Chapter Twelve
KIRAN
She shouldn’t have recoiled when he touched her two weeks ago at the arcade. The truth was that she’d sunk into it, closed her eyes and imagined him holding her. She’d lost herself in the moment, being close to a man who oozed goodness, and had forgotten herself when she groaned.
But Ma had a habit of squeezing her shoulders after a hug, and something about that action had triggered Kiran’s memory in a way that had her parents’ faces slamming her out of her bliss.
She couldn’t forget the look on Nash’s face or the fact that she’d put it there. She didn’t want to imagine how he’d react once she told him about her sister or that she couldn’t date white guys, let alone fall in love with one.
Who knew if his heart beat a little faster when he saw her, the way hers had over the last week when she thought of seeing him again?
She had to pretend her growing attraction to him didn’t exist. It simply wasn’t there.
She didn’t want to dwell on the way they were becoming routine parts of life to each other—their silly little texts and memes had become a seamless part of her day—because what would happen if it was taken away? But she also didn’t want to find out what life would be like without his cheerful presence.
She knocked on Nash’s door three times and waited.
Fake it until you make it, Kiran. If you don’t think about it, it’ll disappear.
A shuffle resounded on the other side, and footfalls creaked on the wooden floors as they came toward the door. Kiran wondered if her own footsteps were loud and if the person who lived underneath her could tell what she was up to if she was pacing her studio or skulking around her kitchen. She remembered the silly banter they’d had at Chelsea Piers about the sounds of their apartments.
She jumped as the door swung open, and Nash stood wearing a pair of jeans. He was shirtless.
“Oh…uh. Hey,” Kiran stuttered. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No, I was changing after work. Here, I’ll grab a shirt.”
Please don’t. Kiran cleared her throat.
“Come on in. What’s up?”
She stepped inside.
“I wanted to know if you wanted to take that Upper East Side walk with me.”
As she spoke, she surveyed his place. It was smaller than hers. It hadn’t been gutted and renovated, but the kitchen was new. And as colorful and full as Kiran’s place was, Nash’s was a diametrically opposite minimalistic space.
“I’d love to! I’ve been cooped up in the office all day. Let me use the bathroom and we can go.”
His couch was black and had accent pillows—she guessed they came with the sofa—which were warm gray. His bedspread—I wonder if it’s comfortable to cuddle on—was a black, gray, and white plaid print.
Photo frames were used sparingly—only two hung in the apartment, both in between the two windows. She stepped closer and looked at them—one of a woman who was middle-aged, curvy, and still held an aura of the beauty she must have worn in her prime, with her arm around Nash at his graduate school commencement, and another of a family and Nash dressed in matching baseball uniforms.
“That’s my aunt Kate, and Brandon’s family—the McGuires,” Nash said, emerging from the small bathroom in the corner of the unit.
“Big baseball fans?”
“Nah, Dr. McGuire had a charity baseball game with his practice against another practice, and we all played. I wish I could say any of us were good, but Brandon wields a bat like a Flintstone, and the pitcher from the other team thought he was a major leaguer and kept trying to do us bodily injury with his pitches.”
Kiran giggled. “I’m glad you survived the experience.”
“It was close, but we made it.”
Kiran turned her face to the photos again. “Your aunt looks kind.”
“She’s pretty great. Quirky. Fun. She called me last week talking about how she wants to take a road trip to see the world’s largest things—world’s largest sandwich, world’s largest ketchup bottle, world’s largest pizza.”
“What was her reasoning?”
“That she was bored of the everyday, and she wanted to see life on a grand scale. I told her seeing life on a grand scale didn’t apply to giant condiments and probably meant something like a trip to Vegas in a five-star hotel, but Kate likes to march to the beat of her own drum.”
“I admire that,” Kiran murmured. “So many people don’t have the courage to really live life on their own terms. Think about our lists. We’re young, capable, and energetic—and even we have so much we haven’t done.”
“Well, that’s why we’re changing that together, right?”
He slipped on his Converses and gestured at the door.
Kiran followed him out, wishing they could have spent more time in his apartment. She didn’t know what it was—maybe being around the things familiar to him and being in his intimate space—but it made her feel special. It also prompted a longing in her to be able to get closer to him.
The pendulum swinging in her heart was on a wild ride, and she couldn’t will it back to equilibrium or permanently stick it in the zone of friendship.
