The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale
Chapter 6
I’m still cackling about the whole set-up, and mentally rubbing my palms together like a Disney villain, when Harrie, my personal alarm, starts barking as soon as the living room lights flick on. He gives up trying to annoy Freddie into play, and takes off for the front door, ready to defend me from home invaders and boyfriends in equal measure. There’s a small, somewhat undignified human yelp as Harrie undoubtedly nosedives for Neil’s leather dress shoes.
I shut my laptop with a guilty snap. I hadn’t meant to spend so much time flipping between the MyShaadi site and snooping on the High Castle web page to identify Milan’s hard-to-sell home. Broken up for six years and I let myself get sucked into—
No, this doesn’t count. It’s for work. It’s not like I’m stalking his social media to see what he’s been up to. If I didn’t give in back then, there’s no reason to break my streak now.
It’s not difficult to see why the house wasn’t working. In a family-friendly neighborhood full of farmhouse- and craftsman-style houses, next to a great elementary and middle school, the owner-architect who had designed this place really fucked up.
Of course people bypassed the ultracontemporary home with huge plate glass windows and forbidding asymmetrical lines. It stuck out like a concrete-and-metal thumb. The furnishings matched the style of the house, which I promptly dubbed the Soulless Wonder.
Very few people would want to buy a cold, sterile house that didn’t feel like a home, especially with little kids. Even if they braved the outward appearance, the second they saw the lounge-y inside, they would know it wasn’t a home they could see themselves living in, not without feeling like a fraud. The curved-back white designer sofa was a grape juice or red wine spill waiting to happen; the behemoth steel floor lamp arching over half the living room made me nervous just looking at it; and the lack of soft furnishings anywhere, including no curtains in the bedroom (!!!), screamed: This place is waaaaayyyy too slick for you.
“Harrie, I’ve only met you a hundred times, minimum,” says Neil, his voice drifting in from outside the bedroom door. “One of these days you’ll have to acknowledge that you know me as something other than ‘Guy You Bark At.’ ”
He enters my bedroom with his best forgive-me smile and a handful of apology flowers from Trader Joe’s.
Good dog,I think to myself.
“Rita, your attack dog has a thing for Cole Haan,” Neil says with a weak smile.
At my blank expression, he looks meaningfully at his socked feet.
Oh. The shoes he kicked off next to the front door.
I try for a joke. “You named your shoes?”
He presents the flowers, not looking amused.
I take them, not quite mollified. “Do you want dinner? There’s leftovers in the fridge.”
“I, uh, ate at home. Ma made idli sambar and mutton curry.”
Other women worry about catching lipstick marks on their man’s collar; I have to watch out for brown curry stains and onion breath to tell me he sneaked off to his beloved ma’s.
Grim, I ask, “What happened to ‘on the way’? That was hours ago. You said you’d have dinner here. You could have—”
Been honest. Chose me first, for once. Cut the cord a little.
He unbuttons his shirt, letting it fall to the floor instead of the chair.
Which is right there.
“One of the guys caught me right as I was about to leave,” Neil explains, “and said the question couldn’t wait. And then Ma called me on the drive here and said there was an emergency, so of course I just headed straight there.”
Of course he did.
I fold my legs underneath me, curling the toes hard. “So what was it?”
Harrie prances in, yipping once in Neil’s direction, and tramples over the shirt with aplomb before settling himself snuggled into Freddie’s side with his usual lack of personal space.
“Huh?” Neil pauses midway through taking off his pants. “Oh. It was nothing. You know how she exaggerates sometimes to get what she wants.” He drops the pants on top of the shirt.
I clench my teeth. And yet you drop everything and go running.
“Oh hey, didn’t you need me for something?”
“It was nothing,” I snipe, feeling guilty almost immediately when his face falls. “Sorry. It was just a little embarrassing when Paula’s husband stopped by to pick up the piece she bought. Don’t worry about it. I loaded it up on the dolly and took it over on my truck like usual.”
Neil’s eyes light up. Nothing ever keeps him down for long. “Yeah, that’s right, you made a sale. Congrats, babe. I’m sorry, it slipped my mind. But looks like it wasn’t a big deal?” Down to his boxers and undershirt off, he slides onto the bed. “Maybe we should celebrate?”
His cologne has some major staying power. Even with his clothes puddled on the floor. I pull away. “Wait, so, indulge my nosiness, but remind me why she called you over, again?”
“Why else? You should take the future seriously, beta,” he mimics.
“Marriage?”
“When I burst in the door thinking something terrible happened, I came face-to-face with a girl dressed in the jazziest kurta I’ve ever seen in my life and both her parents staring at me. See, this is why I keep telling you we should just tell our folks about us and get it over wi—”
Before he can continue his impassioned tirade, I say calmly, “I completely agree.”
Neil gapes. He also forgets to blink. “Did you just say you agree with me? But, but, I didn’t even get a chance to convince you yet.”
“You don’t need to.” I pivot my laptop to face him, switching tabs to our MyShaadi profiles.
“Oh my god!” Neil’s eyes widen. “Shit. Rita. Our parents did this?”
Before he can work himself into righteous indignation, I say, “No, I did.”
Again, his jaw drops. “I . . . don’t understand.” Then his eyes narrow. “Are you trying to tell me something? Look, is this about yesterday? You want us to see other people?”
“Yes, but not the way you think.”
“Right, because there’s really a lot of different ways to misunderstand”—Neil gestures to the offending screen with a wry smile—“your girlfriend making a profile on MyShaadi.com.”
