The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale

Chapter 20

By the next Monday, I figure out five things:

1. Milan looks sexy as hell with his sleeves rolled up his forearms, wielding power tools with a buff-dude-from-the-Brawny-paper-towels ease.

2. He’s called Bluebill Cottage “home” . . . more than once.

3. Harrie, my traitorous second son, quite possibly loves Milan more than me. That or Milan hides bribery biscuits in his pockets.

4. The auntie grapevine moves faster than the speed of light. In the time between the Chitniss-Rao breakup six years ago and rejecting Sanju Khanna, I’ve gotta admit I’ve had a good run. So I take my lumps when well-intentioned aunties start peppering me with information about their sons, nephews, and neighbors’ sons.

   But the biggest realization of all is:

5. Milan has called me on all my shit. When I unintentionally tried to pass off a large dog as a wild pony. When I tried to drive past the formerly Soulless Wonder and almost wrecked on the curb. When my tongue slipped and called him staggeringly handsome. So why hasn’t he yet called me on matching on MyShaadi?

Does he think I want it that way? Or has he noticed that I rejected him and now he wants to avoid the face-to-face awkwardness?

Milan didn’t show up Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Nothing weird about Friday; he doesn’t always get a chance to come out during the week. And Sundays are reserved for his open houses. But he’s been here every Saturday like clockwork, usually with lunch for two.

I don’t tell Raj about his absence. I don’t ask her if she knows if something came up at work, either. She’ll read into that, think I miss seeing him or something.

It’s not like we argued more than usual. Sure, we mildly got into it last weekend when he’d tried to convert me to open shelving, but he saw my point of view eventually. I mean, it wasn’t even a real argument. (“When was the last time you saw someone with all white, matching dishes who wasn’t an influencer? The average homeowner does not want all their mismatched clutter on show!”)

We’d compromised on a slim, exposed wall-length shelf above a counter to put little pots of herbs against a feature wall of blue-and-yellow William Morris wallpaper. I added a strip of LED lighting beneath the high-gloss cream cabinets, spotlighting the open cookbook propped against a wire stand. He thinks I don’t notice, but every time he comes over, he flips the pages to a new recipe. I used to think nothing of it, but today the thought creeps in: This is what we’d make for dinner if we lived here.

I know better than to think he’ll be here on a Monday, but I wait until one p.m. to eat my lunch anyway, a softened peach from last week’s farmer’s market, Greek yogurt with honey and granola, and a fried egg with scallions. This is what I normally make on the days he’s not here, quick and yummy meals that won’t stink up our new kitchen, but it’s never been quite so lonely to eat by myself.

So when Milan does arrive, just past three, empty handed, looking no worse for the wear, without a word of where he’s been or why he’s late, I bite my tongue. I don’t want to admit that I kinda sorta missed him if he was out there not missing me.

I can’t wait for him to see everything I’ve accomplished. But other than a somewhat terse “Hi” before he got to screwing the new lightbulbs into the lamps we bought from Second Chance Shores, he’s been uncharacteristically quiet. No teasing statements meant to provoke, no fussing over Harrie and Freddie, not even his usual swim to unwind after he gets here.

He’s even gone into the downstairs bedroom to put one of the lamps on the dresser we’d just upcycled, but he didn’t say a word about the copper-framed pressed flowers hanging on the wall opposite the bed. It’s just a small touch, those little clusters of tiny white Queen Anne’s lace flowers, taffy-pink and baby-blanket-blue forget-me-nots, palm-sized ferns, and sprigs of lavender tied with twine. But I want him to notice.

“Hey, do you want to go to the master bedroom?” I ask when he emerges.

His eyebrows draw together. “Sure?”

I lead the way upstairs, biting the insides of my cheek to keep from smiling. He may have missed the flowers downstairs, but there’s no way he’ll miss this.

When we enter the bedroom, I can practically feel my soul expand, filling every corner. The quilts all look fantastic folded at the foot of the beds, just like I knew they would, and I put my favorite one in the master. Formerly the “honeymoon suite” when Bluebill was run as a B&B, the mammoth master comes with its own balcony and a more spacious bathroom than the others. If I hadn’t worked on it myself, I’d never believe the Before and After that took this room from dingy and worn to fresh and inviting.

Milan takes it all in, eyes exploring the jute rug in front of each nightstand, the egg-shaped wicker chair with the plump cushion seat, and finally, finally, landing on the dried flowers next to the sunrise macramé wall tapestry.