They walked to the Second Avenue subway station, making small talk about the restaurants in the area, and hopped on the train to Fifty-Ninth and Lexington.
“So I guess I should have asked this before. But why the Upper East Side?” Nash asked as he held onto the metal bar in the middle of the train car.
“You remember how we talked about different vibes in the city?”
“Yes.”
“The Upper East Side vibe, at least along the river, makes me feel like I’m in Paris or something. I mean, I’ve never been to Paris, but what I imagine it’d be like. It’s quieter. Sophisticated. My best friend, Payal, lives around here, and we’ve taken this walk a few different times, and every single time, I promise I’ll come back and do it again.”
“It must be pretty magical. I work up here, but I haven’t taken the time to walk around much.”
“I work over on Fifty-Seventh! I get it, though, the rigmarole of life…sometimes you don’t get a chance to enjoy the things staring you in the face. I tell myself I’ll come here on lunch all the time, but something always gets in the way.”
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” Nash said earnestly.
“Me too.” She gazed into his eyes, and the overwhelming surge of safety, of home, was too much.
She looked away quickly, pointing out that the next stop was theirs.
They walked in silence to the waterfront, winding their way along the pedestrian paths that crossed and uncrossed over FDR Drive.
It wasn’t uncomfortable. But Kiran had the feeling Nash was in his head as much as she was in her own. Perhaps he needed the silence to sort out his thoughts.
It wasn’t until they had crossed the bridge back to Eightieth Street that Nash finally spoke.
“If there was an Olympics for everyday activities, what would you win a gold medal in?”
She was so taken aback that she snorted. The grunting sound was so unexpected that Nash, who had apparently asked the question in total seriousness, let out a bellow of laughter.
Kiran couldn’t help but join in, at first in embarrassed compensation for the awkwardness, and then in genuine mirth at the fact that Nash had slouched forward, his hands on his knees. The harder he laughed, the more genuine her laughter became.
“Where the hell do you come up with these things?” she asked, wiping tears off her cheeks.
Nash rested his hands on his waist, still chortling. “My guidance counselor in high school had these icebreaker cards. Now I use them in my practice. I have all sorts of things I do to get to know people. Icebreaker cards. Games. Trivia. Human knots.”
“Yes, nothing like getting people to open up by ambushing them with a question about their daily Olympics.” She checked the back of her hand to make sure her mascara hadn’t run.
“That’s exactly the point! You catch them at a vulnerable spot, and then it prompts conversation.”
“And I looked vulnerable?”
“No, but you looked like you were in your head.”
It was like he read her thoughts.
Kiran let out a soft whistle. “Okay…then I’d win the gold medal in organization.”
“You do have a lot of stuff in that apartment of yours. I imagine it wouldn’t fit if it were disorganized.”
“Oh, shut up. It is all about old habits. My dad was a neat freak. Now I am. Lists. Plans. Graphs. I like step-by-step actions and thoughts.”
“I mean, seeing as we’re literally on a walk because you created a list…I can understand that.”
“Don’t hate. What fad did you never really understand?” Kiran asked.
“Oh, you’re playing my game now?”
“I figure you deserve a taste of your own medicine.”
“Okay, then I never understood the full denim look. Or guys getting highlights or bleaching the tips of their hair. Or maybe the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC.”
“If you say that again, I will wash your mouth out with soap.”
“Please. They weren’t any good!”
“So basically, you didn’t understand the entire ’90s?”
“Essentially, yes. Humanity hit a low point.”
“We can agree to disagree.”
The ruins of the old smallpox hospital from the early twentieth century rose eerily from Roosevelt Island. Kiran gave an imperceptible squirm at the idea of spirits who had died too early watching them as they walked with the sun setting on the west side of Manhattan.
“What’s the cutest animal you can think of? And the ugliest?”
“The cutest is a baby tiger or a baby elephant. They look so innocent. Baby elephants, especially—did you know they throw temper tantrums? Oh, and the ugliest is a blobfish.”
“I think you made that one up.”
“I did not! Look it up on your phone!” She stopped and pointed at him.
He fished his phone out of his pocket and typed “blobfish” in Google.
“Oh, dear God! That’s awful!” He stuck the phone out away from him and X’d the window.
“I told you it’s real. Quite gross, right?”
“I’ll have nightmares.” He shuddered.
“How did you meet your best friend? Brandon, right?”