“Your mom keeps pressuring you to get married. My mom keeps pushing me at—” I stop short. I can’t tell him about Milan. “Also pushing me toward marriage,” I recover, thinking fast. “And I’m not going to lie, Neil, the weekly digs about how life would be so much easier for you if only you had a girlfriend to bring home to mummy is . . . well, kind of a lot. Especially when I told you that this will break my mother’s heart.” He opens his mouth, but I race on. “And yes, yes, I know you’re going to say your parents are happily married but—” I also can’t tell him mine aren’t, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of his.
“But, Rita,” he says when I’m done explaining the whole scam to him. “It’ll never work. How is it possible that we don’t get any other matches except each other? The whole point of a matchmaking service is to provide people with the kind of options they don’t get in real life.”
“I’ll show you.”
I make him get his work laptop. He brings a gust of cologne-thick air back with him.
After I hand over his log-in info, we each have our own profile on our screen. “Now we just take the personality assessment, fill out all our interests and goals, and identify what kind of partner we’re looking for. It says to be as specific as possible so their AI can give us our best matches. Our job is to make sure we don’t come across as appealing in any way, while still making sure our interests describe each other perfectly. So, for example, favorite movie, we’d both type in Coco.”
“Right.” He still looks unconvinced.
“What’s up, Neil?” I touch his forearm. “Doesn’t this solve all our problems?”
Four birds, one stone. His mom will stop hounding him to meet girls, my mom will stop thinking I still have a future with Milan, Neil and I can date in peace, and if Milan cries himself to sleep every night, it’s literally win-win-win-win. The perfect set-up.
“I g-guess.” Neil taps at the trackpad. “I mean, it just seems like a lot of work, but if you think it’s a good idea . . .”
“So you’re in?” I press. “We’re doing this?”
He nods.
The pressure in my chest eases. I hadn’t realized until now just how nervous I was that he wouldn’t be on board, that he’d hate the idea of lying to his ma, or even that he’d identify some oversight that would blow this whole scam apart.
“Should we fill it in together?” I ask eagerly. My cursor is already poised over start.
“How about tomorrow? I’m kind of tired. It’s, like, ten-thirty. These online quizzes take forever. Remember that IQ one?” He yawns and stretches his arms behind his head.
Could he be any less enthused? “Oh. Oh, yeah, okay. That should be fine.” I blink past the disappointment and sink back onto my side of the bed. “You’ve had a long day.”
Neil’s work-life and mom-girlfriend balance are two conversations we’ve had a lot.
“Is it really fine or is it the kind of fine that’s going to keep you up?”
Delight Bambi-prances down my spine. “See how well you know me?”
He laughs. “Didn’t your mom ever tell you not to pester Daddy as soon as he came through the door?”
“She always made me wait an hour for him to decompress,” I say. “I wasn’t supposed to ask him questions or beg for attention or chatter at him nonstop about my day. Although, if you just called yourself the ‘daddy’ in this scenario”—I give him a light, quick peck on the lips—“I’ll have to kick you out of this bed. Because, one, yuck. And, two, yuck.”
Neil grins, grabbing his laptop from the nightstand and settling it on his lap. “Okay. Let’s do this.” He stifles a yawn. “I swear I’m awake,” he says when he catches me watching.
“Thank you. I promise you won’t regret this.” I’d go in for a cheek kiss, but my nostrils are still tingling from his cologne. I tap start. “Question one—”
“How about we just do it on our own? I mean, you said it yourself. If I majored in Rita, I’d be at the top of the class. A-pluses only.”
His confidence is nice, but if we don’t match our answers to be equally terrible, there’s every chance we’ll get matches other than each other. But maybe that’s okay. I can reevaluate, I can adapt. The chances of only matching with each other was a long shot, maybe. If we show our parents all the people we want to pass on, it’ll just set us up better when we “find” each other.
My mom will only be thrilled about Neil if she thinks he’s the only guy I find appealing. So maybe the best way to prove he’s my Prince Charming is to show her all the frogs first.
I haven’t told Raj about this yet, but I know exactly what she’d say—that I have nothing in common with Neil.
Wouldn’t filling out our answers independently and still matching, anyway, be the perfect way to rub her nose in her wrongness?
“Okay,” I say, drawing the word out like the longer it took the most okay with it I’d be.
“Great!” He turns his attention back to his screen, eyes skimming at a speed that makes me a little worried for him.
It’s not like it’s a race.
At least, I don’t think it is until Neil adds, “Last one done has to wake up early to get Little Shop of Hors D’Oeuvres’s donuts for breakfast on Saturday.”
Oh.I work my mouth into a stiff game-on smile and start reading the first question, trying to ignore the loud click-click-clicks next to me. Neil’s already way ahead, typing with the ease of someone who was passed the answers before the test. He’s rough with his keyboard in a way that makes me clench my teeth, but I don’t want to interrupt him now that we’ve finally gotten started. And he does know me. So we’re fine. This is fine. It’s all going to be fine.
Even if I can’t shake the thought that he’s rushing through it so he can go to sleep.
Question #1: Why do you want to get married?
Because I do not believe in premarital sex and I’m tired of waiting
The sheer cheek of my answer makes me grin.
Question #2: Are you spiritually strong?
Yes, I can hold my liquor with the best of them!
My jaw hurts from this dorky, inordinately-pleased-with-myself smirk.
This time tomorrow, MyShaadi.com will deliver on their promise and tell me what I already know—Neil is the man for me.