The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale
Chapter 24
The rain comes crashing down again ten minutes after Milan leaves. At first in dribs and drabs, light enough to be called a sprinkle, but then come the buckets. Sheets of rain hit Bluebill Cottage, mournful wind howling as the sky whorls a stormy black and gray.
I microwave a mug of tea for Milan, then hover at the window, mug clasped in my hands, and watch for his figure returning up the path.
By the time the herbal tea cools, Milan still isn’t back, and he isn’t answering his cell phone. Lightning breaks across the sky, splintering a dozen different directions. What if he’s caught out in the storm and thinks he’s better off continuing to town instead of turning back?
The next clap of thunder shakes the entire house. At this point, it’s only a matter of time before the electricity goes out. Luckily Milan had already stocked plenty of flashlights, candles, and hurricane lamps just in case.
It’s the just in case that’s worrying me now. Planning for the eventuality of something bad happening.
Ugh. I should have insisted on calling ahead to make sure the ferry was still running before he left. There’s no way they’re making the trip in this weather.
I get through to Ken in the ferry office. “Hi, it’s Rita. I’m out on Rosalie right now and I was wondering whether the ferries—”
He anticipates what I’m about to ask. “No. There’s already more than a dozen dripping people taking shelter in here who didn’t make it off the island in time. We’re canceling service the rest of today.”
“Um, would you happen to know if Milan made it to the office?”
Ken knows us. He’s usually the one at the counter window when we buy tickets.
“Sorry, Milan’s not here. Possible he ducked into a restaurant or something when it started to pour.”
I thank him and hang up, trying not to panic. Yeah, that’s gotta be it, he probably just found somewhere else to take cover. He’s a grown man who can take care of himself and service on the island is spotty even on the best of days, but rationality is overridden by one thought and one thought only: Why isn’t he calling me back?
I drink the tea just to have something to do, wash the cup, and then reuse the teabag. Forty seconds into microwaving my second cup, the electricity goes out.
I’m plunged into darkness, with my still-lit phone screen the only source of light.
BANG BANG BANG!
I jump. It’s the first time since I’ve been on the island that I’m actually a little afraid to be all by myself, without even Harrie and Freddie here for comfort.
I peer through the peephole, heart going a hundred miles an hour. “Milan!” I exclaim, throwing open the door. “Oh my god, get in here.”
He drips his way across the wood floor, muttering something about needing some more rugs in the entryway, which I ignore, working at the buttons on his shirt. He doesn’t even make a wisecrack about me divesting him of clothing. He’s shivering, arms wrapped tight around himself. He stays still and lets me peel his shirt from his arms.
“Wait here, I’m getting you a towel,” I instruct.
When I return, I find that he’s slung his shirt and shorts over his arm, but has stayed on his feet to keep from soaking the couch. His hair is plastered to his forehead in stringy wet-dog waves. While Milan towels himself off, I wring his clothes out over the sink and hang them to dry on the back of a chair I drag from the dining room. Jumping into action makes it easier not to think about the fact that he’s two feet away, wearing nothing but boxers.
After he finishes the lukewarm mug of hot honey tea, he starts a fire in the grate and lights the hurricane lamps, casting the room in a soft, buttery glow.
“Oh, shoot, I should have gotten you a sheet,” I say.
He gestures at himself. “No, I’m fine. See? I’m not cold anymore.”
I run my eyes over him. He’s finger-combed his hair to lie smooth, and except for the slight curl at the end, it does seem mostly dry. Likewise, his boxers have dried enough to tell they aren’t black, as I first thought, but navy.
“Are you done eye-sexing me?”
My cheeks burn. I glare. “Stop trying to be cute.”
His face is way too innocent for the way he purrs, “I don’t have to try.”
I get him a sheet, anyway, insisting he wrap it around himself if he doesn’t want me to do it for him. He looks intrigued, but obliges, wearing it around his shoulders like a cape.
“Another second and I’d have run into the rain after you,” I tell him, pulling a chair closer to the fire. The heat will hopefully take care of his clothes, but it’ll take a few hours.
