The Bollywood Bride (14 page)

16

“I
t’s completely preposterous, Uma Atya!” Ria couldn’t believe that her aunt wanted to drive straight to a dinner party from the hospital. They had been doing the rounds of pre-wedding dinners with the Auntie Brigade for the past few nights, as was tradition. Every evening Uma told them where to go and they got in the car and went, much like they had done when they were kids. After Ria started to spend her summers here, Uma had taken summers off from her job as mathematics professor at the College of DuPage. And she had driven them to every obscure museum, park, and theater in the greater Chicago area, always a tornado of energy.

Now she looked so exhausted Ria wanted to bodily push her into a bed. “You were just in the hospital, for heaven’s sake. Why can’t we cancel and just go home?”

Uma patted her cheek. “Says the girl who gave me such a hard time for not letting her gallivant around town after she knocked herself out cold for two days.”

“But I listened to you and stayed off my feet. I didn’t even go to Jen’s bachelorette party.” Actually she had used Uma as an excuse to not go because Mira had organized the whole thing and she’d become extremely uncomfortable around Ria. “Why can’t you listen? Please. What if your arm starts hurting again?”

“Do you know how many doctors will be in that house? Nothing can possibly happen to me that won’t immediately be pounced upon,” Uma said firmly, and that was that.

After seeing Uma in a hospital, learning that she was fine should have been a huge relief, but Ria felt too unhinged by everything that had happened that day to feel anything but worry. Her mind wouldn’t stop latching on to darkness, unable to trust any glimmer of brightness.

It was paranoia and it was part of her special gift of depression, along with sadness and fear. Vikram was right to be nervous. And he didn’t even know how right he was. Her own nervousness was an inferno in her gut.

“Which auntieji is it going to be today, Uma?” Vikram said, and Ria caught the cheeky grin he gave Uma in the rearview mirror. How could he be so undisturbed after what he’d told her? But his life hadn’t just flown off the rails. It was just that she had only now found out about it.

“Today’s Friday, right?” Uma slapped her head. “I’m having a senior moment. Oh, of course, it’s at Priya’s house. And I told her we’re coming straight there.” She leaned back in her seat laughing at herself and Vikram, and Vijay laughed too.

Their levity fanned Ria’s nervousness. There was too much she didn’t know, even more she couldn’t control.

She met Vikram’s eyes in the mirror. His calm gaze was like ice and warmth, the two best remedies for pain, and it kicked dirt on the disasters of the past against all good sense.
Relax. Everything’s going to be okay,
it said.
I’m fine,
it said.

She shook her head at him, negating his silent claims.
No. Nothing’s going to be okay.

Priya Auntie lived in the same wooded neighborhood in Naperville as Uma and Vijay. Vikram pulled into the driveway and jogged over to open the door for Uma, who winced while undoing her seatbelt. “Ria’s right, Uma. Maybe we should have gone home,” he said, frowning at her.

“You two need to stop mothering me. Now get out of my way, child, and let me get out of the car. We’re already late.” She patted his face.

He caught Ria’s worried frown and suddenly his eyes sparkled. “Well then, the least you can do is stay off your feet.” He reached over to lift Uma out of the seat. “I think we can arrange a ride.”

Uma yelped and smacked Vikram’s hand away. “This aunt of yours isn’t that old yet, and we don’t need to go back to the ER when you break your back.”

Vikram groaned. “Great. That sounded too much like a challenge. Now I’m going to have to do it.”

“Vikram Jathar, don’t you dare!” But he had already scooped her up in his arms. She squealed and grabbed his ear as he lifted her out of the car and carried her down the path. “Put me down, right now!” She twisted his ear with one hand and started slapping his arm with the other.

“Don’t make me drop you,” he said, laughing.

Vijay jogged past them and held the door open and gave Uma a gallant bow when she screamed for help.

“Someone order a stubborn aunt?” Vikram strode through the house. Nikhil, Jen, and the entire Auntie Brigade and their broods rushed in to see what the commotion was about.

As soon as Vikram put Uma on the couch he ran for it, grabbing a little boy from the laughing crowd and holding him up like a shield when she came after him.

