The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale
Chapter 23
I think this must be what closure feels like. The feeling follows me throughout the rest of the work week. I haven’t been able to stop wondering what could have happened next if only he hadn’t had to leave for a meeting so soon after our talk.
When I close my eyes and run the lightest of fingertips between my knuckles, my body comes to life the way it hasn’t since—well, since. My cheeks flame. But all the same, it’s no substitute for him.
To keep my hands busy, I get started stacking the shelves in the living room, intermittently texting Raj for details about her first date with Luke last night.
When I went back to the mainland for a tandoori dinner with my family for Aji’s seventy-third birthday, Raj borrowed Harrie and Freddie (“But, Rita, think of the children! They need to socialize with their peers before they forget how!”) to legitimize her presence at the dog park and stage a run-in.
It was utterly transparent, but from the goofy smile Luke wore when he saw her, apparently he was charmed by the subterfuge. Enough so that Raj asked if she could hold on to my doggos for longer (“Rita, you’ll get so much more work done without them underfoot! Pleeeeease?”).
I’m not sure what the past few days makes me and Milan. Friends? Or more than that?
Definitely more than friends.Raj sends. People who used to be as in love as you two were don’t have a middle ground. You’ll never be nothing to each other.
But that’s what I’m afraid of. Now that he’s back in my life, how can I say goodbye to him once this house is done if we’ve become “definitely more than friends” again? Bluebill gave us a shared space to orbit each other. Without it, what if we go back to the status quo?
That’s why, trusting in fate to be on our side one more time, I logged in to MyShaadi last night to reset my old answers with true, honest ones. The kind I would fill out if I was really looking for the One. If Milan and I matched before with my bullshit answers, we have to now, too.
I chomp on my hearts-not-sticks pretzels while hoisting a stack of seven thin art books to a middle shelf of the bookcase. Their black and white spines compliment the monochrome world globe on the opposite end. I arrange more clusters of vertical books and separate them with an artsy bowl of pearlescent sea snail shells, framed around-the-world vintage postcards, and black horse head bookends. A spill of purple spiderwort trails down from the copper planter above.
When I’m done, I check my phone to find that Raj has sent me a picture of herself holding that horrific ceramic rooster to her face and feigning a horror movie scream while Freddie’s buried his head behind the sofa cushions. And another of Raj and Luke out at dinner, sharing an appetizer plate of deep-fried ravioli.
A weird first-date present AND Italian food? I might be in love!reads her message.
Huh. Some guys bring flowers, some bring haunted roosters.
Smiling, I return to my shelves. A large purple geode goes on top of a leather-bound volume of poetry. They nestle between a Grecian bust pot with a thriving silvery green rex begonia and a framed floral needlepoint.
The rest of the books go up on the shelves in alternating horizontal and vertical stacks, leaving plenty of white space. I love to showcase books as art pieces, while using wire baskets to tuck away anything that doesn’t quite fit my aesthetic. In my house in Goldsboro, it’s usually the well-thumbed, dog-eared romance books featuring men with straining, sexy muscles, disheveled cravats, and just-ravished women in rumpled gowns that I don’t want Aji to see. Not because she’s a prude, but because she’ll cheerfully make off with them in her purse.
The air shifts behind me. “These bookshelves are incredible.”
My heart leapfrogs. “Hi, Milan.” I hesitate, then say, “I really hoped you’d come today.”
He’s right about the shelves. Refinished to look brand-new, they seamlessly melt into the wall on either side of the blue-tiled living room fireplace. You can’t even tell that these are the same junk bookcases Dad hauled from the curb.
The warmth of Milan’s breath nips at my ear. “I remember when you painted them. They looked nothing like this before. So many clients, even the ones that don’t even read a single book a year, want built-in bookshelves. It’s a hot-ticket item.”
His hand lands on my shoulder. Squeezes. “You added a lot of value to this house.”
“I hope whoever moves in has the books to fill the space,” I confess, not turning around. “Whenever I make something, I try to imagine the kind of person or family that’s going to buy it. I imagined this shelf filled with yellowed, dog-eared paperbacks from a secondhand bookstore. Hardcovers that lost their dust jackets years ago, their corners worn smooth from rereading. Some picture frames up. Memories you’d want to see every day. Memories that take you back.”