He’s going to notice that the forget-me-nots are the same exact ones he gave me before I left for college. I’d laughed, thrown my arms around his neck, almost knocking our chins together in the process, and promised him Never, not in a million years, you goof. How can you even think that? We’ll be talking to each other every single day.

I still have the entire bouquet dried and pressed into the pages of a phone book, along with all the other flowers he’s given me: Valentine’s Day roses, my prom corsage, even the bunch of daisies snipped from his mom’s garden that he gave my mom the first time he came to dinner as boyfriend-girlfriend. It’s silly and totally sentimental of me, but I liked the idea of sharing a few of those blooms with this house. Something of ourselves to leave behind.

Milan’s gaze finally returns to me. My heart leaps into my throat.

“Very nice,” he says.

My forehead furrows. That’s it? That’s all he has to say?

“You did a good job in here,” he adds, taking a few steps back.

Not an over-the-top you’ve-blown-me-away stagger, but a leaving-the-room-thank-you-and-goodbye reverse.

“Did you recognize anything?” I ask, following him out, but not without one last, desperate glance to the flower frames.

He answers without looking at me. “The flowers.”

Yes! My chest surges with elation. I knew he wouldn’t have forgotten.

“Weren’t those the frames we saw last week in Second Chance Shores?”

I wither. I swallow past the dryness in my mouth, fingernails pinching into my palms hard enough to leave half-moon indents. “I—um, yeah. You’ve, um, got a good eye.”

But his memory is shit. I’d second-guessed and almost talked myself out of it twice, but nooooo, I’d decided to be brave and take a chance on him. Show him that despite rejecting him on MyShaadi, I still wanted to give him—give us—another chance. The flowers were a baby step in that direction, showing him how something old could be renewed, even though I’d spent so long thinking we’d been broken too long to ever be fixed.

But maybe it’s not about you at all, inner Rita reasons. Maybe he’s got something else on his mind, something that’s making him distant and terse.

Inner Rita is right. Something is definitely up, even if he’s being tight-lipped about it. He’s so noncommittal and blank-faced that I can’t even make a guess at what he’s thinking. Where I skirt around issues until they come to a tipping point, Milan’s the type to push things to a head.

People admire him for being a straight shooter.

People. People in general. Not me.

So I don’t get why he’s staring at the pinch pots of herbs like we didn’t spend last Sunday morning at the Rosalie Island farmer’s market picking our parsley, mint, and basil.

I glance at the cookbook. It’s still on Sunday’s shakshuka recipe.

Are you okay?I want to ask, but I won’t, since it’ll reveal I’ve been paying more attention to him than I want to admit.

“It looks great, right?” I say instead. “You were totally right about not buying that baby cilantro plant.”

While facing the herb shelf, I sneak a peek at him. There’s no expression on his face, just bland interest that makes me think of how Neil’s eyes used to glaze over when I’d talk about a day at the flea market.

“Mmm,” says Milan.

“I mean, the amount of cilantro Indians use,” I say with a laugh. “We’d finish off the whole plant for one meal.”

That doesn’t even get a smile.

I tell him he was right, make a joke at my own expense, and get zero reaction from him?

“I didn’t think you were going to come over today,” I say, more in an effort to draw him out than anything else. “I missed you on Saturday.”

At this, he twitches. “Why?”

I open my mouth, then snap it shut. Something about the way he asks puts me on the defensive.

“I guess,” I say with a deep breath, “I got used to you being here.”

His mouth takes on a disappointed set. “I see.”

“What do you want me to say? That I enjoyed spending time with you? Okay, you got me. I like wondering what lunch you’d surprise me with. I like debating whether the fireplace tiles should be Oxford blue or Prussian blue, even though they’re basically both the same. I like getting to work knowing that you’re in the house. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .I count down, giving him the chance to reply. My fingernails dig into my palms as I stare at him, unblinking, until my eyes burn.

Waiting for him to feel the same way.

Instead, with each second that ticks by, I’m back in that arrivals lounge.

Waiting for him to show up.

3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

Milan looks everywhere but at me until finally his gaze drops to the dining room floor, where I’ve propped frames against the wall, waiting to be hung. He glances up at the wall, where I’ve plotted out where each frame goes in pencil.

He studies it for a moment, then starts to hang the vintage seaside prints and Rosalie Island postcards we picked up at the farmer’s market. I found plenty of cheap wooden frames for literal pennies on my solo return trip to Second Chance Shores that I painted with our leftover admiral blue and buttercup yellow.