“Vikram, you brat, just you wait until I get my hands on you!” Uma tried to catch her breath, glower at him, and reach around the child he was holding up, but she was laughing so hard she fell back on the couch.

Vikram turned the boy around and kissed him on the forehead. “Thanks, Rahul. I think you saved my life.” He was about to put the boy down when the boy grabbed Vikram around the neck.

“Rahul stay on Vic Bhaiya lap.”

Vikram groaned. “Rahul break Vic Bhaiya back.” But he tucked the boy to his side and smiled when Uma rolled her eyes at him.

“Rahul want Vic Bhaiya to steal Gulab Jamuns like last time. I know where Naani hid them.”

Vikram pushed one finger to his mouth. “Shh. Vic Bhaiya get in big trouble if Rahul’s
naani
finds out.” He threw one surreptitious glance around the room and took a giggling Rahul into the kitchen.

Ria laughed, but her heart ached so much it made an awful mess inside her. She sank down on the couch next to Uma, who was definitely laughing. The aunties, who were all dressed in black today—some in saris, some in
salwar kameezes
—goaded Uma to go up and change into something of Priya’s so she was wearing black too.

Uma followed Priya up the stairs and Ria went with them. “You’re not off your feet, Uma Atya,” Ria scolded. Although she had to admit that Uma Atya definitely had her usual glow back, and Ria couldn’t quite conjure up the level of panic she had felt before.

“Neither are you,
beta,
” Uma scolded back. “Mine was a false alarm, you really did hurt yourself.”

Ria had completely forgotten about her knee. But she shamelessly milked it when it was time to dance. The aunties claimed that the party was technically part of the wedding celebrations, so of course there had to be dancing. Not that they needed an excuse to dance. “Dancing is the real plastic surgery,” Uma loved to say. “It’s what keeps you young.”

One of the uncles had compiled a playlist of the latest Bollywood party music. After another outrageously elaborate dinner, the rug in the living room was rolled up and propped against a wall and the floor pulsed with hip shaking
thumkas,
shoulder-bobbing bhangras, and shouts of
Oye! Oye!

“Oh, look, our Vic is without his cute girlfriend today,” Sita said as the aunties watched Vikram enter the room.

“She’s hardly his girlfriend,” Uma snapped. “They’ve barely known each other for a month.” Ria took a page out of Vikram’s book and picked at the label on her bottle of water.

“
Arrey,
so what? Every relationship starts somewhere,” Radha said in a placating tone. The aunties exchanged glances.

“Please don’t call it a relationship,” Uma said. “Vijay had to chase me for a good two years before he got to call me his anything.” How had Ria never noticed how Uma Atya felt about Mira?

“And what about Nic? He knew Jen for just a month before you were ready to print out wedding cards.” Trust Anu Auntie not to mince her words.

Uma cut Anu a sharp glance. “It was more than a month, but look at Jen and Nic. Who can’t see the match there?”

Sita patted Uma’s arm. “We all agree on that. Jen and Nic are perfect together. But come on, Uma, calm down and let the kids have some fun.”

“And us too,” Anu said as Vikram walked up and they surrounded him, leaving Ria sitting cross-legged on the couch.

“Look at you! Getting more and more handsome every day!” Priya pinched his cheeks and winked.

Anu pulled him to the dance floor just as a new song started. “
Chalo,
today you get to dance with your old aunties!”

He spun around, scanning the room. “What old aunties?” he said, and they all giggled like little girls.

“That boy!” Uma shook her head at Ria. “How did a witch like Chitra ever produce a child like that?”

Ria had asked herself that question only about a million times. She mirrored Uma’s eye roll before Uma went off to join them.

On the dance floor, Vikram grinned his most disarming grin and picked up the beat as the aunties made a circle around him and started dancing.

“Look at the boy move,” one of them said, not that Ria could stop looking. His body moved in perfect rhythm to the music and he easily matched it to the auntie he turned to. He danced with all of them at once and then with each one of them in turn, twirling them and dipping them. He even lifted Anu up in his arms and spun her around as the music reached a crescendo.

