My Last Love Story (14 page)

I pulled back from him, even as I thought those things. I could never do that. If I hadn’t told him the truth then, there was no reason to tell him now. Rizvaan was dead. He’d been shot down by Ahura Mazda’s justice the very night he raped me. The creep was dead and shamed for eternity even though his mother persisted in endorsing him as a martyr.

And I was married to Nirvaan now. Nirvaan, who didn’t have a sliver of evil in his bones but was dying young all the same. Such was also God’s justice.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Zai,” I said as I bent my head to the ice cream before forcing a spoonful into my mouth.

By nightfall, the cramps, with their constant ebb and flow of pain, had made me restless. I huddled and rocked myself, and when it didn’t help, I paced. I tried cat stretches and fetal positions and even soaking in the tub, but nothing helped for long.

Currently, I was sprawled on a lounger on the deck, hugging a hot-water bottle between my stomach and raised thighs. I rocked back and forth, trying to jiggle the pain away. I’d taken a dose of painkillers again, as per the doctor’s instructions, and I was waiting for it to kick in.

I’d also encouraged the guys to take the Jet Skis out. They hadn’t ridden them all day, for my sake, and to combat boredom, they’d been video-gaming the silence out of the night. My head had boomed with the sounds of bombs until I’d ordered them to be gone. I’d craved wallow-able peace more than their constant concern.

Unlike Nirvaan, I was a terrible patient. I didn’t know how to be sick or accept help gracefully. It was because I had a high threshold for pain—physical pain. I’d been like that, even as a child, and I had the scar to prove it.

I’d gotten the scar during a two-day camping trip from school. Twelve or thirteen, I’d been in the eighth class of an all-girls school. Being a puny girl, I’d often overcompensated my lack of stature with false bravado. On the first day of camp itself, I’d slipped a dozen feet down a brush-strewn slope because I’d taken a steeper path to overtake a bunch of sporty girls in my class. My jeans had torn, and a thin branch had gouged a five-inch slit into my thigh. Mortified, I hadn’t called for help. I’d ignored the burn and the pain and finished the trek. Then, I’d washed the wound and tied a handkerchief around it for the rest of the trip. I’d needed a tetanus shot by the time I got home and a heavy dose of antibiotics, as it had become infected. It was the first and only time my mother had come this close to smacking me.

Nirvaan thought it foolish to suffer in silence. Not that he was a cumbersome patient, but he didn’t underplay his health or his mental state. Of course, he’d learned not to.

Zayaan was like me. He could bear pain quietly and would seek help only as a last resort.

His brother had beaten him with a belt, with a cricket bat, with his fists all through his childhood—a big brother’s due for babysitting his younger sibling. Zayaan hadn’t called it abuse, but Nirvaan had had no such reservations.

I’d stumbled across the truth only because I caught Zayaan in a weak moment and asked about the scars. The beatings had long stopped by the time I got to know him, but I wouldn’t ever forget the little white worms that marred his back and upper arms. Once Zayaan had grown as big and strong as his brother, he’d fought back. But by then, Rizvaan had found his calling in terror.

Life was a strange beast, wasn’t it?

Zayaan’s family had left Pakistan to remove Rizvaan from the influence of bad company. It was always the other who was bad and never your own. But like attracted like, and Rizvaan had quickly gathered a band of nasty men around him in Surat, too. They were destructive, disgusting creatures who’d wreaked havoc wherever they went. I’d known he was vile, but my mistake had been in thinking of him as Zayaan’s brother. They looked alike, so much so that people would ask if they were twins. But that facade of good looks was the only thing they’d had in common.

