The Bollywood Bride (4 page)

With each memory a cold trickle of sweat ran down Ria’s back. One of the reasons this house had been her safest haven was that she had first come here at her most broken, with no hope and no ability to make words.

One of the neighbors had asked Nikhil if Ria was “dumb” once. “No, she’s not. She’s smarter than you’ll ever be,” Nikhil had told him. “And the word is
mute.
” And then he’d never spoken to the boy again.

It had been years since it had happened, but Ria’s tongue grew heavy and glued itself to her palette at the memory, and panic gripped her. She focused on Nikhil and Jen, on the easy warmth glowing between them and forced her heartbeat to slow.

One of Nikhil’s high school buddies winked at her. “Seriously? You of all people, an actress!” he said. “I mean, all those years I don’t think you said a total of ten words! We thought you were shy, but you were just saving it for the cameras, ha?”

Everyone looked at her, waiting for a response. But her tongue wouldn’t move. A sheen of sweat moistened her palms. This hadn’t happened to her in years. The last thing she needed right now was to think about her first time in front of a camera, because the paralyzing helplessness of the memory flooded through her all too easily. She looked around desperately, searching the room for an escape, and found an empty platter on the coffee table.

“You must be starving,” Nikhil said in his calmest voice, and handed her the platter. “Sorry we cleaned out the samosas. But I’m sure there’s a ton more in the kitchen. You want me to get you some?”

Ria kept her eyes on Nikhil until her tongue eased. “No. Thanks,” she said gratefully. “I’ll get refills.” It was all she could manage before leaving the room, affecting as much dignity as she could muster to hide the shame that flooded through her.

Coming here had once given her back her words. But she had never felt so close to that year of silence as she just had. If there was ever a place that held the power to snatch away all it had given her, she was in it.

4

O
ne step into the kitchen, with its high white cabinets and black granite that looked like it had stars trapped inside it, and the painful knot in Ria’s stomach eased. She came to a standstill under the arched entrance, the platter balanced on one upturned palm, and soaked up the warmth that suffused the room. A huge, perfectly round moon shone through a wall of windows across from her. She had forgotten how much bigger the moon was here in America and how for some reason it hung really low, like a paper lantern at the edge of the sky. You didn’t have to lean your head back to look at it like you did in India.

Great, now the moon was making her nostalgic.

The moon, the house, the kitchen, it was all too much, all of it. It was muddling her brain. Filling her up. She was eight, ten, fifteen, eighteen. She was Ria Pendse again before she had let someone callously discard her name and turn her into someone else. She was uprooted, then cherished. Happier than she’d ever been. This was the only place on earth where she had ever been only one person. Just Ria. Not Ria Pendse. Not Ria Parkar. Just Ria. Nothing in the world had felt like that.

She entered the kitchen gingerly, as though any sudden movement might shake off what she was feeling. Every surface was crammed with signs of festivity. Candles sparkled in red glass mosaic holders everywhere. Brightly wrapped sweet boxes sat stacked up in colorful towers. Aluminum food trays and bottles of wine lay strewn across the granite. The clutter intensified the warmth, made the room part of the celebration. It looked ready to explode with excitement.

This kitchen, this house, it was the only normal Ria had ever known. Her childhood hid in every corner. Breakfasts with Nikhil, perched on the high bar stools, watching wide-eyed as her uncle flipped pancakes chef-style, one hand stretched out like a pirouetting ballerina. Her aunt coming down in her pajamas, her hair piled in a twisty knot on top of her head, her sleepy eyes taking in the scene with quiet pride as she grumbled about the mess they’d made. Sneaking into the kitchen with Nikhil and Vikram late at night after the adults were asleep, pulling out Sara Lee cheesecake from the freezer and polishing the entire thing off straight out of the box as they talked until dawn.

And then that summer, when everything had changed.

When the threads of friendship that had always tied her and Vikram together had stopped being invisible. When their connection had seared into something hot and hungry, sizzling through their eyes and burning between their fingertips, consuming them in a crazy kind of desperation that could only be quelled when parts of them were touching.

It had terrified Ria, made her feel like the shadow of craziness that never followed her into this house had finally chased her down. But Vikram, with his healthy wholeness, was never threatened by anything. When he threaded his fingers through her hair and tugged her lips to his, she had melted in his arms, crumbled into infinite pieces, and allowed every single one of them to merge into him.