“Just for that,” she said, blushing in the most un-Anu-like fashion, “all my working out has been worth it.”

He was gallant and generous and so irresistibly charming that each one of them preened and glowed, and Ria found her heart so full it hurt beneath her hand. No matter how hard she tried she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. Her heart did a skip every time she stole a glance at him and then skipped a beat every time he caught her doing it. Finally, she peeled herself off the couch and left the room to keep from making a complete fool of herself. But then Vikram and Nikhil broke into one of their break-dance routines and Uma pulled her back into the room.

“Come, come,” she said, “the boys are doing that walking on the moon thing.”

They had done this at every party when they were kids. They always did the worst moonwalks, but today they were so bad Ria laughed until her stomach hurt, and even when Vikram caught her laughing, she couldn’t stop. And instead of turning away he hammed it up and made her laugh even more.

Much later, when the entire crowded dance floor was jumping up and down to the latest Bollywood hit, Nikhil hopped over to her, doing some sort of one-legged step that looked like he was being electrocuted, and dropped down on his knees in front of her. “I’m sorry,” he shouted over the music, “I was an insensitive ass.” He joined his hands together. “Please forgive me.”

“How much has he had to drink?” Ria asked Jen in a stage whisper.

“Enough to make a perfect fool of himself and not care at all,” Jen stage-whispered back.

Nikhil scooped Ria up in his arms and carried her to the middle of the dance floor, jumping up and down with such gusto, fresh laughter spilled from her.

“The best sister in the world,” Nikhil shouted over the thumping music, and she threw out her arms as he spun her around.

Someone up there must time the joy she was allowed because Ria’s phone buzzed in her pocket like an alarm signaling her to come back to earth. She gave Nikhil a hug and ran into the relative quiet of the kitchen. Vikram was already there, holding his own phone to his ear.

“Hi, Mira,” she heard him say just as she said, “Hi, Big,” and they turned away from each other and moved to opposite ends of the room.

“I thought you promised to be careful?” DJ fumed without so much as a hi, and Ria slipped into the backyard, pulling the French doors shut behind her.

Somehow the fact that Ria was in Chicago had leaked to the media and speculation about what she was doing here ran rampant across the Internet, ranging from a new secret foreign film project to a hush-hush elopement and everything in between. It wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before.

Ria leaned against the deck railing and watched Vikram pace inside the kitchen with the phone pressed to his ear.

“Calm down, DJ. What happened to ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity?’”

“Don’t be purposefully dense, Ria. I’m thrilled you’re all over the Internet. But why do I have this awful feeling you’re going to be your usual stubborn self about security?”

“It’s out of the question, Big.” There was no way she was letting him use this to get some stranger to tag along with her. She had just six days left to be someone who didn’t need a bodyguard to leave the house, and she wasn’t letting this ruin it. “I swear there’s no chance of me going to any public place in the next week. There’s just too much to be done at home. I don’t have the time to go gallivanting around town.”

Inside, Vikram stopped pacing and rubbed his forehead.

On the phone, DJ’s voice deepened. “Ria, we have a blackmailer holding pictures of an attempted suicide over our heads. We don’t need any nasty incidents in America to add to this and increase the selling price of his pictures. You know the media. If one story takes up the public’s imagination they’ll go all out to dig up more stories.”

Vikram looked at her, and what he saw on her face made his eyebrows draw together in concern. She turned away and faced the backyard and gripped the deck railing. “I thought you took care of the blackmailer.”

DJ hesitated. DJ never hesitated. “Don’t panic, but someone’s been asking questions, trying to dig up information about your past.”

“And when were you planning to tell me this?”

“Babes, I’m handling it.” He took an uncharacteristically hesitant pause. “There’s another little problem. But I don’t want you to worry.”

Ria dropped into a deck chair. When Big DJ told you not to worry, it was time to worry.

“Ved Kapoor—you know how publicity hungry he’s been since he stopped getting roles. Seems like he’s enjoying reminiscing about his past conquests with the press these days.”

Ria thought she was going to throw up. And not because the mention of Ved’s name always did that to her, but because of how proud of her Uma had looked the other day.