I pause, waiting for him to compliment the color scheme. To say, Hey, Rita, these look amazing. Chalk paint was a good choice. They don’t look like you made them yesterday. If a buyer walks in here for a viewing, they’d totally buy that these frames have been in the house forever. How did you get that distressed look? Steel wool? Wire brush?

Okay, so he won’t have a clue what half those things are, but still. He was never this stingy with his praise before.

Before Raj’s voice pipes up that I’m fishing for compliments—which I’m not—I get to work, starting to paint over the pencil sketch on the newly ombréd blue dining table legs.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was pissed I shot him down on MyShaadi.

That can’t be it. Not when he’s never ever acknowledged our match in the first place.

The only thing I don’t get is why. He’s never beaten around the bush before.

Focus on the work, Rita. That’s what you’re here for. That’s all this is.

This house is my only link to Milan. Once it sells, it’ll probably be another six years before we run into each other again. My chest stress-ball squeezes. I shouldn’t give a fuck, but now that he’s back in my life, a part of me wants to keep him there.

I can’t not know him for another six years.

Painting the house, the sand, and the beach grasses are done in no time, but when I move to the last, final details on the two figures walking along the beach, frustration sets in. I clench the green-tipped paintbrush hard enough that my fingers turn white. Then I unfold myself from the dining room floor, ignoring the rippling soreness that washes over me. I stare at the finished paintwork until my vision blurs, and the faint lines and curves bleed together: the calico scallop shells; the round whorls of the moon snails; the tiny orange clam shells the size of a baby’s ear.

“If I wanted to spend my time not talking to you, I would never have accepted your job offer or this partnership,” I say before I can stop myself, heat rising in my cheeks.

He stops mid-strike, slowly bringing the hammer down to his side. “What?”

“You heard me.” I tip my chin defiantly.

I’d said it now. There was no going back.

“I’m sorry, did you want me to sing and dance for you?” He doesn’t say it with mockery. He just says it, and I feel a fool all the same. “We’re here to work, Rita, not play house.”

“Don’t be an ass. I know perfectly well why we’re here. You asked me to flip this house with you. We could have gone our separate ways after the first house sold, but no”—I jab the pencil in his direction—“you wanted to keep me around.”

“Yeah?” He fixes his gaze on the wall. “Why do you think that is?”

That’s the last thing I expected him to say. I suck in a sharp breath. “W-what?”

He turns to face me with aggravating slowness. “You heard me,” he says levelly.

Seeing the look I must be wearing, his face softens. “I didn’t mean what I said about not being here to play house.”

Childish spite rises in my throat. “So we are here to play house?”

He puts my hammer back in the toolbox with a clank. “Ugh, Rita, instead of having a knee-jerk reaction to everything I say, could you let me finish? Please?”

“Fine,” I say, clipped.

He gives me a long look, making sure I’m going to keep my word. Then he says, pointed enough for me to know he thinks it’s my fault somehow, “It’s weird sharing this house with you. It was one thing to imagine where you were, what you were doing, who you were with, when I never saw you.”

Before it sinks in that he thought about me these past six years, he keeps going, talking faster and faster, like he’ll chicken out if he doesn’t do this now.

“When I didn’t know what street you lived on and what flowers you grew in your yard. The names of your dogs.” Milan’s voice roughens. “The way you say my name. How it sounds different from the way anyone else says it, even though it shouldn’t, and it makes no sense. But I swear, Rita, when you say it, it’s like I have a soft place to land.”

I gasp in too much air and the soft burn collects in my throat. That’s the last thing I expected him to say. It’s too hard to look at him, but it’s even harder not to, so I settle for zeroing in on a freckle on the underside of his jaw.

“Last weekend, everything crept up on me. How much I looked forward to our weekends together.” He runs a hand over his face. “Wrapping up my work early so I could be here. Do you know, after the first few times, you weren’t even surprised to see me? You got used to me being here, even though we agreed at the start that the day-to-day would be yours. How easy it was to be Milan and Rita again. How fucking stupid it was that we ever stopped.”

My mouth hangs open. “So you’re blaming me now for getting used to you?”

His laugh is short and bitter. “You took it for granted I’d be here for lunch on the weekends and some Fridays, and I . . . I liked that you did. I wanted you to. Because then maybe it would be like no time had passed, nothing had driven us apart.” His breath catches. “A world in which I hadn’t fucked everything up.”

I keep my focus on his freckle, trying not to hold my breath, which I tend to do when I’m emotional. So even when he wanted to show it the least, on the inside he was as much of a mess as I was. As affected by being back in each other’s orbit again.