I’d been warned to keep out of Rizvaan’s way. Zayaan had kept me under his family’s radar for a long time. But we’d been too close and too joined at the hip not to have at least some interaction with our respective families. I’d wanted to meet his parents right from the first, even before our relationship had progressed to the serious level. I’d hated feeling like an orphan, and so I’d sought whole new families to belong to. Nirvaan’s family was wonderful, and they’d sort of adopted Zayaan and me into their clan. I’d naively believed Zayaan’s parents would be the same. At first, Zayaan’s father had been wary, but I’d won him over. Gulzar Auntie’s overt disapproval was another story. And Rizvaan, it seemed, had always hated me and Nirvaan. He’d hated Zai, most of all.

Yes, life was strange.

After everything that had happened since the night Zayaan had rescued me at Dandi Beach, I still couldn’t regret knowing him. And that scared me because I didn’t want to forget. And I didn’t wish to forgive.

The
chug-a-chug-chugs
of the Jet Skis announced the guys’ return. Our patch of the beach was semiprivate, but we had no pier to dock the bikes. After each use, the Jet Skis would have to be dragged over sand, and either left by the deck, weather permitting, or stored in the carriage house.

I got to my feet and went into the house to grab a couple of thick towels. I’d usually leave a stack on the deck, but I’d forgotten today.

Nirvaan bounded up the stairs, talking a mile a minute. “Baby, you missed the dolphins versus humans race.”

“Down!” I yelled, leaping back from him. I pointed at the outdoor shower. “Shower off the sand, hose down the wet suit, hang it to dry. Then, you may join me on the deck.”

“You’re feeling better,” he said, beaming at me.

Completely ignoring my orders, he jumped me. I screamed like I was being murdered. My nightgown got soaked, as it was plastered against his wet wetsuit. As I opened my mouth to scream again, his mouth came down on mine, slick with salt and sand and delicious cold.

“If the neighbors call the homicide squad to report a homicide, I’m skipping town,” said Zayaan. His one-liners weren’t all that shabby either.

Nirvaan released me and stripped out of his suit as I grumbled and spit the ocean from my mouth. He threw the suit at Zayaan, who’d stripped off his and was hosing it down. Nirvaan made a lewd comment about inviting the cops to join our striptease party before stepping into the shower. Zayaan said something equally crude in return.

The perfect comeback bloomed in my head. I would’ve said it, too, had my tongue not glued itself to the roof of my mouth.
Dear Almighty God.
Every day, I’d see the guys in various stages of dress and undress, but tonight, in the sparse light of the moon, combined with the beam of yellow light from the deck, they both looked beyond lick-able.

Dr. Archer had said my hormones and libido would go nuts while on fertility meds. Apparently, I didn’t need to be drugged to go nuts.

Water rippled down slick muscles and pooled inside their swimming trunks. Zayaan wore a knee-length pair, riding low on his hips. And Nirvaan—I grinned in delight—wore my favorite pair of cobalt-blue designer swimwear. Any skimpier, and he’d be wearing a thong. His bum muscles flexed and relaxed as he moved, and I admired them with impunity.

I hadn’t made love to my husband in two years, but I wanted to tonight. I needed to tonight.

I didn’t want to remember the past. I didn’t want to forget it either. And I would not forgive. Most of all, I wanted to place the dominoes back around my heart.

Dr. Archer had said that sex might hurt after the HSG, but I couldn’t wait. And I wasn’t hurting now. The cramps had subsided. The medicine had worked.

“Boys, there are towels by the stairs. You’ve soaked me to the bone, Nirvaan. I’m going to change,” I said over my shoulder.

Excited by the plan and more than a bit aroused by the swimwear models, I walked into the bedroom and drew the curtain all the way across for privacy. In the bathroom, I stripped off the wet nightgown along with my underwear and wrapped a towel around my body.

I looked in the mirror. My face, my shoulders, the tops of my breasts were flushed with excitement. I smiled and bit my lip. I could do this. There was no need to be shy or afraid. My reflection shivered even though I wasn’t cold.

Suddenly, my smile dimmed.

Shit.
Nirvaan would need a stimulant, and I couldn’t remember where I’d stashed the pills. So much for spontaneity.

