Meghna rolled her eyes and looked over at Karthik, as if to ask whether he’d take the lead. He didn’t especially want to, but it was clear she was ready to pass the reins.
“But we’re still going to call off our engagement,” Karthik said.
“Ha!” Meghna’s father said. “Radhika, you didn’t guess that.”
Karthik’s mother leaned over to read Meghna’s father’s slip of paper, and her lips curled up. “Neither did you, Akshay. You guessed they were breaking up. I’m the only one who got it right.” Sheunfolded her own piece of paper and read, “Meghna and Karthik are going to call off the wedding, but stay together.”
The room filled with stunned silence, then Karthik laughed and turned toward Meghna. “Okay, I told Amma some stuff, butIdidn’t even know we were going to do that.”
“How could you…how did you…?” Radhika sputtered in Shanti’s direction.
Karthik’s mother delicately raised a shoulder. “It was a calculated guess.”
“We’re playing twenty-eight when this is over,” Radhika said. “I demand a rematch.”
Karthik’s mother smiled serenely, and Karthik couldn’t help but grin. It looked like Meghna’s mother had finally met a worthy competitor.
“Congratulations, Shanti, on the well-deserved win,” Meghna’s father said. “But Meghna, Karthik, can I ask why you’re ending the engagement? You said you care about each other, yes?”
“We do,” Karthik said, squeezing Meghna’s hand slightly. “Very much.”
“So, why not stay engaged?”
“We don’t want to rush anything. We just want to take it a day at a time,” Meghna said. “Without the pressure of a wedding around the corner.”
They’d both agreed that ending the engagement was the right call. Karthik was looking forward to just…spending time with Meghna. Without any kind of end date. Without having to pretend.
Meghna’s mother frowned. “So, that’s it? You’re both just…dating?”
Meghna laughed, and Karthik couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess we are.”
“Well, that went about as well as we could have hoped,” Karthik said.
Meghna snorted as she pulled out of her parents’ driveway. Everyone had accepted the end of their engagement rather quickly, though Meghna still hadn’t told her parents that the engagement had never been real to begin with. She wanted to tell them the truth. She wanted to be more honest with them about a lot of things. But she’d decided she would discuss it with them later. Privately.
Besides, once her mother had confirmed that Meghna and Karthik were happy and were still in a relationship and that nothing seriously bad had caused them to take a step back, she’d dropped it and reissued her challenge to Karthik’s mom. In record time, she’d wrangled up a pack of cards and started dealing. And before they knew it, Meghna and Karthik had been roped into their mothers’ high-stakes game of twenty-eight.
“This isnothow you deal,” Meghna’s mother had said petulantly, after losing a hand. “There are rules for this. Everyone knows that you have to deal—”
“One at time,” Karthik had said.
“All at once,” Meghna had said at the same time.
They’d turned and looked at each other with surprise.
“No, but you have to deal them all at once,” Meghna had said. “Otherwise no one gets dealt a good hand.”
“Exactly,” Karthik had said. “Some people end up with hands that are too good. They need to be distributed evenly so it’s fair.”
“But where’s the fun in dealing them fairly? You never get half-courts if you deal like that.”
Karthik had been about to launch into his next point when they’d been interrupted by the sound of all three parents laughing. They’d finally agreed on a compromise, alternating the dealing style each round, but the fights between the two of them had only gotten more and more ridiculous until the mothers had practically shooed them out the door. They’d insisted they had a real score to settle, and they didn’t want Meghna and Karthik interfering.
“How long do you think they’re going to keep playing?” Meghna asked, grinning over at Karthik in the passenger seat.
“No idea. But I’m glad we got out of there. I don’t want to see what happens when your mom inevitably loses.”
