pity on me. My baby’s making a statement, but it’s one I don’t fall for and Freddie pretends not to see, because Freddie, unlike the rest of us, is a grown-up.

  “You two don’t know how lucky you are not to have girl problems,” I inform them.

  The wily look Freddie gives me says clearly: You’re our girl problem.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, falling on my back, only marginally less sprawled than Harrie.

  Freddie doesn’t give up on me, marching himself right between my dangling feet and fixing me with an imposing that’s-bad-posture-young-lady stare that would make Aji proud.

  I straighten without thinking about it. God, he has me well trained.

  With one last, suspicious look, he pivots back to his spot on the rug.

  And because I can’t help but annoy my young-but-old-man-at-heart pupper, I slump my back and feign inching back down again. At once, his head pricks forward. He opens his mouth, about to bark, but then catches himself.

  Because Freddie does not bark for anything shy of an intruder, and since I’ve never had one—knock on wood—there’s no proof he’d do it then, either, but I’d like to think he loves me enough to deign to do so.

  “I’m so sad,” I say to the ceiling. “Pestering my dog because I’m bored and pent up and missing him.” I want to mean Neil, but as soon as the confession is out there, I know I don’t.

  I miss you I type to Neil, anyway. And once I’ve hit send, I know it’s the truth.

  He isn’t perfect, but he wouldn’t hurt me. Not on purpose, anyway.

  He starts typing back right away. SRY!!! Ma’s being a drama queen as usual. Steam-coming-out-the-nostrils emoji. Clenched-teeth emoji.

  Then, Can’t talk. Tell you later. Blowing-a-kiss emoji.

  I resent this woman, his ma, for so much more than just the principle of replacing my mother. This faceless woman I have never seen, never met, and her control over her son, terrify me to a visceral degree. In my mind, she plays the predictable villainous mother-in-law in a Bollywood script, the Indian saas ready to browbeat any girl who dares marry her son.

  Without meaning to, I remember Milan’s mother, to whom I was already as good as a daughter. His parents were so embarrassed by what he did that they avoided us for years.

  Until now.

  Tears catch in the corner of my eyes, slide down the side of my nose, tremble over my upper lip, and finally crash-land in the valley between my breasts. I’m ridiculous, driven to literal tears because of some asshole I dated in high school and college. The pressure builds in my chest like a shaken can of soda until finally a laugh bubbles out.

  I told Milan I was on MyShaadi.com to meet reliable men. Me, Rita. I said that.

  I really was a mess if I threw that in his face.

  My amusement peters away.

  Of course, Mom wouldn’t have believed me for a second. Despite Aji’s harping, I’ve held my ground on not believing in the divine intervention of the matrimonial website. I’d rather put my stock in the magic of meet-cutes than in algorithmic kismat connections.

  Like meeting a guy on Tinder who happened to be the son of the man who scorned your mother, hooking up with him, and hiding your relationship for the next three months because you’re pretty sure it makes you a terrible daughter?

  Now that I think about it, the only way Neil would be accepted is if MyShaadi.com proved he was my perfect match. Hell, my only match. If Neil was literally the last man on earth, my family would give him the red-carpet, cherished-son-in-law treatment, never mind that we’re not actually getting married.

  “Holy shit.” I say it so loud that Harrie and Freddie both raise their heads.

  “Holy SHIT.” Again, louder.

  Ignoring Harrie’s confused yips, I grab my laptop from the nightstand and flip it open. Hunched over on the bed, I navigate to the MyShaadi website. The page populates with a huge graphic that reads Helping You Find Happiness! and a glossy header with a brown couple sporting beatific smiles, arms loosely around each other, decked out in wedding regalia.

  And their promise: At least one match guaranteed in your first 24 hours!

  Gross, the site remembers me. Welcome Back, Rita! We’re So Glad to See You Again! What’s New with You? Please Log In to Update Your Profile.

  Scrolling down, I find dozens of satisfied customer testimonials as well as search options based on mother tongue, caste, and religion. I frown. It feels like I’m basically customizing an online shopping basket, especially when a pop-up tells me I can upgrade to a premium account for more personalized matches based on age, education, and skin color. This is so cringe.

  Almost ready to talk myself out of this this-is-either-brilliant-or-brilliantly-bad plan, I swipe my thumb across the trackpad, about to close out of everything. But then I think, no, this is fighting fire with fire. If Mom can use trickery to get me and Milan in a room together, then why can’t I use my own cunning to devise a ploy to get both my family and Neil’s off his back?

  I can see the Hallmark—if it wasn’t so white—movie trailer right now:

  Rita, a single twenty-six-year-old woman, gives MyShaadi.com another chance.

  Neil, a single twenty-seven-year-old man, signs up for a new account hoping to find love.

  In a surprise plot twist that will surprise exactly no one, they match with no one else except—gasp—each other?