Her gaze rested on the door across the room and her heart gave a painful squeeze. She pressed the platter she was carrying to her chest. It was the door to the basement, where they had snuck away so many times. She walked toward it. The leaded glass gleamed. She reached out and touched the doorknob. The slightest twist and the door swung open.

Her feet sank into the thickly carpeted steps. Her childhood artwork hung on both sides of the stairway. She couldn’t believe her aunt had saved her pictures. The puppy with huge eyes. A family of five in front of a big red house. Vibrant splashes of color that had given her so much solace. Her fingers trailed the textured wallpaper as she went from picture to picture, memories piercing through her at every step.

The sounds of her childhood rang in her ears. Shrieks as she was thrown into the air, her stomach catapulting into her throat. Laughter. The silly tickling games they had played. Her little-girl giggles, and then the not-so-little-girl ones. Laughter he had liked to steal from her lips with his own.

Her hand tightened on the platter as she stepped onto the hardwood floor and turned the corner into the room. More laughter. Not in her head anymore, but a chilling blast slamming into her. Sharp. Real. Erupting from the two intertwined bodies pressed against the back of the sofa in front of her.

“Holy, crap! Vic. Shit!” A yelp from the girl, more laughter.

Vikram’s hands froze on the girl’s bare bottom, taut flesh squeezed and spilled from between his fingers. The platter slipped from Ria’s hand and hit the wood floor. It shattered. Of course it shattered.

The girl’s legs unwrapped from around his hips. The bunched-up red
ghaghra
freed itself from around her waist and slid down her legs, the heavy weight of sequins pulling it down. She climbed off him as if in slow motion, but her hands stayed locked around his neck. His hands stayed on her bottom, clutching, even as the
ghaghra
fell like a curtain over long fingers pressed into supple, intimate skin.

Ria looked up bewildered by the pain that tore through her, and her gaze met his.

His eyes were glazed over, unfocused. The crystal of his irises smoldering, aroused. Not broken. No, certainly not broken.

“Shit. We are so sorry,” the girl said. She couldn’t stop giggling. Or was that Ria’s ears ringing? Ria wanted to look away from him. She should’ve looked away, but she couldn’t.

Their gazes melded into each other, locked in place, stripping bare everything she had struggled ten years to forget. And then his eyes hardened. Remembrance slid like molten lava over the naked vulnerability she recognized like her own breath and turned it into such unadulterated hatred that Ria gasped and took a step back.

Hot angry color flooded his face. He pulled the girl closer, one hand still molded around the globe of her butt under her
ghaghra.
His other hand trailed up her spine and caressed the back of her neck, his thumb making deliberate strokes against her skin. He watched Ria follow the movement of his hand, savored it, then turned away and looked into the girl’s eyes. His expression softened, the harshness turning so tender, so intimate, that parts of Ria’s heart she’d thought were dead twisted to life in her chest.

“No. I’m sorry.” The relief of finding words made her want to weep, made her voice too thin, too brittle. She forced herself to deepen it. “I had no idea—I didn’t know anyone was here. I’m sorry. I—” She squatted and started to pick up the pieces of broken glass.

Locks of hair freed themselves from her bun and spilled around her face as she leaned over. Her scarf slid off her shoulders. Her legs started to tremble on the pencil thin tips of her heels.
Damn strappy sandals. Damn ghaghras. Damn weddings. Damn it all.

The girl pushed away from Vikram and sashayed over to Ria. She squatted down next to her. “Here, let me help you. Vic, honey, could you grab that trash can, please?” Her voice was equal parts tinkling and husky and it sparkled with confidence. She beamed at Ria with the impishness of a child who’d been caught doing something naughty, but knew she wouldn’t be punished for it, because she had never been punished for anything, ever.

Ria looked at her and forced out one of her dimpled smiles. Pushing with all her might to turn her lips up at the perfect angle. Anything to keep from looking back at him as he moved across the room. Anything to keep from falling apart in front of this girl who vibrated with so much life just looking at her made Ria weary.

“Hey, aren’t you that actress cousin of Vic’s?” the girl asked in her tinkling voice.

“She’s not my cousin.”

It was the first time Ria had heard his voice in ten years.

She pressed her hand into the floor and leaned into it. The deep, low tones washed over her like rain after a drought—so long-awaited every parched inch of her soaked it up.

Time had turned the bass in his voice up just the slightest bit, but the sound was so distinctly him, Ria’s flesh prickled with recognition. A voice that had haunted her silences. A voice her ears had searched for in all other voices. She wanted to close her eyes and drown in it.

