Chapter Twenty-Four
KIRAN
Did you know there’s a Library Walk in Midtown? Nash texted.
Are you reading tourism books about New York and choosing things to do? Kiran couldn’t help but smile, given her improved Googling habits for the very same reason.
Nash: Are you judging me?
Kiran: A little.
Nash: So I’ll see you at six p.m. on the corner of Park and 41st then?
Kiran: …Yes.
Kiran’s stomach did more loop-the-loops than the roller coasters at Coney Island while she waited on the corner near Grand Central Station. She shifted her weight from her right to left foot, grinding her jaw.
She’d made a stop at home, leaving work at five so she would have time to change. She had put thought into her outfit—too much thought in fact. She spent well over a half hour in front of her closet, debating between a sweater dress with a cream blazer or a pair of jeans with a white sweater and a scarf. It was silly, really. She and Nash were friends regardless how she dressed. But now she wanted to accentuate her legs, and the curve in her hips suddenly mattered to her. She knew she’d impressed him with her mind, but now her body cried out, Look at me too! She wanted to feel as sexy as she knew she could be—while being herself at the same time.
She finally combined the outfits in the end, wearing a blazer over a white tee with a long necklace, skinny jeans, and flats. She’d left her hair loose—clipping back the top with a slight bump and allowing her waves to cascade over her shoulders. A touch of mascara and lip gloss were all she wore.
Now, if only she could get her thoughts to be as coordinated as her outfit.
One second, she was certain she wanted to explore the possibility of a relationship with Nash. A few seconds later, she would backtrack and take it all back. What was she thinking? She reminded herself this wasn’t a game. Nash had feelings too, and if he felt the same way, she had to be committed. She couldn’t come and go as she pleased.
That meant she had to tell him about Kirti, about the weight of the expectations on her shoulders, how they might be doomed from the start, and how it would never be a relationship that started on a smooth road.
Then a tiny piece of hope would argue back that perhaps Nash would want her enough to be there, to fight for her. Akash’s comments about wanting to fight for a woman he cared about could also apply to Nash, right?
As she paced back and forth on the corner, she didn’t notice Nash come up behind her.
The hair on her arms stood on end.
He grabbed her by the waist.
Her elbow flew back reflexively and met his abs with the force of a truck.
“Sweet Jesus, Kiran! Houdini died like that!”
Nash was hunched, his back in a perfect arch as his face flushed.
“Oh my gosh, Nash, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize you were right there!”
Well…this is off to a great start.
Nash groaned as he stood straight. “Okay, well…at least I have some doctors on speed dial. I don’t think you ruptured anything.”
“To be fair, you snuck up on a girl.”
“Probably not my best idea… Let’s walk your elbow off, shall we?”
They walked toward the library. Every ten or twenty feet, a plaque stood out with a quote about reading and learning. Nash mouthed the words to himself as he scanned the words quickly, but Kiran read them out loud and allowed the words to sink in, the same way she memorized her textbooks in India. Lucille Clifton’s words gave her the most pause—a poem about remembering one’s own memories rather than the ones others had.
She fell into silence, holding her breath at the gravity of the words and how Clifton seemed to describe her. She must have stared longer than she had at the other plaques, because Nash turned around ten feet ahead and backtracked.
“You okay?”
“Just thinking.”
“Want to share?”
“In a bit, maybe.”
She crossed her arms, tucking her hands into the spaces in her elbows and finding warmth there.
“Sunshine disinfects.” It was something Baba used to say when Kiran had left her freshly washed clothes in a bucket for too long and the mildew smell needed to be aired out. He said it when the truth came out about a scandal involving politicians. He always waved his hand cheerfully as he said it, as if the wave were a breath of air and the issues would waft away with it.
Nash was the sunshine now, but it wasn’t as simple as bleaching a turmeric stain on a white shirt by laying it outside. On one hand, colors seemed brighter. Nights were more full of life than they’d ever seemed in Kiran’s eyes. She laughed more. Words reached her more deeply, and so did observations about events around her—babies made her grin bigger, sadness was sharper, and now, words that she would have skimmed over and skipped caused her to pause.
Six months ago, those words would have been nothing. She may not have ever stopped. She probably wouldn’t have even taken this Library Walk. But memories, hazy and small but memories nonetheless, came flooding back to her about Kirti—like the gap she had between her bottom front two teeth. How she always wore glass bangles until she’d accidentally cut Kiran when she was tossing her in the air and one cracked on her skin, and then she switched to metal, so her baby sister was never injured again. The way Kirti loved math the same way Kiran did, and using an abacus, Kirti had taught her basic arithmetic before Kiran had even entered school.
But the memories her parents cried about often overshadowed her own. The pain the panchayat had inflicted on the family and how it was Kirti’s own fault it happened. Those were Ma and Baba’s remaining memories because they were the most recent and the ones that shaped their lives the most. And Nash, like sunshine, had disinfected and cleansed Kiran’s mind. No longer did she think about Kirti in the context of her parents’ memories but in her own, which were resurfacing. The dust was being blown away, and clarity was appearing.
Nash was serving as a cure.
But with the antidote to Kiran’s dimmed past came questions about Kirti’s departure from the family. How was she, all these years later? Was she even alive? What was her life like now? Were there ever moments when she missed them?
And more than that came Kiran’s epiphany that she wanted to build her own life and that doing so might not take her down a path that she was comfortable with. That was her word prior to Nash—comfortable. Now that Nash was around and these truths were coming to light in his brilliant presence, she wasn’t sure how to move forward with the same concrete intention she had proceeded with before.
“So do you want to grab some chocolate?”
Nash’s voice startled her, and she jumped. “Didn’t you just get punched for that?”
“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to scare you. There’s a chocolate place in the Grace Building. I figured maybe it would cheer you up to go.”
“I didn’t realize it was that obvious I was a little mopey.”
“That’s okay. It’s my turn to be here for you.”
She was amazed he could read her face, that her thoughts were racing, and that sweets were exactly what the doctor ordered. She grew acutely aware that her left hand had slipped out of her pocket and it was tantalizingly close to his. Her skin tingled with goose bumps as they brushed against each other, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same way when he didn’t move his hand or seem disturbed when it happened.
They walked in sync, breathed as one, and every hair on her body was set alight from the warmth of his body.