  My idea has gained steam, enough to play whack-a-mole with my heart. I’m thinking of possible problems that could rear their ugly heads and fucking annihilating them. We’ll have to fake it, of course, so we can match our answers to each other. Fill our personality profiles with outrageous traits and bomb the compatibility so hard that no algorithm would even think we were suitable for other human beings.

  We can’t assume our parents won’t demand access to our accounts so they can check up on eligible spouses—not with a mom as helicopter as his and an aji as nosy as mine.

  So all we need to do is be the most troll-worthy versions of ourselves so not even one other person matches with us, and even if by some wacky coincidence, one does, they’ll be so D-list that Neil will look like Prince Charming in comparison.

  I probably look like a total goon, if Harrie’s concerned puppy-dog eyes and Freddie’s alert, perked ears are anything to go by, but I can’t stop smiling.

  My scam will buy us a few months, maybe even a year, of dating, if we want it, before either of our families start grumbling about marriage and grandchildren. How didn’t I think of this before? The workaround of using a matrimonial site as a defense tactic, a literal shaadi-block
, is a sheer genius way of letting Neil and me figure out if we’re going anywhere.

  I can just imagine the crushed expression on Milan’s face when he finds out that not only have I met my dream man online, but I’m thinking about marrying him. It would serve him right to see exactly what he’d let slip away.

  It can’t be too obvious. I can’t flaunt how great my life is without him; I have to play this right. Casual and effortless, like his hair always seems to be. That’ll show him precisely how okay I am. How not hard at all I find his unwanted reappearance in my life.

  The past is the past, and that’s exactly where it’s going to remain.

  I smile a feral kind of smile.

  And of course, he is going to find out.

  Because when my plan works, and it will, Milan Rao is going to have a front-row seat to my boyfriend bliss.

  Chapter 6

  I’m still cackling about the whole set-up, and mentally rubbing my palms together like a Disney villain, when Harrie, my personal alarm, starts barking as soon as the living room lights flick on. He gives up trying to annoy Freddie into play, and takes off for the front door, ready to defend me from home invaders and boyfriends in equal measure. There’s a small, somewhat undignified human yelp as Harrie undoubtedly nosedives for Neil’s leather dress shoes.

  I shut my laptop with a guilty snap. I hadn’t meant to spend so much time flipping between the MyShaadi site and snooping on the High Castle web page to identify Milan’s hard-to-sell home. Broken up for six years and I let myself get sucked into—

  No, this doesn’t count. It’s for work. It’s not like I’m stalking his social media to see what he’s been up to. If I didn’t give in back then, there’s no reason to break my streak now.

  It’s not difficult to see why the house wasn’t working. In a family-friendly neighborhood full of farmhouse- and craftsman-style houses, next to a great elementary and middle school, the owner-architect who had designed this place really fucked up.

  Of course people bypassed the ultracontemporary home with huge plate glass windows and forbidding asymmetrical lines. It stuck out like a concrete-and-metal thumb. The furnishings matched the style of the house, which I promptly dubbed the Soulless Wonder.

  Very few people would want to buy a cold, sterile house that didn’t feel like a home, especially with little kids. Even if they braved the outward appearance, the second they saw the lounge-y inside, they would know it wasn’t a home they could see themselves living in, not without feeling like a fraud. The curved-back white designer sofa was a grape juice or red wine spill waiting to happen; the behemoth steel floor lamp arching over half the living room made me nervous just looking at it; and the lack of soft furnishings anywhere, including no curtains in the bedroom (!!!), screamed: This place is waaaaayyyy too slick for you.

  “Harrie, I’ve only met you a hundred times, minimum,” says Neil, his voice drifting in from outside the bedroom door. “One of these days you’ll have to acknowledge that you know me as something other than ‘Guy You Bark At.’ ”

  He enters my bedroom with his best forgive-me smile and a handful of apology flowers from Trader Joe’s.

  Good dog, I think to myself.

  “Rita, your attack dog has a thing for Cole Haan,” Neil says with a weak smile.

  At my blank expression, he looks meaningfully at his socked feet.

  Oh. The shoes he kicked off next to the front door.

  I try for a joke. “You named your shoes?”

  He presents the flowers, not looking amused.

  I take them, not quite mollified. “Do you want dinner? There’s leftovers in the fridge.”

  “I, uh, ate at home. Ma made idli sambar and mutton curry.”

  Other women worry about catching lipstick marks on their man’s collar; I have to watch out for brown curry stains and onion breath to tell me he sneaked off to his beloved ma’s.

  Grim, I ask, “What happened to ‘on the way’? That was hours ago. You said you’d have dinner here. You could have—”

  Been honest. Chose me first, for once. Cut the cord a little.

  He unbuttons his shirt, letting it fall to the floor instead of the chair.

  Which is right there.

  “One of the guys caught me right as I was about to leave,” Neil explains, “and said the question couldn’t wait. And then Ma called me on the drive here and said there was an emergency, so of course I just headed straight there.”