“This looks exactly like what you just described,” says Milan, voice a low rumble. “Down to the well-loved books.” A beat. “It’s everything I’d want in my home.”
He can’t see me, so I don’t need to bite back my smile, but I do it, anyway. “That’s the perfect way to put it. Well loved. There’s something about old things, right? Comforting favorites. A place in time you want to return to, revisit, like an old friend.”
Like talking to him now, better than friends.
He touches my arm, warm fingertips on bare skin. I startle, whirling around.
He’s standing close. Too close. I almost collide into him.
“Whoa,” he says, hands coming up to steady my shoulders like I’m a spinning top. His warm thumbs slip into the sleeve of my black tee and he doesn’t let me go.
Somehow, he seems more startled than I am.
My breath stalls in my throat when I see the look on his face. All masks dropped. Open, for-all-the-world-to-see yearning on his face. He lets me see it, doesn’t throw the shutters up.
“That shirt’s an old friend,” he says, just the tiniest bit hoarse. He pinches the sleeve of my black tee between his thumb and forefinger. “You wear it a lot.”
“I mean, I have a lot of black tees.”
“Yeah, but you like this one the best,” he states.
What a weird thing to say. I shoot him a confused okaaaay smile.
“You were wearing it the day we reunited, too,” he says, an undefinable quality in his voice unlike anything I’ve heard before. “And about a dozen times since.”
Curiosity leaps into my throat. If I asked, would he remember what I wore the first time he realized he was in love with me? The ditsy floral dress I wore when he gave me those forget-me-nots and teasingly made me promise not to forget him (as if I could even if I tried)?
His hands are still on my shoulders, and now I’m feeling dizzy for altogether another reason. His forehead is scrunched, intense, the way he looked when we were doing our homework together, only this time it’s not a tough math problem he’s trying to figure, it’s me.
The warm pads of his thumbs inch further up my sleeves, gentle but a little rough, too, maybe from working on the house. My nipples stiffen against my bra and I instinctively strain forward, yearning to be crushed against the solid heat of his chest, but I draw back just in time.
“I remember what you were wearing the first time we reunited, too,” I say instead, swallowing past the leapfrogs in my throat. “You looked like one of those hot, preppy guys in the American Eagle store windows. I was, like, he dresses like this on the daily just because?”
I think my comment flies over his head at first. No smart-alecky quip? No cocky comeback about the fact I called him hot and didn’t try to backtrack?
Milan seems content to keep holding me, touching me. The friction of his thumbs skimming against my bare skin makes me jumpy and achy at the same time. These aren’t his usual calming, trancelike circles. My cheeks burn. I want to know what this butterfly-light sensation would feel like in other places.
I’m pulsing for him. Though he’s infinitely, teasingly tender, I don’t think he’s aware of the arousal he’s eliciting from me. That far-off look on his face, that restrained emotion in his eyes . . . These are new. If he picks up the tempo on his barely there caresses, I think I’d shatter right in his arms.
Belatedly, he laughs, but it’s gravelly and strained. “I guess my color palette got more sophisticated since we dated. Figured out I liked colors other than gray and black.”
I’d noticed. Has he cataloged the ways I’m different now, too?
I take his cue to pull out of the moment. I roll my shoulders away from him, and he lets me, but that contemplative expression doesn’t leave his face once. A muscle in his jaw flickers when I rub my arms as if I’m warding off the cold, but in actuality, I’m trying to desensitize myself from the ghost of his touch.
“If only you’d realized that the million times I told you that when we were together,” I say. “It would have made shopping for you so much easier.”
“I mean, you could always buy me a present now,” he drawls.
Back to banter and verbal sparring safe ground. Familiar, but possibly not any safer.
I roll my eyes. “Smooth. For what occasion?”
His smile is victorious. “Us, of course.”
A giddy flutter of butterflies takes flight in my chest. Celebrate us? My startled laugh turns into a hacking cough. “What?”
He thumps my back. “For doing such a great job on this house.”
—
It’s an amazing job on this house, actually.
An hour later, right before we break for lunch, I’ve finished hanging a curtain of twinkly fairy lights against one of the glass panes in the dining room. It’ll provide the perfect ambient lighting both inside and out. I switch them on before joining Milan at the old picnic table in the backyard.
