Shayne looked at Marley, head tilted. “Question, Marl. I’ve known you forever, and I’ve never seen you fall for someone like this. Is this because he helped you while you’re healing? Or because he’s a hot movie star now? Or is this real?”
Marley closed her eyes. It was hard to say for sure. They didn’t live in a vacuum, and all the shit in their lives right now was influencing everything. Including their feelings.
But at the end of the day, it wasn’t his fame, or his body, or even how good he was at helping her recover from surgery that she fell in love with. She fell in love with the man who loved to Netflix and chill as much as her. Who she could talk to for hours about their families, or food, or where they wanted to travel. Who would laugh at himself every time the chai boiled over, then clean it up. And who managed to make her smile exactly when she needed it. The Nikhil she fell in love with was the one she’d known years ago. Not the movie star, but her old friend. “I don’t know. It feels real. I love him. But I can’t be with a celebrity. It’s not me.”
“I get it.” Shayne slunk down into the sofa. “Welcome to the falling-in-love-with-the-wrong-man club.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Nikhil
Nikhil barely got any sleep that night. Not because there was anything wrong with the futon in his parents’ basement, but because it turned out that he was addicted to sleeping with Marley next to him. And withdrawal was a bitch. He headed upstairs early, figuring he could go sit in a cafe or something to clear his head before driving into the city for the meeting at eleven. But when he got to the main floor of his parents’ house, he saw that his mother was in the kitchen. Cooking. He didn’t remember the last time he’d seen his mother out of bed before noon.
“Do you want a fresh paratha?” she asked.
He blinked. His mother used to always bribe him with a fresh paratha with extra butter if he agreed to cook them while she rolled them out. But it had been years since he saw her making parathas. Making anything, really. Both his parents loved to cook, and rotlis and parathas were always something his mother made when he was growing up. But when Mom’s mental health took a hit when Arjun was criminally charged, Dad took over all the cooking.
Nikhil slipped on a blue apron and picked up the spatula next to the stove. A pale-brown paratha was ballooned on the tawa. He flipped it over and pressed on the bubble.
“Are you going to your rehearsal?”
He nodded. He hadn’t told either of his parents exactly why he’d moved his things back to the house yesterday. Only Nalini knew. “Where’s Dad?”
“Still sleeping. I told him I’d make your breakfast today.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Mom shrugged. He watched her for a few seconds, trying and failing to gauge her mood by her eyes. Maybe if he was home more, he’d be able to read her better. “It’s been a long time since I made parathas,” she said. “Nalini said she wanted me to teach her to make them, and I didn’t know if I remembered how.” She chuckled, but the laugh didn’t reach her eyes. This paratha-making wasn’t thanks to a sudden clearing of her depression. “There is no way Nalini would stay still long enough for this, though.”
“It’s great to see you cooking again,” Nikhil said. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. He didn’t want to make her feel bad.
“It’s nice to have you home again. At least for now…” Her voice trailed off.
The paratha he was roasting was ready, so he flipped it onto the plate near the stove, and his mother put a new one on the tawa.
They cooked silently for a while like that. Nikhil could feel the giant elephant in the room—neither had mentioned that she was rarelyhereanymore. Rarely functioning. Was this a good time to suggest she get some help? That it was long past time for her to tell her doctor that she wasn’t doing well, and that her family was in crisis?
“I heard from your brother last night,” she said after the silence became almost unbearable.
“Mom,” he said. She knew he didn’t want to talk aboutArjun. After his brother sold him out like that, he was positive he never wanted a relationship with his brother again.
“It’s okay, beta. I know he told that reporter where your friend’s house was. What he did wasn’t right. I told him he can’t come back here again since he doesn’t respect his family.”
Nikhil’s eyes widened. Momknewwhat Arjun had done? That was the first time he remembered Mom ever admitting that Arjun was wrong. Nikhil had always assumed that his mother was incapable of seeing any flaw in her golden firstborn son. Mom started rolling out another paratha. “I always wished you boys could be closer.”
Arjun and Nikhilshouldhave been close. They were only a year apart in age. But they were so different—Arjun was the kid who read all the get-rich-quick books in the library and was convinced he’d be a millionaire before he was twenty-five. He’d convinced the whole family, too—the golden boy was going to make them all so proud. Nikhil was… well, his head was always so high in the clouds that no one on earth noticed he was up there. He sometimes wondered if his dream of being an actor was so people would notice he existed, because it never felt like his parents did.
“It’s not going to happen, Mom. After what he did to Marley, I never want to see him again.”
Mom nodded, then looked down at the ball of dough she was rolling out. He still couldn’t read her expression. “I always thought Arjun was the easy one,” she said. “He was a straight-A student. You? You got a fake ID to sneak into comedy clubs.”
Nikhil chuckled. He’d been determined to make it big as a stand-up comedian back then. He had no idea how anyone in those clubs didn’t figure out that he was only sixteen.
“You had big dreams. You were so young when you left home. But I knew you’d be okay.”
He’d barely turned nineteen when he moved to Los Angeles. It was unheard of for an Indian teen to skip university and run off to be an actor instead of staying and taking care of his family. But he hadn’t needed to be the perfect Indian son, because they already had one of those.
Even when he finally got his big break, hestillwasn’t the golden son. His success wasn’t enough to brighten the cloud over the household from Arjun’s downfall.
