Samir: Seriously. I’ll stay in India for good then.
Meghna laughed.
Meghna: Right. Like we don’t have any family members there who’d love to make you a match.
Samir: Well, I’ll just tell those Yente-wannabes that I’m not interested. No need to find me a find. Catch me a catch.
Meghna grinned at the reference toFiddler on the Roof. Samir may not have willingly shared her love of musicals, but he’d watched all the classics with her when they were children. She sent him a laughing face emoji and told him she’d see him in an hour.
The reminder of the time sent a nervous flutter through her stomach. Karthik would be here soon. He’d been incredibly gracious about coming down to Dallas to attend Ankita’s engagement party. He said he’d been about to ask her to attend an event with him in New York, so it felt like an even trade.
Meghna pursed her lips in the mirror, then grabbed a tissue, wiping her lipstick off. It didn’t seem like the right color anymore. She searched for a more muted shade of pink and had just put it on when the doorbell rang.
She took a deep breath and shook out her shoulders before opening the door.
Karthik stood outside, his form flickering in shadows until she turned the pale porch light on. He blinked against the sudden brightness, and her mouth went dry. He was all crisp lines and sharp edges contained in the best-fitted suit she’d ever seen. Sophisticated. Sleek. Slate gray. It was like he’d stepped off a Tom Ford runway and walked straight to her apartment.
“Hey,” he said, his forehead creased in obvious confusion.
Warmth crept across Meghna’s cheeks. She’d been staring. Like she’d never seen a handsome man before. Like she’d never seena manbefore. She mentally slapped herself across the face and joined him outside.
She could handle this. She could be normal. She…she still hadn’t responded to his greeting. She lifted her arms to give him ahug, but dropped them immediately, reaching out to shake his hand instead.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, pumping his hand up and down. Firmly. Then she broke the contact to scan the street in front of them. She’d called a car a few minutes ago and the app said it was almost there.
“Thanks for agreeing to come to New York next week,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “I know it’s more than we initially talked about.”
“No worries. Neither of us planned for these things to happen.”
His lips twitched, the smallest beginnings of a wry smile. “Maybe we should have come up with some real terms after all.”
Her instinct was to return the smile, but for some reason she couldn’t get the muscles in her face to cooperate. “Maybe.”
They turned back toward the street, the warm night air thick and heavy between them. She snuck a look at him out of the corner of her eye, but any trace of his earlier smile had disappeared. His mouth was firm. Hard. Set in a stern, straight line.
“Let’s talk about some terms, then,” she said.
He nodded and put his hands in his pockets, slowly returning his gaze to her. “Okay.”
She ran through the list of questions Ankita had asked her, trying to select the best one to start with, but when she opened her mouth, the question that came out was “Are we dating other people?”
Karthik started. “No,” he said. He paused, then continued. “I don’t think we need to complicate this more. And what if our families heard something about it? It just feels like too big of a risk.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Why?” he asked. “Do you want to? Are you dating someone?”
“No, no. I just wasn’t sure.”
He nodded thoughtfully, and they fell into a silence that felt more strained than companionable. The car arrived, and they climbed in. The backseat seemed smaller than usual, and Meghna held herself asstill as possible, not wanting to accidentally brush up against him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this uncomfortable around someone.
Karthik cleared his throat. “So, tell me about your friend. This is her party, right?”
Meghna breathed a sigh of relief. She seized onto the lifeline and immediately launched into a summary of her friendship with Ankita. They’d been friends since they were little, carpooling together every day to school and spending most of their summers at Meghna’s house, where they followed Samir around until he was forced to hang out with them. Samir pretended that he hated playing with them and insisted that he was only there because Mom forced him to be, but they all knew he was actually happy to be a part of their little trio.
“That’s great you were all so close,” Karthik said. “I’m an only child, but I always thought it would have been nice to have a sibling.”
“Nice? Sometimes. Samir and I fought constantly. We still do.”