His eyes sparkle, or maybe it’s just the flames dancing in his dark irises. “In that case, we’d both be sharing this. Darn. A missed opportunity.”
“Ha-ha. If only the washer and dryer had been delivered on time, and the power didn’t go out.”
“What time do you think it is?” he asks, stifling a yawn.
“Dinnertime?” I check my phone. “Yup. It’s almost seven.”
What I really want on a cold, rainy night is hot soup and a crusty baguette, but we don’t have either. So we scarf down some saltine crackers, apple slices, and manchego cheese, washing it down with the last bottle of lemon-lime Limca soda I’d stocked in the fridge, knowing how much he loved it.
Milan adds more logs to the fire. “I’m going to get some more. Want anything?”
“I’ll just have some of whatever you’re getting,” I say, distracted by the sight of a red bubble on my email app. I tap it on reflex.
Sender:MyShaadi.com
Subject:Rita, the only thing better than one match is two!
I don’t even look at the preview, just open the email and follow the link to go to my account. My heart batters against my rib cage as I wait for the page to load.
I want it to be Milan. I want it to be him so bad.
By the time I remember the shitty reception here, Milan’s returned to the couch with a tub of hummus and crackers. He gestures to the middle seat and makes as if to stretch his legs out. “Do you mind?”
I don’t. “Go for it.”
“Did you get service?” he asks while loading his cracker with hummus.
“N— Yes!” By some miracle, I have one bar. The shortest, tiniest bar, but it’s there.
He looks amused. “I’m still out,” he informs me.
The page still hasn’t loaded.
Earlier today he wanted to know if I could see a second chance with him. But as the seconds tick by, I realize I don’t need MyShaadi to tell me what I already feel.
It doesn’t matter if an algorithm thinks we’re a match. Even if we’re one hundred percent perfect for each other. Many clever someones rigged dating science with data science to create MyShaadi, but the fact is Milan and I aren’t perfectly matched.
That was always our mistake, thinking that we were.
We were together for six years and apart for six more.
If we’re going to try again, to rebuild what was broken, we have to face that we weren’t perfect then, and we aren’t perfect now. It took us six years to talk to each other, to figure out what went wrong. To have a simple conversation.
“You’re quiet,” Milan comments. His foot nudges my knee.
I’m about to say I’m thinking when I realize I’m not thinking anymore.
“Is this what you hoped would happen from the moment we met at my parents’?” I ask.
Milan runs a hand over his face and into his hair as if he’s suddenly shy. “I never stopped hoping. It just seemed like you had moved on. I mean, I used to look you up online. Eventually I stopped because it didn’t look like there was room for me anymore. But I should have fought for you, even fought with you. Should have talked to you, period.”
“We’re talking now.” Tired of fighting the impulse, I reach out to cover his hand with my own. “I . . . I can’t deny that I’m drawn to you. And this is the last thing I thought we’d be working on today. Us.” I laugh under my breath.
“Oh, yeah?” His tone is deceptively light. “What did you think we’d be doing?”
I’m thinking of the work on the house still to be done. But his eyes are dark and smoldering, fixed on me. Without even being aware of it, he wets his lips.
He wants me. He’s not exactly being subtle about it.
And that gives me a certain power.
I want to tell him—not that I love him, even though I think I maybe do—that high school sweethearts Rita and Milan are gone, we can’t be them again, but that we can be who we are now. And maybe there is a second chance for older and wiser Rita and Milan.
Deliberately, letting him feel every inch of the innuendo, I say, “I guess I hadn’t figured on us spending much time talking at all.”
His eyes darken. After a long exhale, he says, “Right. Because we’d be hard at it.”
My upper lip twitches halfway into a smile.
His eyes flare. “At work, I mean!”
Side-stitch laughter overwhelms me and I dissolve, clutching at my middle and hunching over. Without thinking about it, I nudge my toes against his ankle.
He yelps, but traps my foot under his hand. “How are your toes this cold in August?!”