We have some of the leftover charcuterie, mostly dried fruit, nuts, and cheese, to go with the simple tomato-basil soup and ham-and-cheese sourdough panini Milan made with some of my farmer’s market produce.
He looks up from the screen of his Canon camera with a distracted smile as I drop into the seat next to him. My knee glances off his, but neither of us moves away.
“I was just about to call you to eat,” he says. He notices the lights glittering in the window in front of him. “Wow. That’s going to look terrific at night. Really romantic.”
I reach for my sandwich. Some of the cheese has spilled out from the crust while frying, thin and crisp and deliciously golden. I snap it off and pop it into my mouth, where it crackles with the barest pressure. The cheese in the sandwich, however, is a different story, gooey with the nutty, buttery tang of swiss and the kick of pepperjack, multiplied with the crisp sharpness of dill pickles and dijon mustard.
Taste buds exploding, I close my eyes in satisfaction. Masala mac is without a doubt my number one go-to comfort food, but this piece of pure heaven is a close second.
“You’re still a cheese fiend,” Milan informs me, taking a sip from his Limca bottle.
I don’t bat an eye. “Cheese is a very important food group.”
His voice holds a smile. “I noticed you have a value-size bag of kid’s string cheese in the fridge.”
“Leave me and my cheese alone,” I grumble good-naturedly.
He laughs, and oh my god, it warms me more than the oozing cheese. A reflexive, fizzy giggle rises in my throat. I shovel in a succession of quick bites until my cheeks bulge like a chipmunk’s.
“Get anything good?” I ask around a mouthful, nodding to the camera he’s holding.
He hums, angling the screen my way. “You tell me.”
“You do realize an iPhone packs the same amount of power in a smaller package?”
One corner of his mouth crooks upward. “Who said I like small packages?”
I nudge his knee. “Quit being cute and show me.”
It just slips out, but I’m big enough to admit that he’s cute. He just is, no trying involved.
Milan’s eyes flash like I’ve turned brown topaz in the palm of my hand to catch the light. He tries to hold back a laugh, but obligingly begins clicking through the pictures. He’s done a great job with the composition and angles, showing the outside of the house to its best advantage.
He has the Before photos, too. Looking at the yellowing wallpaper and dull floors, the saltwater damage to the exterior paintwork, and the thick drapes smothered in so much dust Milan said he’d been on allergy medication for a week just reminds me how unloved Bluebill Cottage used to be.
Through spoonfuls of hearty, warming soup and bites of crusty panini, we discuss the listing, making sure to note every new update and improvement. We’re listing it for so much more than he bought it for, so if we want any chance of recouping well over our costs, we have to show where the money went. Remodeling all the bathrooms and the kitchen, the professional cool blue exterior paint, the brand-new roof . . . It’s unrecognizable from the Before pictures.
My heart wrings and my fingers tighten around the slim neck of the Thums Up glass bottle he handed me. Pictures mean we’re one step closer to putting the house up for sale. One step closer to saying goodbye.
And maybe not just to the house.
“What do you think?” he asks eagerly. “I sent a few shots over to Josh because he was curious about the house that stole my heart, but— Oh, not that one.” He hurriedly clicks through a handful of photos before I can see them.
“They’re great. I . . . I really like them.” I down the rest of my Indian cola drink.
The inevitability of our parting ways should have occurred to me when I was putting the final touches in the living room, arranging the bookshelves with objets d’art. We’ve ticked off just about everything on our to-do list. I don’t even need to double-check on my phone’s notes app, I just know.
I look to the sky, at the angry gray clouds rolling toward us, darker than they’d been on my way out here. Birds scatter above us, swooping over Bluebill Cottage as they head back toward the mainland. Fleeing like they sense a storm coming.
The first raindrop lands in Milan’s scraped-clean bowl of soup. He hisses, reaching for the camera’s lens cap. “Let’s move this inside,” he says.
We make it back with seconds to spare before the rain slakes down, hitting the windows hard enough for the house to tremble. As Milan secures the doors, I pile the last of our salvaged lunch on the kitchen counter, but my hand shakes at a sudden clap of thunder, sending the nuts rolling along the blue soapstone.
