First Comes Like

by Alisha Rai

  Was that his breathing coming harder and faster? The sudden wetness at his eyes stunned him, and he sat up straight. What was wrong with him?

  “Dev?”

  Pull yourself together. Men don’t act like this. His father had drummed that into him. He’d been a kind father, but not one to tolerate his sons weeping over an injury that wasn’t fatal.

  “Dev?”

  Horror ran through him, mingling with panic. No, no. The only thing worse than spiraling out was having Jia see him so weak. He opened his mouth to assure her he was fine, but nothing came out.

  Her beautiful heart-shaped face came into view. Were the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose natural or makeup? He hadn’t noticed them before.

  Jia’s small hand came to a fluttering rest on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said, confident and calm. “You’re having a panic attack. I’ve seen this before.”

  He shook his head frantically. He was not. He’d tell her that as soon as he could speak, too.

  “Match my breathing.” She inhaled loudly, then exhaled.

  Automatically, without conscious effort, he mimicked her, and she nodded. “Tell me something you feel.”

  Dev took another deep breath, then another. His hand groped for hers on his shoulder and he squeezed.

  “Good,” she said, like he’d spoken. “Now tell me something you see.”

  “You,” he wheezed. Truly, it felt like there was no one else.

  His breathing gradually regulated, growing calmer. His heartbeat slowed from the gallop it had taken off on. He squeezed his eyes shut, though he didn’t want to stop looking at her face. As if she knew his struggle, Jia moved to sit next to him, plastering herself against his side. Dev dropped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight, something he would have never dared to do under normal circumstances.

  When he felt more like himself, he opened his eyes, and was immediately hit with a truckload of mortification. What on earth had just happened?

  He looked down at her. She was staring at the water, but glanced up. Her eyes were soft and calm. Her shirt was slightly rumpled, though he wasn’t sure if it was from him or the breeze.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yes. I apologize. Nothing like that has ever occurred before.” He licked his lips, searching for an explanation.

  “Please, there’s no need to apologize. Panic attacks happen.”

  “Not to me.” He rubbed his chest. “Never. Especially out of nowhere like that.”

  “Nothing triggered it?”

  “No. I was simply looking at the swing and remembering the swing my family had when I was a child.”

  “Do you think that did it?”

  The muscles in his jaw worked. “I suppose.” He should move away, but he didn’t want to. The warmth that had filled him when she’d hugged him had come back. He hadn’t realized how cold he’d been.

  “That’s natural, to miss them.”

  “I miss my parents. I . . .” His greatest shame. “I don’t think I miss my brother as much as I should. I told you we weren’t close.” Sometimes it felt as though strangers had mourned Rohan more than he had.

  “You don’t have to be close to someone to miss them. Or miss what they used to mean to you. It’s part of being alive, I suppose. To miss people, or to even miss missing people. Grief is like that sometimes. Like a bubble that gets big and small.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Miss missing people. Yes. That was exactly how he felt about his brother, and even his grandfather, to an extent. He missed the idea of a loving grandfather. He missed the brother he’d pushed on a swing. “I blamed Rohan.”

  “For what?”

  His words came fast, spilling over one another. “For adapting so easily to life with our grandparents, after our parents passed. He was so happy with the attention and, later, the fame. With the industry. With our last name greasing wheels, with our grandfather’s bullshit and money. Meanwhile, I would have traded all of that for our life with our parents, and I didn’t think he would have. It felt like he betrayed them and me, and that’s absurd.”

  “Why is it absurd?”

  “He was a child.”

  “So were you.”

  His chest tightened. “No, I was older. At the very least, I should have mended bridges with him when I was a grown adult.”

  “You could have. He could have, too.” She paused. “Please don’t think it’s my anger over the catfishing driving me to bash him or anything, but it sounds like there was some resentment on both sides. Don’t take all the blame on yourself. It’s okay to have complicated feelings about someone after they pass away.”

  He huffed out a breath. “I don’t like these feelings.”

  “Oh, no one likes feelings.” Jia rubbed his arm. “Don’t you think we would all choose to be robots if we could?”

  A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “You wouldn’t.”

  “True. I do like pouring my emotions out on everyone. But I imagine those people wish I’d be a robot, sometimes.”

  “I would not,” he said, gruffly.

  She pressed slightly closer. “That’s nice to hear.”

  Dev didn’t know how long they sat there, only that he was startled by how close her face was when he looked down at her. They were real freckles, he realized, charmed. Just a couple, over her nose.

  He wanted to kiss them, trace every single one.

  And it was that realization, coupled with the fact that they were sitting like lovers, that made him stiffen and lean away from her. “Should we . . . ?” His voice was hoarse to the point of unintelligible. “Shall we head out?”

  “You want to see the rest of the place?”

  Sure. Or at least, move out of temptation’s way. He would love very much to kiss her freckles, but that wasn’t possible. Not only because of gentlemanly courtesy, but because this was no normal courtship. Or a courtship at all, as far as she was concerned. “Absolutely. You wanted me to play photographer, yes?” Casually, Dev separated himself from Jia and came to his feet. She shaded her eyes.