I could pull back, but he makes no move to let me go.
There’s nothing cute about my bare feet after weeks of hiding them in sturdy working boots and sneakers. There’s one lone hair on my big toe, a little ashiness across the joints, and speckled remnants of old nail polish. My feet are nowhere near summer sexy, ready for sandal and flip-flop weather. But he doesn’t seem to notice.
“It’s just so easy to be with you. It’s the ultimate illusion of no time having passed at all.” He scrapes his front teeth over his bottom lip. “Don’t you feel it, too?”
Of course I do. How could I not?
“Yes,” I say quietly, even though what I mean is: I know there’s no way we’ll ever be able to afford to keep this house for us, but I’m still designing it like it is. I’m not nearly as fearless as you think I am, but you make me want to be brave and take a second chance on us.
“It’s still coming down hard,” he says finally, swiping his finger into the tub of hummus when he runs out of crackers. “Luckily there’s enough food to see us through the weekend.”
I eye his finger, which he’s brought to his mouth. Right as he’s about to stick it in, I say, “You didn’t ask me if I wanted any.”
He pauses. “Do you?”
“I want you.”
“You should have told me before I finish— Wait, what did you say?”
I reach for his wrist, bringing myself closer. Keeping my eyes trained on his, I draw his finger into my mouth. His soft gasp as I scrape my teeth lightly over his slim digit is everything I remember it being.
That look of unguarded surprise he wears takes me back to the first time I went down on him and every time after, fingernails trailing over pale thighs, the tip of my warm tongue re-creating the sensation. The way he didn’t want to finish too fast and come in my mouth battling with the dazed look on his face, head thrown back and fists clutching in my hair, in his sheets, as he came undone.
“Rita,” says Milan, voice impossibly strained. His eyes are dark and filled with want.
I swirl my tongue over the pad of his pointer finger, feeling his full-body shudder all the way in my mouth. My lips glide back and forth, taking him in all the way to the first knuckle.
“Rita,” he says again, this time with more insistence.
I slip his finger free. “Do you want me to stop?”
The question in his eyes grows. “You want me for tonight or for forev—for longer than just tonight? Because I’m telling you right now, I don’t want to be another Neil to you.” Raggedly, “I want you. And, god, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but not if sex is all that—”
I press my finger to his lips, cutting him off. “Sex isn’t all I want.”
“It’s not?”
“No. I also wanted that hummus.” I can’t hold a straight face for more than a second.
“You also wanted—” He has to bite his lip to keep from laughing. “I am not laughing. This is me not finding that funny at all. You are terrible, Rita.”
“Yes,” I murmur, moving to straddle him. “I’m sooooo mean in my old age.”
“Very mean,” he agrees, sliding his hands up my shirt, around the curve of my breasts, and up my collarbone to finally settle around my neck. “It makes me almost not want to kiss you right now.”
“Mmm, but that punishment doesn’t fit the crime,” I whisper. “You’ll have to be a bit more creative.”
His lips brush mine in a slow, lingering caress, but he denies me when I try to deepen the chaste touch. “I can be creative,” he says in my ear, low enough for all the words to run together.
He trails his tongue down my earlobe to the shivery place where my pulse leaps to meet him. “I have protection,” he says, nipping at my skin.
My neck arches, allowing him better access. “I’m on birth control,” I say through a gasp, fisting his hair by the roots.
Milan breaks contact just long enough to grab a condom, returning to me with wild, flushed cheeks and a heady grin. He plants soft kisses along the column of my throat, working his way back to my jaw, and finally, finally, my lips.
When he pulls away for breath, he takes some of my lip balm with him, the gloss smudged across his swollen upper lip. I flash back to the fruity, sticky lip gloss I had to wipe off his chin when we were fifteen and hiding around hallway corners from teachers to kiss in peace.
He hisses when I adjust myself over him, pressing into his hardness. His fingers press against my hips, sliding under my black tee. “I’ve wanted to rip this off you the first time I saw you wearing it and every time since.”
And then he does.