When our hands accidentally touch over the runaway almonds and he hooks his pinky around mine, it’s hard to pretend it didn’t happen.
“It’s coming down hard,” he says, pulling a bottle of bubbly from the fridge. “We can’t get any work done, anyway, so might as well pop this open?”
I sink into the new emerald-green velvet settee that I’d covered with an old bedsheet for protection. “I— I thought you were saving that for our last day.”
If we split it now, the sale of the house is all but inevitable. And while I always knew in my heart that this was going to happen, can’t we put off the celebration until it actually sells?
“Let’s seize the fucking diem,” Milan declares, rifling through the drawers. “Where are the fresh kitchen towels?” he mutters under his breath.
I know where they are, but I don’t tell him, hoping he won’t find them.
No such luck. Older and wiser Milan doesn’t give up that easy.
“Success!” he crows.
Waiting for his return, I idly pick up Milan’s camera. It’s heavy in my palm, a satisfyingly solid weight. I can see why he prefers it. It hasn’t turned off yet, so I go back to clicking through the images.
I click the wrong arrow button. There, between a picture of the freshened front porch and a coastal view of the house, is a picture of me.
My heart flies into my throat. I never posed for this.
And yet, you’d think I did. I’m working on the dining table, sanding it back, sweat glistening on my neck and damp baby hair slick on my forehead, but I’m smiling. Smiling big.
Not at Milan, and not even in the general direction of the camera, but I look happier than I’ve seen myself look, well, ever. And he caught it, immortalized the joy in that moment, with the most serendipitous of timing. As if he’d been watching me for a few minutes. Studying his subject. But he’d limited himself to just one photo. Why? Was that all he thought he could get away with before I noticed?
There’s a muffled pop! and then a drawer in the kitchen slides shut. I jump like I’ve been caught reading someone’s diary. Quickly, I go back a few photos and set the camera on the end table without turning it off.
None the wiser, Milan joins me on the couch with a wide grin and two glasses of champagne. “To a job well done,” he says, raising his glass to me.
I clink mine against his. “We’re not finished yet.”
“Spoilsport,” he says, grinning against the rim of his glass.
When his mouth pulls away, there’s a bead of champagne clinging to his lower lip that I absolutely don’t notice, not at all.
“Hey, pass me the camera,” he says suddenly. “I’ll show you the rest.”
“Oh, I— Okay.”
With him on one end of the couch and me on the other, it’s hard to view the small screen, so I scoot closer, only half listening as he enumerates the rest of the house specifications he’s putting on the listing. I keep my eyes glued to the screen, nodding at the right intervals, waiting to see if he’s sneaked in any more surreptitious photos of me.
He splits the rest of the bottle between us, giving me too much and leaving only half as much for himself. With a rueful, crooked grin, he shakes the bottle to get the last few drops out.
“Just take some of mine,” I murmur, taking my eyes away from the screen.
My voice came out husky, inviting. The idea of his lips on my glass, maybe even overlapping where my mouth has been, is thrilling.
Milan stares at the glass I nudge toward him. His eyes are bright, maybe even feverish. “No, no, that’s okay,” he says, more to himself than to me, before he gulps down the remnants in his glass.
When his throat bobs with the swallow, my stomach up-downs, up-downs in a concurrent rise and fall. It’s like being on a roller coaster on the way down.
“Um, should I put on the lights? It’s gotten so dark outside.” Milan switches on the table lamp closest to him, and then lunges forward to get the one behind me, but freezes when the side of his face brushes my cheek.
If I turn my cheek just a few degrees, we would meet. It takes every bit of self-control I have to stay still, waiting to see what he’ll do.
“Uh, why don’t you get that,” he stammers, even though he’s more than halfway there.
I sag with disappointment before forcing up a smile. “Yeah, no worries.” My voice is twice the normal volume.
I twist around to turn on the lamp. By the time I face him again, he’s pushed himself all the way back to his armrest, leaving the middle cushion in the no-man’s-land between us.
The rain’s coming down hard. The air electrified with the coming storm.
This wasn’t on the weather radar.
“I swear it sounds like the roof is made of tin,” he says, reading my mind.
I roll an almond between my thumb and forefinger. “It’ll pass.”
“I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t,” he muses quietly. “If we could just stay like this.” He darts a look up at me from under long, thick lashes.