  Of course he did.

  I fold my legs underneath me, curling the toes hard. “So what was it?”

  Harrie prances in, yipping once in Neil’s direction, and tramples over the shirt with aplomb before settling himself snuggled into Freddie’s side with his usual lack of personal space.

  “Huh?” Neil pauses midway through taking off his pants. “Oh. It was nothing. You know how she exaggerates sometimes to get what she wants.” He drops the pants on top of the shirt.

  I clench my teeth. And yet you drop everything and go running.

  “Oh hey, didn’t you need me for something?”

  “It was nothing,” I snipe, feeling guilty almost immediately when his face falls. “Sorry. It was just a little embarrassing when Paula’s husband stopped by to pick up the piece she bought. Don’t worry about it. I loaded it up on the dolly and took it over on my truck like usual.”

  Neil’s eyes light up. Nothing ever keeps him down for long. “Yeah, that’s right, you made a sale. Congrats, babe. I’m sorry, it slipped my mind. But looks like it wasn’t a big deal?” Down to his boxers and undershirt off, he slides onto the bed. “Maybe we should celebrate?”

  His cologne has some major staying power. Even with his clothes puddled on the floor. I pull away. “Wait, so, indulge my nosiness, but remind me why she called you over, again?”

  “Why else? You should take the future seriously, beta,” he mimics.

  “Marriage?”

  “When I burst in the door thinking something terrible happened, I came face-to-face with a girl dressed in the jazziest kurta I’ve ever seen in my life and both her parents staring at me. See, this is why I keep telling you we should just tell our folks about us and get it over wi—”

  Before he can continue his impassioned tirade, I say calmly, “I completely agree.”

  Neil gapes. He also forgets to blink. “Did you just say you agree with me? But, but, I didn’t even get a chance to convince you yet.”

  “You don’t need to.” I pivot my laptop to face him, switching tabs to our MyShaadi profiles.

  “Oh my god!” Neil’s eyes widen. “Shit. Rita. Our parents did this?”

  Before he can work himself into righteous indignation, I say, “No, I did.”

  Again, his jaw drops. “I . . . don’t understand.” Then his eyes narrow. “Are you trying to tell me something? Look, is this about yesterday? You want us to see other people?”

  “Yes, but not the way you think.”

  “Right, because there’s really a lot of different ways to misunderstand”—Neil gestures to the offending screen with a wry smile—“your girlfriend making a profile on MyShaadi.com.”

  “Your mom keeps pressuring you to get married. My mom keeps pushing me at—” I stop short. I can’t tell him about Milan. “Also pushing me toward marriage,” I recover, thinking fast. “And I’m not going to lie, Neil, the weekly digs about how life would be so much easier for you if only you had a girlfriend to bring home to mummy is . . . well, kind of a lot. Especially when I told you that this will break my mother’s heart.” He opens his mouth, but I race on. “And yes, yes, I know you’re going to say your parents are happily married but—” I also can’t tell him mine aren’t, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of his.

  “But, Rita,” he says when I’m done explaining the whole scam to him. “It’ll never work. How is it possible that we don’t get any ot
her matches except each other? The whole point of a matchmaking service is to provide people with the kind of options they don’t get in real life.”

  “I’ll show you.”

  I make him get his work laptop. He brings a gust of cologne-thick air back with him.

  After I hand over his log-in info, we each have our own profile on our screen. “Now we just take the personality assessment, fill out all our interests and goals, and identify what kind of partner we’re looking for. It says to be as specific as possible so their AI can give us our best matches. Our job is to make sure we don’t come across as appealing in any way, while still making sure our interests describe each other perfectly. So, for example, favorite movie, we’d both type in Coco.”

  “Right.” He still looks unconvinced.

  “What’s up, Neil?” I touch his forearm. “Doesn’t this solve all our problems?”

  Four birds, one stone. His mom will stop hounding him to meet girls, my mom will stop thinking I still have a future with Milan, Neil and I can date in peace, and if Milan cries himself to sleep every night, it’s literally win-win-win-win. The perfect set-up.

  “I g-guess.” Neil taps at the trackpad. “I mean, it just seems like a lot of work, but if you think it’s a good idea . . .”

  “So you’re in?” I press. “We’re doing this?”

  He nods.

  The pressure in my chest eases. I hadn’t realized until now just how nervous I was that he wouldn’t be on board, that he’d hate the idea of lying to his ma, or even that he’d identify some oversight that would blow this whole scam apart.

  “Should we fill it in together?” I ask eagerly. My cursor is already poised over start.

  “How about tomorrow? I’m kind of tired. It’s, like, ten-thirty. These online quizzes take forever. Remember that IQ one?” He yawns and stretches his arms behind his head.

  Could he be any less enthused? “Oh. Oh, yeah, okay. That should be fine.” I blink past the disappointment and sink back onto my side of the bed. “You’ve had a long day.”