Finally, Marley looked at his face and frowned. It wasn’t just his clothes that resembled Chris Pine’s pandemic look, butalso that beard. That wasnota good beard, and neither was his halo of frizzy black hair reaching his shoulders, or his lopsided smile. It wasn’t lopsided like in a sexy, cute romance-hero kind of way, more like… half his face was paralyzed. And he was drooling from the slacked half of his mouth.
This was the VIP? How in God’s name was she going to turn this slack-jawed man into an international movie star?
He put his hand up and waved. “Hi, Mahreen!” he mumbled through the mobile half of his mouth. He winced. “Chit. Dorry. I wad at de dentitht.”
That’s when Marley realized she knew the half of his face that still had muscle tone. Even under that unkept beard. This was her scrawny class-clown grade-twelve chem lab partner. Also, the second person she’d ever had sex with. The guy who fucking ghosted herandkiss and told.Nikhil Shamdasani.
“Marley, Meet Nik Sharma, the new Bronze Shadow,” Lydia said.
Marley shook her head. “No. Are you being serious right now?”
CHAPTER TWO
Nikhil
Nikhil Shamdasani was having the most surreal day of his life. It started when he woke up and saw a Google alert for his name from a tweet from New Zealand. That was good. Free publicity.
Then he read the tweet. It said that Nikhil Shamdasani, the co-star of the short-lived comedy showCommuters(which was still in syndication and strangely popular in Polynesia), was dead. Maybe that wasn’t good. Nikhil was definitely exhausted and, to most people, anobody, but he was 100 percent alive. In fact, he was about to become one of the most hated men in Hollywood. Alive and despised.
He let his talent agency know about his untimely Kiwi death, since they presumably had a necromancer process to resurrect celebrities wrongly mourned on social media. That’s when he heard from Lydia, his handler, who informed him that they were going to another dentist that afternoon.
Nikhil hated dentists, but the studio insisted on having his front tooth fixed that had been missing its left corner for over a decade now—since Oren Glassman punched him as he was walking out of grade-eleven cooking class. Nikhil hadneverconsidered fixing that tooth. As far as he was concerned, the chip was a part of his identity. But apparently,superheroesneeded to beflawless. But two different dentists took half a look at his mouth before recommending a full set of veneers, which Nikhil did not want. He liked his real teeth, thank you very much. But finally, today’s dentist agreed to repair only the chipped tooth. Seeing himself with an intact tooth after the procedure was the second surreal thing of the day. He looked like himself and a complete stranger at the same time.
But the third surreal thing that happened topped the two before it. While Lydia was paying for the dental work, he thumbed through a three-year-old magazine and saw the breathtakingly beautiful face of the very goddess who caused the chipped tooth in the first place. Nikhil remembered the day well. He had been walking out of cooking class and asked his crush, who happened to be Oren’s girlfriend at the time, how she’d liked his coq au vin. Oren assumed another meaning of the phrase and promptly socked Nikhil in the mouth.
Mahreen Kamal.
Nikhil lifted the magazine closer to study the picture. Yeah, that was her. His cooking class buddy, chemistry lab partner, and prom date. He’d fucked things up so monumentally with Mahreen that he still felt nauseous whenever he thought of her. His fist clenched as he read the article. It was about Toronto’s top luxury sales associates, and the little profile about her didn’t say anything about her personal life, only that she was a consultant and stylist at Reid’s, this fancy store in Yorkville. Mahreen was standing behind a counter looking into the camera with the same nonsmile smile she’d perfected back in high school. She was even more stunning than she used to be.
It made sense. Nikhil had gone to an arts-focused high school for their drama program, and Mahreen had been in the fashion program there. He examined her eyes: rich brown withpale green striations. Warm and cool at the same time. And they often had the same detached expression on the surface. Nikhil used to study her eyes more than the periodic table in chemistry, trying to decipher the minuscule changes that gave away her true emotions. He spent most of grade-twelve chemistry trying to get those icy-warm eyes to flash with pleasure… pleasure because of him. He’d once made it a personal goal to make her smile at least once a day—and he could tell which of her smiles was real. But he couldn’t read her eyes in this picture. Since he couldn’t resist—when Lydia was done with the receptionist, Nikhil told her that he wanted Mahreen as his next stylist.
Which was how he’d ended up here now. In a moment that outsurreal-ed all the surrealism of the day: Nikhil was standing in front of Mahreen Kamal with his face still partially frozen from the dentist, and Mahreen was giving him the same unimpressed glare she’d given him a decade ago when he’d suggested he wear his dad’s wedding kurta to prom. By this point, he should have been used to stylists being disappointed in him.
“Mahreen, let me explain,” Nikhil said. Or rather, mumbled. He probably should have waited for the numbness to wear off before this reunion.
She looked… amazing. It had been ten years since he’d seen her. He was in show business now—living in LA, where he was regularly surrounded by women who looked like they’d just stepped out ofVogueor aSports Illustratedswimsuit issue. But those women weren’t like Mahreen. She wasn’t just pretty… she was, like,otherworldly breathtaking.
She was wearing shiny black pants that perfectly skimmed her long legs. Her hair was in a sleek, high ponytail thatcascaded in waves down her back. Her white blouse accentuated her narrow waist. And her breasts… full, round, and generous. Nikhil had fantasized about her body for months before getting a chance to see it in the flesh on prom night. Spectacular. Mahreen still being as beautiful as she’d been at eighteen was immaterial right now, but man… it was messing him up to see those eyes looking at him again.
“You’re drooling, Nikhil,” Mahreen said.
He wiped his mouth. This was officially the first time they’d spoken since prom night, and he was making a complete fool of himself.
Lydia gave him a scolding look. “He just came from having a chipped tooth fixed. Marley, do you know Nik?”
Mahreen raised a brow. “Nik?”
He nodded. Mostly because he was afraid if he said something wrong, she would run away. Or that spittle would fall from his mouth.
“Is it the tooth Oren broke?” Mahreen asked.
Nikhil nodded again. He tried for a disarming grin, but with only half his mouth working, he wasn’t sure he was disarming anyone.
Mahreen chuckled. At his expense, but that was fine. It gave him the same rush it did ten years ago.
She glanced at the two people standing near Lydia. One, a tall, fiftysomething white woman who looked like she’d stepped out of her summer home in the Hamptons, and the other was a burly man with light-brown skin and a goatee wearing a shiny blue three-piece suit. “May I speak to him alone?” Mahreen asked them. Burly Guy stepped forward a bit. A bodyguard? “Nik and I went to high school together,” Mahreen said quickly. “I’d like to catch up a bit first. I can handle him.”
Yes, she could handle me a decade ago, too.