He’s been doing that ever since our foray to the farmer’s market. Secret little stolen glances that I’m not meant to catch, but I do. Our eyes lock, and I’m the first to look away, embarrassed by the depth of the want in his eyes.
“Rita.” There’s a trace of panic in his voice. “Right now, us, here . . . It just makes me feel like this could be ours again. It’s in our grasp.”
When I don’t answer right away, he jerks his head up. “Couldn’t it be?”
It’s what I’ve been asking myself since New Bern. A question that’s burned my mind, hungering for an answer. I settle upon, “I wish it could be as easy as a yes or a no.”
“Because you met someone on MyShaadi?”
I hesitate. “Not exactly. But there was someone I met on Tinder.”
He sucks in a sharp breath. “Was it . . . serious?”
I have no clue how to answer this. What does serious even mean? Yes, I’d slept with Neil. He was my longest relationship since Milan. He’d wanted to marry me.
“Ish,” I settle on.
We’re sitting sideways now, our legs are tucked under us, knees close enough to bump if I move just a bit. His arm is stretched over the back of the couch, and every so often his fingers strum the air. As if he forgot himself for a moment, regressing to a time when he could reach out and tuck an errant strand behind my ear or massage the back of my neck.
To my disappointment, he catches himself every time, hand stilling as if he’s struck the wrong chord and the discordant note is reverberating all around us.
“So then why are you looking on MyShaadi?” Milan asks. “Did you break up?”
He’s doing his best to sound aloof, face a little closed off, but his eyes tell a completely different story.
So I tell him: about Amar, about Mom, about the chance meeting with Neil, about the Shaadi scam, and then, finally, about the breakup.
As I speak, he starts to play with my hair, idly, like he’s not aware he’s doing it. “What did you like about him?”
I tilt my head to lean against the couch. My hair, frizzy at the temples, wisps against his fingers. I feel a soft pull as his fingers instinctively curl. It takes every facial muscle I have not to grin like a clown at how incredible it feels.
“Do you really want to know?” At his nod, I say, “Neil seemed uncomplicated. No gross come-ons, no ego. And he was attractive. He made me laugh. Pretty basic reasons, I guess. Just a guy and a girl who met and talked and thought they’d maybe like to see each other again.”
“So what changed?”
I roll my shoulders, getting more comfortable. “We wanted different things,” I say. “He wanted a happily ever after and I wasn’t looking that far ahead.”
I tip my cheek into the path of his hand. I study him, his posture, the curve of his shoulders. In the soft, buttery lamplight, he’s gilded in gold, light brown skin warm and honeyed.
“What about you?” I ask, stomach a writhing pit of snakes. “Have you dated much?”
Of course he has. Look at him.
“A few relationships,” he acknowledges. “One that even lasted a year. Keiko was a little older than me, and had just got out of a nasty divorce. I found her a new place and we hit it off. But she wasn’t looking for anything more than casual.”
“Oh.” A year is pretty serious. Longer than any of my boyfriends anyway. “Do you still love her?”
He shoots me a strange look. “I was never in love with her. Maybe I could have been, but I knew from the start she didn’t want anything permanent. We’re still friends. In the end, I think that’s all she wanted, really.”
Milan breaks into my thoughts when he asks, “Do you still love Neil?”
“I was never in love with him. I don’t think he loved me, either. I think he saw it as the natural progression of our relationship. The obvious next step. And on some level, I knew it. I just ignored it, hoping he’d get the hint.” I shake my head. “That was my biggest mistake.”
“It can be hard when two people aren’t at the same place at the same time,” Milan offers. “Don’t beat yourself up.”
I know I will anyway, but I nod.
“Anyway, after Keiko, I joined MyShaadi,” he says. “I used a junk email, you know, instead of my main one. The kind you sign up with for shit that you won’t need more than once? I had some friends who’d met their then-girlfriends there and I figured, what the hell? But I wasn’t looking to get married, and that’s what most people on the site want.”
“You weren’t the only one who got suckered into giving it a chance. I did it purely for Aji, and got bombarded with matches I couldn’t care twice about.”