“Right. We went to the same school. We sat next to each other in kindergarten. That sums it up.”
“You guys have been best friends your whole lives, and you summed it up with a single sentence?” Kiran smacked her forehead.
“I wish there was a—I don’t know—romantic or bromantic story behind it, but I think I asked him for a crayon. It wasn’t particularly monumental…though our friendship certainly is.”
“Fair point.”
“Before you make a call, do you rehearse what you’re going to say?”
Kiran scratched her chin. “Yes. I’m not someone who likes to be unprepared or caught off guard. Obviously, it happens, but important conversations… I’m definitely someone who thinks about what to say beforehand.”
“I have a little experience catching you off guard.”
A little? Kiran thought to herself. You’ve caught me off guard since the day we met, Nash Hawthorne.
“I mean, I’ve flustered you before between asking you to dinner and…things like that.”
In that moment, she knew they both were reflecting back to Chelsea Piers and that touch.
She cleared her throat. “Oh, I have a good one!”
“Fire away.”
“What would be a great sport to watch if the athletes were drunk?”
Nash crinkled his nose. “And you ask me where I come up with this stuff?”
Kiran shrugged.
“Curling.”
“What?”
“Brooms everywhere. Ice. Granite stones. It’s kind of a recipe for disaster, but watching people hit each other with brooms while inebriated would be really funny.”
Kiran giggled at the image of an Olympic team swinging brooms over their shoulders or tripping over them.
“If you could go anywhere and do anything, what would it be?”
“Wow, that’s a good question.”
“You didn’t tell me everything added to your list before. And we know each other better now.”
“This is true. But it wasn’t on my list. Your question caught me off guard…”
“Well, let’s hear it.”
“I want to play with an elephant in Thailand. I know there’s some ethical implications of that, but in my head, it’s an ideal world and the baby elephants—because as I said, they are the cutest—need cuddles. I want to be a mom. I want to dance for all of Navratri, in Gujarat—”
“Sorry, what’s that?”
“Nine holy nights in Hinduism. Good triumphed over evil. It’s celebrated for different reasons in various parts of India, but Gujarat, this state in north India, has nightly dances with sticks called dandiya. They dance in concentric circles, and each circle does different steps. You can move between them, learn as you go, and dance for hours. It’s colorful and bright and spirited. I would love to celebrate it authentically.”
“That sounds beautiful.”
“I imagine it is…” Her voice trailed off. “I want to see a cricket match live in Mumbai.”
“People watch cricket?”
“You’re such a hater, American.”
“I’m not hating! I didn’t know.”
“Cricket is one of the world’s most-played sports.”
“That can’t be.” Nash scoffed.
“It is.”
“Well, I guess you learn something new every day. What else?”
“I want to drive a Volkswagen Beetle across the country, like one of those pop stars from the nineties on a road trip. I’d like to see my sister again—” She stopped short.
Nash didn’t miss that last one. He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
What do I say? she shrieked internally. Her eyes widened, then darted to Roosevelt Island across the river—anything to avoid looking at his face.
For all her bluster about being prepared and about having rehearsed conversations, she hadn’t expected to verbally vomit that she hadn’t seen Kirti in years. And if she opened Pandora’s box on this beautiful starry night, the monsters from her past would fly out and the light from the stars may never be seen with Nash again.
When Gandhi preached honesty and truth, Kiran, he didn’t mean white lies, her conscience scolded her, but it didn’t matter. She was speaking before she could ruminate on it for too long.
“I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Why not?” came the inevitable question.
“Oh, you know. Family drama. I’m a woman of mystery, Nash, remember?”
Nash frowned slightly at her forced nonchalance but then smiled. “Indeed.”
But it was a lie that humiliated her. Not only had she omitted the truth about Kirti’s leaving the family, but she had thrown her family on the fire, making it sound like the most heartbreaking decision of her parents’ lives was only a little drama. She hated that she burned the very thing she loved most to preserve a relationship…no, not even a relationship, a friendship that she had for a month and a half.
Then again…her family was torn apart in dramatic fashion, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a total lie. And someone in America, the land of the free, may not understand the complexities behind what happened.
“I’m really sorry,” Nash said, his brows knit in a frown. “That must be hard.”
“It is.”
Kiran’s mind went to her sister in India and wondered what she was up to, how she had chosen love over family, and what she’d say to her if they reunited.