He reaches out like he’s aching for me, but doesn’t come close enough to touch. His fingers curl in empty air. Rough with anguish, he says, “It was so much easier when you weren’t close enough for me to—” His arm drops back down to his side. He blinks fast, tilting his head back as though the ceiling is infinitely fascinating. “So if I’m quiet around you, it’s not because I don’t care. It’s because I do.”

Why is it that I’m feeling everything right when my mind blazes white as sun glare on snow and goes blinking-cursor blank? Words have ceased to exist. Or, at least, my ability to form them.

“Milan,” I say, his name a plea. I have no idea what’s going to follow it, especially not when he swings his startled gaze to mine.

“Say it again,” he demands.

“Milan,” I whisper. I know even less, now, about what I’m asking him for.

His lips part, and what he says steals the air from my lungs. “I have no idea how to be around you,” he says, low as a secret, “when all I want to do is lose myself in being with you. But then, inevitably, I have to go home, and then the real world comes rushing back.”

Milan flexes his finger like he has to keep from reaching for me again. The words keep tumbling out of him with abandon. “The one where we can play at being a happy couple again in this beautiful place . . . but it’s not real. It’s a dream of the life we could have had. And here you are looking on MyShaadi for something solid. Not a redo of the past. Not someone ‘unreliable,’ ” he says with a self-deprecating laugh.

“That’s not fair. You’re throwing all these grenades at me now when you’re the one who acted all this time like it wasn’t hard for you.” My breath catches. “Like I meant nothing except a slice of stale teenage history.”

His forehead pulls into a wrinkled frown. “I knew if I didn’t challenge you, you’d back out. When you came to High Castle with Raj’s catering, do you think I couldn’t tell you were getting up the courage to blow me off? To back out? I know you.” Then, as if he’s reminding himself as much as me, he repeats, “I know you.”

“You baited me on the first house,” I realize aloud. “You got my hackles up. You called me on trying to run when I went for the elevator.” And I’d been such an easy mark. “I would have done anything to wipe that smug, stupid grin off your face.”

“But I didn’t bait you for this house,” he counters swiftly. “I just had to ask.”

The way he says it, though, like he crooked his finger and I came running. I had my own reasons for accepting this job, and they had nothing to do with him.

“If you remember,” I snap, hands curling into fists, “I turned you down the first time. Sure, I did change my mind but not because of you.”

His jaw tightens like he doesn’t believe me. “Yeah? So what was the reason then?”

I glare. Neil’s name is on the tip of my tongue, but the way Milan’s standing there, so sure that he’s backed me into a corner, makes me clamp my mouth shut. My petty victory would be fleeting and pyrrhic. Mean in a way I don’t want to be. Not to him.

More satisfying to let him stew, make him wonder if he doesn’t know me as well as he thinks he does.

“Why are you saying all this now?” I fling at him. “Why not the morning of the open house? When you pretended the coffeehouse got your order wrong, but it was the exact flavor I’ve loved my whole life? Or how about the time you swung by my house to return a scrunchie you wore around your wrist the way you used to when you’d pull them out of my hair? Honestly, you say you’re not here to play house, but it sure seems like you came here to pick a fight.”

“I told you. Spending so much time with you, laughing with you, getting to know you again. I wanted to catch up on everything we missed out on, but it’s like trying to hold on to a cloud. It slips through your fingers and it’s gone.” He snaps his fingers. “Just like that.”

Harrie comes skidding into the room to make figure eights around our legs.

Milan and I stare at each other in a stalemate. I don’t understand him. He’s being honest and vulnerable about everything else, except one thing.

MyShaadi. He’s conspicuously avoiding going there. It makes no sense.

I stare Milan down. “That’s the only reason?”

“The routine we settled into. It . . . it scared me, Rita.”

I grind my back molars. “Yeah, you said.”

Harrie gives up trying to get our attention and retreats under the table to watch us.

I’m not being short to hurt him, but I don’t buy that his speech wasn’t prompted by the fact that I rejected him and now he’s worried that I’ve found someone else.

“Right. So it has nothing to do with MyShaadi?” I scoff. “The fact that we matched on there and you didn’t mention it for weeks? And you coincidentally just happen to want a heart-to-heart with me right after I reject you?”

“What? I—” Milan’s eyebrows shoot toward his hairline.

“You heard me.”

“What are you talking about?” He blows out a long, irritated breath. “I used to have an account, but I haven’t been active in a long time. There’s no way they’re still matching me.”

He can’t be serious. It was one hundred percent his name and photo on the profile.

I could prove it if only I hadn’t already deleted all of my MyShaadi emails.