I opened the medicine cabinet. Not there. I rushed into the bedroom and checked in both nightstands and the dresser and—
yes, yes, yes!
I found them in a box buried under my birth control pills.

“Nirvaan,” I called out as I pressed a tablet out of its packet. “Nirvaan, I need you.”

“Yeah, baby? Whatchu need?” He came in, flinging the curtain aside.

I yanked it closed again and faced him.

“
Ooh
. What do we have here?” He gave a lecherous chuckle and hooked a finger between my breasts, tugging on my towel. He could’ve easily stripped me naked. He didn’t. He joked and teased and leered, but he never stripped me naked anymore.

I showed him the pill. If I hadn’t been staring at my husband’s face, I would’ve missed the flare of panic in his eyes. His wolf-smile slipped for half a second and bounced back full force.

“What’s that? I’ve taken all my medication,” he said carefully.

He knew bloody well what was on my palm, and it bothered me that he was pretending otherwise.

“I want to make love to you,” I said clear and loud so that there was no misunderstanding.

I didn’t know of any husband who’d hear his wife say those words and take a step back from her. Mine did. He kept smiling though, as if I’d made a great joke.

But I wasn’t going to back down. Not tonight. I was bold tonight.

I stepped closer.

His eyes grew round and huge. “What about the cramps?”

“I’m fine.” I put a hand over his heart. It was racing as wantonly as mine.

Nirvaan used to have whorls of hair all over his chest. Now, the mat was sparse and patchy, his skin almost translucent in spots, through which his ribs showed. He had scars from the surgeries and PICC line, but there was strength in him still. His skin was almost always cold to the touch now, but I was about to warm him up.

I smiled, thinking I should just tug his towel off and get started on my knees. He used to love that opening.

He darted a glance to the curtain separating us from the rest of the house. “Baby, we can’t. What’ll Zai think?”

“I’m sure it won’t come as a shock to him that married couples have sex.”

Nirvaan’s chest expanded, and he shuddered out a breath in lieu of a laugh at my cheekiness. He stared at me then, a riot of emotions flying across his face. I knew the idea of Zayaan knowing…maybe even listening in…appealed to him. My husband was into kinky sex—or had been before we’d gotten married. And I was guilty of taking that freedom away from him.

“What? It’s not like he hasn’t heard us or seen us do stuff before. Have you forgotten what the three of us got up to during those summers in Surat?” I pressed my thumb to his nipple.

He pressed his hand on top of mine to stop my thumb from worrying his nipple. “We were kids, Simi. We didn’t know whether we were coming or going back then.” Nirvaan ran a hand through his hair. A line of sweat had beaded up along his upper lip.

“What about these last few weeks when you’ve constantly talked of those days, reliving our glory days and wild nights? More than once, you’ve thrown Zayaan and me together in awkward situations. What has it been about then?” I curled my hand under his. I wanted to rake it down his chest for making me crazy.

“It’s not been about a threesome, Simi.” He looked…unhappy.

With me?

“I know that. Khodai. But I thought, maybe, you were feeling better…that you wanted me.”

God, I’d misread the signals on purpose. He really didn’t want to make love…
because of Zayaan?

I yanked my hand free from his grip, my cheeks burning—from anger this time.

I recalled Zayaan’s expression from this morning as he’d stood by the door. I’d thought he was angry at whatever Nirvaan had said, assumed it’d been something about my uterus. What if it hadn’t been anger but embarrassment making his ears red?

“What have you told him?” I asked my husband. “Did you tell him about our bedroom problems? Does he know you haven’t touched me in two years?”

When he didn’t answer, all my insecurities, my guilt, my regrets came flooding back. My husband didn’t want me as a lover. Even worse, Zayaan, the man I’d rejected, knew it. It didn’t matter that they talked about everything under the sun. This was one thing Nirvaan should’ve kept between us, kept sacred.

I’d never felt more betrayed in my life.