“Same,” says Milan. “So I ditched the account without meeting anybody. That’s why I was so shocked when you said you matched with me, because I thought there’s no way they would be pimping me out after a year of inactivity. But then I remembered that after you told me you were on MyShaadi to meet ‘reliable men,’ I logged back in that same afternoon to see if by some chance we’d matched up, but we hadn’t. It must have reactivated my status.”
And he never got any of the email notifications that we matched multiple times because he used a junk email that he probably never checked.
“Do I know any of your exes?” I ask hesitantly.
Would we bump into them at Diwali parties, be forced to make small talk in line with them at the store? I want to cringe before I reality check myself. What am I doing? I’m already thinking in we, as if it’s a given that Milan and I are a couple. Or that we will be, soon.
“No, you don’t.” He ignites my bones with the look he sends me now, all molten heat and shivery desire. Under the guise of stretching my back, I close the gap between us a little bit more.
Now two of his fingers graze my ear. Heat strobes over me when his pointer traces the edge without any urging. Soft and unhurried at first, then increasing the pace into an electric frenzy as the friction from the pad of his finger grows bold, traveling a featherlight caress to my lobe.
The unintended tickle wakes up my whole body, nipples peaking under my shirt. I lean into his touch, rewarded when his fingers slip into my hair, gripping hard. His wrist is nestled into the crook of my neck and shoulder, impossibly warm, exactly what I wanted, but now that I have it, I want more.
“Rita,” he says in a rumble, maybe even a little exasperated. “What are you doing?”
“Something that is quite possibly a very bad idea,” I whisper, inching closer and taking his hand with me.
“Definitely a bad idea,” he agrees. His eyes draw me in like a tractor beam.
The thunder claps above us and we both startle, his fist grabbing hard enough to tug at my scalp. I gasp, arching my neck. It’s a little rough, the way I like, and frenetic streaks of pleasure dart down my spine.
“Now,” he whispers against my lips, throaty and sandpaper-delicious, “where were we?”
Milan’s lips flutter over mine before touching down, moving slow and steady until my mouth opens to him. His hands run up my spine, soft fingertips dancing against the back of my neck as he pulls me closer, then closer still.
His hands settle on my waist, thumbs sliding up my heated skin. A soft mewl slips out of me when his warm tongue darts between my teeth. Our tongues meet, battle, then fall back. Tingles sweep over my jaw, electrifying and clustering in my ears until I’m cotton-eared and dizzy with want.
I bare my teeth and try not to cry in frustration. If I’m being honest, really honest, I’d love nothing more than to fuck him right here. But smarter, rational Rita is still in the driver’s seat, and she talks me out of pushing him down and ripping off my shirt. Even if everything about being with Milan makes me feel as ravenous and giddy as I did as a teenager.
But there’s still so much we haven’t talked about, worked out.
I’m the first to break the kiss, gasping for breath. “We should . . . we should . . .” I can’t seem to form the rest of the sentence.
“Keep kissing?” Milan suggests.
—
We should put up the new curtain rods and curtains.
God, I could just kick smarter, rational Rita’s ass.
I could have spent the rest of the afternoon kissing him, but nooooo, I had to suggest getting back to work after we finished lunch. Now that I’ve kissed him again, I can’t believe I ever stopped. My body is an ungrounded live wire, aching for Milan every time he looks my way, sending shooting stars down my limbs whenever he grazes my arm in passing.
When the last curtain goes up, Milan steps down from the stepladder with a regretful smile. “Rita, I hate to say it, but I have an open house tomorrow.” He hesitates. “The rain’s down to a drizzle. I could probably make the next ferry out. Plus . . . if I stay, I’m not sure we’d get anything else done. All I want is to—” He breaks off, turning away quick to walk to the door like he doesn’t want to be talked out of it.
I don’t want him to leave. I want the same thing he wants.
“Milan, I—”
He freezes, one shoe on his foot, the other hanging limp in his hand. “Yeah?”
“I don’t know if the ferry will still be running.”
It’s not what I meant to say, and we both know it.
He hops into the other shoe. “Sure it will. It’s not that bad out.” He opens the door, letting in a gust of salt air. “See? No rain.”
I peer out at the dark clouds gathering above. “I’m not so sure about that. Maybe you should stay—”
He grins at me over his shoulder, totally unfazed. “I’ll text you when I reach mainland, okay? Lo— Later. See you later.”