  “Sure. I think the place is easy to explore by foot, but let’s take the car.”

  “Don’t want to be without transportation in case we come across those pitchfork-waving locals,” he teased, eager to get them back into their previous relationship.

  “It’s quiet here! Freaks me out.” She came to her feet and shook out the blanket.

  It was quiet. Dead silent, to be exact, with barely a breeze to make a sound. “City girl.”

  She made a face. “I’m sorry, are you not a Mumbaikar who was raised in Dubai?”

  He chuckled. It was rusty, but it felt good. “Checkmate.”

  The first problem came when he tried to back up the car. The second came when he tried to go forward.

  He attempted it again, but the tires met resistance.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The car’s stuck.” He tried again.

  “Oh no.”

  He got out of the SUV and bent down to look at the tires. They were sunk in the loamy sand. He muttered a curse and straightened.

  “We’ll need someone with a winch,” she observed, standing right next to him.

  Dev placed his hands on his hips and glanced around. He squinted at a sign tacked on a beam nearby. “We probably should have read that before parking here.”

  STUCK? CALL KIM.

  “We must not be the first influencers who got stuck out here,” Jia remarked. She pulled out her phone and then sighed. “Do you have reception?”

  He hadn’t even taken his phone out of the car. He reached in and grabbed it out of the cupholder. “No.”

  “What now?”

  His tone instantly went to the same soothing tone he occasionally used with Luna. He was far more comfortable being the soother than the sooth-ee, that was for sure. “It’s not a big deal. This place might not have a lot of residents, but it has a motel, and a grocery store. Someone will have a pho
ne we can use to call Kim.” Dev watched as Jia went to the trunk. “What are you doing?”

  “Putting my camera away.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Well, we have this to deal with now.”

  “So?” He shut his car door and hit the lock. “Doesn’t mean you can’t still do your work. Take photos as we walk through town. Your job doesn’t need to suffer because my rental isn’t as hardy as I thought it was.”

  She stared at him for so long he grew worried. Had he said something wrong? “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’m not used to someone who treats my work like . . .” She shook her head and slung her camera bag across her body. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

  It wasn’t nothing. She’d become uncharacteristically subdued, and he wasn’t sure why. He tried not to take it too personally. Perhaps she was worried about the car, but he’d do his best to take her mind off that. It was the least he could do for how she’d had to literally hold his hand on the beach.

  Another thing to stuff into his box of feelings.

  Dev had never been in a ghost town before. Hearing and seeing no one as they walked past dilapidated homes and businesses was creepy, but it was also fascinating. They met no other tourists as they sauntered down the empty street, but they did pass a “drive-in” that consisted of junked classic cars and old repurposed roller-coaster seats.

  Jia looked interested when he pointed out the installment, but she didn’t slow down to take photos, which surprised him. Was she feeling hesitant to work in front of him?

  In case that was the issue, he stopped when they walked past an old house that had been painted with a fresh coat of bright blue paint with the word OPERA painted in elegant cursive above. Here, too, the artists had left their mark. “Look at that. This would look good with your yellow shirt.”

  “It . . . would.”

  He held out his hand. “Do you want to show me how to use your camera?”

  “Um, okay.” She gave him a quick rundown, then set it into auto mode. “Angle it—”

  “Down to slim your face, up to lengthen your body.” Dev smiled at Jia’s raised eyebrow. “I told you, I’ve watched a few videos of yours. I learn quick.”

  Her smile was more like her normal sparkle. It emerged as he photographed her in front of the bright blue empty house. Though he wasn’t the thirst trap—Rohan’s words, not his—that his brother had been, Dev had to do his share of photo shoots in the past, plus he’d been around enough of them to know what was needed.

  Photos. So many photos, so she could pick and choose her shots later. He tried to keep moving. She did the same between every click, but she was still a little stiff. He tried to think of how his brother had teased him the first time he’d gone to get headshots as a scrawny nineteen-year-old, to get him to loosen up. It was a good Rohan memory, and those were few and far between. “Look at you, you’re a tiger,” he said.

  “Sorry, what?”

  Oh, he’d spoken in Hindi. He switched to English. “Channel your animal side.”

  “My animal side?” Her lips turned up. He continued shooting as he walked around her.

  “Yes. You’re a tiger, you’re a lion.”

  “And a bear, too?”

  “An odd animal to wish to be, but certainly.” He had the feeling he had missed some reference, but she was smiling now.

  She gave an adorable “rowr” and made a claw. He kept walking around her in a semicircle. “Yes, yes, perfect. You just woke up, you saw the sun. The sun is in your eyes, shield your eyes. Now let the sun in. Squint against it a little. You’re a tiger in the sun now. Now it’s cloudy. Look sad that it’s cloudy.”

  “Wait, am I still a tiger?”

  “You’re always a tiger.” He wasn’t aware he was smiling until she started laughing. He kept shooting as he walked closer, angling the camera slightly above her to catch her delight. “Perfect.” He stopped and handed her the camera.