“Hold up. Rewind.” Hurt blazes in his eyes. “You rejected me?”

There’s a horrible, lurching sensation in my stomach. Like the ferry ride over but ten times worse. It’s the sixth sense right before you hurl after drinking too much cheap beer and all-you-can-eat wings at sports bars with short-lived boyfriends two and three.

The room stills, almost as disorienting as the rocking.

“I didn’t know what else to do. It’s not like I set out looking for you, Milan,” I say.

When I say his name this time, it gets a completely different reaction than before.

He flinches into himself, face closing off. “Yeah, but rejecting me. That’s cold.”

“Probably still not as cold as you breaking up with me with a Dear John voicemail.”

His lips flatten. “That’s what you think happened?”

“This whole pretending-you-don’t-know-what-I’m-talking-about thing is getting real old,” I hiss. “You know perfectly well what happened. You blamed me for you failing your classes.” Tears spring to my eyes. “Told me you wouldn’t be coming on our trip, and if that wasn’t shitty enough, you dumped me while I was in the air!”

When it looks like he wants to say something, I plow on, “You didn’t even have the guts to see me after I came home.”

“Because you had the time of your life! You made friends at your hostel, you had drinks with guys in clubs. You were so used to us being apart that you didn’t even miss me when I wasn’t there.”

I didn’t miss him? Blood rushes to my ears. I didn’t miss him?

I have spent the last six years of my life missing him.

His mask slips for just a second. “You Instagrammed the Ladurée macarons, Rita.” He has to swallow before he can speak again, and when he does, there’s a wrangled vulnerability in his voice. “Did you forget what we promised?”

I hate that he’s reminding me as though I’ve forgotten. But he’s got it wrong.

We said we’d feed each other those macarons under the Eiffel Tower on our first night in Paris, at the exact moment it lit up with those magical twinkling lights.

Of course I wouldn’t forget a thing like that.

His flush dims, returning his cheeks to their normal color. Voice cracking in a way it hasn’t since he was fourteen, he says, “You went off on an adventure like it didn’t matter if I was there or not. Just like college. So fucking fearless on your own,” he says with a laugh, sounding strangely proud. “You didn’t need me at all. How was I supposed to know you’d need me when you were back?”

How can he think I was fearless? I was anything but.

I make a strangled sound in the back of my throat. “My god, you’re one to talk about promises. What was I supposed to do? Waste my money moping in the hostel over you?”

“Yes! No. I mean, just a little. Of course I didn’t want you to miss out.” He rubs at his forehead. “I never wanted any of—”

“See, now I’m thinking that’s exactly what you wanted.”

“All I want is y—”

It’s not the repartee either of us expected, judging by the way he goes ashen and throws his hands up, caught out.

Want. Present tense.

This? This mess is what MyShaadi thinks makes us such a good couple?

His eyes sear into mine. “I never broke up with you, Rita. I wouldn’t do that.”

“But you did!” I half shout, splaying my hands in front of me.

He vehemently shakes his head. “Believe whatever you want.” He moves forward, as if he’s about to walk out, then pauses to glance back at the still-unhung wall art. “I’ll get out of your hair. I should have never spent so much time here.”

He leaves without a backward glance, the screen door banging shut on Harrie as he tries to follow. I hover where I stand, rolling on the balls of my feet. If I run, I can catch him.

But what do I say? I can’t tell him to come back so we can yell at each other some more.

Why am I even bothering?

He said his piece and now he’s gone. I hear the six-year-old voicemail in my head over and over. It’s engraved on my mind, word for word. Every run-through, it ends the same: It’s because of you and I think maybe we should take a break.

Harrie barrels back into the dining room to fix me with an accusing stare. He doesn’t understand what just happened, but he’s never heard me get into it like this with anyone before.

That it’s happened now, with Milan, baffles me as much as him.

He wants to be a couple again, but not just any couple. The one we used to be, Rita-and-Milan. He can’t see that we aren’t the same people anymore, and I can’t be sure it’s not the Rita I used to be that he misses. He might be able to draw those old feelings out, but I’ll never be that girl again. She’s not the only Rita I’ve ever been, and who I am now isn’t the only Rita I’ll ever be. I’m still becoming, and so is he, and those two people need to see each other.

If we’re going to have a chance, we need to look forward instead of recapturing the past. I don’t want to pick up where we left off—I want to know Milan for who he is now. But he’s happy for us to fall back in each other’s arms like it’s just been a semester apart instead of six years.

How the hell did MyShaadi think Milan was my perfect match?