“But she’s Nikhil’s cousin and Nikhil is your cousin. So it’s the same thing,” the girl said, looking from Vikram to Ria. “Didn’t you guys grow up together, weren’t you friends?” She picked up a shard and dumped it in the bin Vikram handed her.

For a long moment nothing but the sound of glass on metal clattered against silence. Ria found her gaze locked with his again, although she didn’t remember looking up at him.

“No,” Vikram said finally, his spine impossibly straight as he backed into the dark paneled wall behind him. “We were nothing.”

The words fell from his lips, raw and jagged. His face was cast in stone, expressionless, but he hadn’t quite mastered the storm in his eyes. Pain twisted in Ria’s gut.

A confused frown crinkled the girl’s forehead. She waited for Vikram to say more. When he didn’t, she turned to Ria and stuck out her hand. “I’m Mira,” she said, as if they were standing in Uma Atya’s living room, mingling, not squatting on the basement floor gathering remnants of broken things. As if Ria hadn’t just caught her with her bare legs clutching Vikram in the most intimate embrace. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. Nikhil talks about you all the time.”

Ria forced herself to reach for Mira’s offered hand. Mira’s handshake was firm and warm and self-assured. It made Ria aware of the limp lifelessness of her own hand and she strengthened it. “I’m Ria,” she said. “And I really am sorry.”

“Don’t be. We should be more careful.” Mira threw an accusatory glance at Vikram, a look that left no doubt that this had been his idea. “But you know how it is.” She gave Ria a conspiratorial smile. “We lost track of where we were. Vic said no one ever comes down here. That it would be just us. I’m just glad it was you and not one of the aunties who found us or we’d be married off tomorrow.” She giggled.

“Maybe it should’ve been one of the aunties then,” he said, his voice light now, his eyes indifferent. All signs of pain gone. The storm mastered.

He walked toward Mira and held out his hand. Everything inside Ria reached for his outstretched hand. She wanted to touch him so badly she had to clench every muscle to keep from moving. The shard of glass in her hand poked into her skin. She eased her grip. Mira reached out and grabbed his hand. As he pulled her up and she jumped into his arms, Ria knew this girl never did anything in half measures.

“Aw, Vic, is that a proposal? You hopeless romantic, you!” Mira made a face at him and smiled into his eyes.

“Is that a yes?” His answering smile was kind, amused.

“What, and make it that easy for you?”

He laughed. And his laugh sounded real.

Ria stared at her, this girl with her messy curls, her flat shoes, and that unencumbered smile that swallowed up her eyes and made no pretty dents in her cheeks. Everything about her spoke of ease. And it seemed to seep into Vikram and relax him. Ria knew his smiles as well as she knew herself, and she knew the one he was smiling at Mira came from deep within. In a moment of startling clarity Ria knew walking away from him had been the right thing to do. He could still smile like that—like happiness lived inside him. Ria hadn’t taken that away from him.

The relief made her sick.

She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked at the gleaming shard in her palm. A physical, tangible wound would do nothing to distract from the pain in her heart. She let the piece drop into the trash can.

“You be careful with that.” The impossible familiarity of his voice slid over Ria like a beloved, well-worn scarf.

She looked up at him, but he was looking at Mira. His eyes saw only Mira, the blue gray melting with concern. He cupped Mira’s hand in his own and plucked the piece of glass out of her hand with the gentleness of someone catching a butterfly and let it drop into the trash.

Ria rose to her feet.

Vikram’s eyes stayed fixed on Mira even as she looked away from him and gave Ria another apologetic grin. He was completely in control now. Ria felt the control stretched taut across his body and mirrored it.

Mira opened her mouth, but Ria couldn’t take another apology. “It was nice meeting you, Mira.” This time her voice didn’t tremble. She blasted a Ria Parkar smile at her, the best one she could muster, pulled herself up to her full height, and with all the practiced grace of an Ice Princess she floated up the stairs without a backward glance.

Behind her Mira sucked in a breath. “Stop it, Vic! What’s the matter with you? She can still hear us.” Mira’s breathless whisper turned into a throaty moan, painting pictures in Ria’s head. The Ice Princess melted around her. She sped up, running the rest of the way up to the door.

“Why would I care?” His voice chased after her, hot and seductive and just loud enough to hit its mark before she made it out the door.