  Jia quickly swiped through the photos, her face brightening. “Not bad, not bad. You make a pretty good Instagram boy—”

  His heart caught, but she didn’t finish. “What?” He didn’t need her to clarify. He knew what she’d been about to say, and he wanted her to say it. Boyfriend.

  You haven’t even kissed her yet. The closest you’ve come to touching her was when she was comforting you during a breakdown.

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t need their lips to meet to know that he was falling for her. Some things transcended the physical, and their connection was one of them.

  Not that he didn’t want the physical, of course, he corrected his brain hastily. But that would come. When it was appropriate.

  Wait, will it?

  Yes. A confident bubble rose up in Dev, the same confidence he imagined people like Jia and the rest of his family felt on a regular basis.

  Jia was his. He’d always been a patient man. He could wait until she came to the same conclusion.

  She looked up at him from under her lashes and took a step forward. Her cheeks were pink. She took another step, and Dev wondered what she was thinking. “You’re—” she started, then stopped when a horn blared.

  She jumped away and he whirled around, ready to both protect her and be annoyed at whoever had ruined the moment. A truck pulled up next to them, and the driver stuck his arm out the window. He was a thin man, his hair a shock of white, his skin like leather. “That car stuck on the beach belong to you two?”

  Dev cleared his throat. Jia came to stand next to him, and he almost shoved her behind him again. “Yes, it does.”

  The driver shook his head. “Don’t know when you tourists will learn not to pull onto the beach. We get one of you stuck every couple months. Bet you didn’t have reception down there, did you?”

  “We did not. We were going to find a phone and call someone named Kim.”

  “Kim’s out of commission right now. He’ll do it in the morning.”

  “We can pay him to do it sooner,” Jia chimed in. “We’d really like to head back home tonight.”

  The local stuck a toothpick in his mouth. “Impossible. Kim’s my dad. He’s the firefighter and the mechanic and the auto club around here, and he’s already had a few too many to be safely operating the tow truck.”

  This man’s father was the jack-of-all-trades of this teeny town? This good Samaritan looked almost seventy. How old was his parent? “We weren’t really planning on staying the night. Can you get us out?” Dev asked.

  The man looked offended. “And take business from my own father? No, no one in this town’s going to do that.” He nodded at the opera house. “You guys look like you have stuff to do. It’ll take you at least an hour or two to take photos of all the art. You’ll be fine.”

  “But we need to—”

  “Why don’t you take a walk down to the bar and see if Jenny has any rooms for you for the night? I’ll get my dad up early tomorrow, and he’ll have the car waiting for you at the inn first thing.” The man rolled up his window before Dev could keep talking, and he drove away.

  “This might sound like a conspiracy theory,” Jia remarked. “But what if there’s no big warning sign on the beach because stranded tourists is kind of how these folks make some of their money in the off-season?”

  “Is there an on-season?”

  “When the artists are here. There’s a festival in April.”

  “I bet that’s a sight to see,” he murmured. His brain was clicking along too fast, pondering what it would mean, he and Jia spending the night here. In this town. With perhaps nothing more than a thin wall separating them.

  Luna would be fine. She wasn’t going to be home until at least one tomorrow, maybe later if he knew how much his niece loved to sleep in. The problem wasn’t logistics; it was an overnight trip with a woman he was interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with.

  He attempted to think of how to fix this. “I can try to get a private car.”

  “For a rescue mission? And what will
happen to your rental, who’s going to come back for that?” She chuckled. “The guy’s right, Dev. It’s not that big a deal.”

  “Are you okay with this?”

  “Sure.” She hesitated. “Are you?”

  He scratched his head. “We’re not married or engaged. It’s improper for us to spend the night together.”

  Her cheeks flushed red, and he played back his words. Oh yikes. What had he just said? “I mean, in such a remote place. People will think this is some kind of—” He cut himself off.

  Jia gave him a wary look. “Some kind of what?”

  “Something . . . improper,” he repeated, because some kind of romantic rendezvous was stressful.

  “Uh-huh. Except . . .” She glanced left, then right. “No one knows we’re here together. I don’t see any tabloid reporters, and I doubt there’s going to be any lurking in a town where there’s only one firefighter and one mechanic and they’re the same person.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” These were abnormal circumstances. She was right. No one knew about this and no one needed to know. As soon as they found service, he’d text Adil Uncle that he’d gone for a drive and had car trouble and that he’d be back as soon as possible, on the very slim chance that something came up with Luna at her sleepover. “I mean, it is true.”

  “Good. Now let’s check out this hotel, and get a couple rooms for the night.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “SORRY, WE only have one room left.”

  Jia should have expected that one. One room left at the inn in a ghost town, why . . . that was exactly how her luck was shaping up.

  The bar was on the first floor of the hotel. The place was only two stories, a half-dozen rooms max. It was completely empty, save for her, Dev, and the bartender slash hotel clerk. Who on earth was occupying these rooms? “One room,” Dev repeated.

  The woman snapped her gum. Her skin was as weathered as the mechanic’s son they’d met a mile away. Jia hoped they were wearing sunscreen in this desert sun. “Pest control guy is doing routine treatments in our other rooms. We only got the one free.”