But it’s just…wrong. It’s so wrong.
The car pulls to a stop, and I leap out, barely remembering that I need to grab my bag from the trunk before I storm to the front door.
I rap my knuckles against the hard surface, but no one comes to greet me. Instead, I’m met with the loud creak and screech of the garage door opening around the corner. I rush in that direction, every cell within me thrumming with energy, with the need to confront him.
But that fire slowly dies as I draw closer. He’s facing away from me. His form is slightly shadowed in the dim light of the garage, but I can tell he’s bending over. He lets out a grunt as he grabs hold of something. A large pallet or crate of some kind.
I’m about to announce myself, but then the back of his shirt rises, exposing a strip of warm, tan skin. My mouth goes dry. Did he always have a lower back like that? With…with…ridges? Can human beings even form muscles like that there? How can that be possible?
“You painted the house?” I ask. The words rush out, as if my mind’s desperate for anything that will change the direction it was heading in just a second ago. “You painted all that red brick white? Why would you do that?”
He turns around immediately, whirling so fast that the pallet of bottled water wobbles in his arms. It tips to the side, almost falling, before he adjusts and catches it.
“Meena?” His voice is hoarse. His eyes are wide with shock. But I don’t bask in his surprise the way I thought I would. I don’t get to savor it, relish the moment. Because whatever shock he’s experiencing, my body seems to be echoing it. My heart is thumping, beating wildly. The sound of blood whooshes fast in my ears.
I didn’t properly prepare for this. Sure, I did my research and fine-tuned my negotiation strategy. But I didn’t prepare for the full force of him. I didn’t let myself imagine what it would be like to see him face-to-face.
It’s been years. And logically, I knew that, but I didn’t think about the toll those years would have had on him. In my mind he was preserved in amber. A relic. Static. Unchanging. But he’s aged.
He’s broader now. Still just as tall, but his shoulders seem to have expanded, his chest widened somehow. And his arms are slightly thicker too. They strain under the weight of the water he’s carrying, making his veins stand out in sharp relief. He looks good. The same eyes, the same nose, but his hair’s different. He’d always done that longer on the top, shorter on the sides thing when he was younger, but now it’s long all around. Dark, tousled waves that end at the tops of his ears.
I want to run my hands through it. I want to see if it’s just as soft as I remember. I want to feel it against my skin.
He blinks, his eyes slightly glazed, and I realize he’s been watching me back this whole time, his gaze traveling over me from head to toe.
I flush, thinking about how much I’ve changed over the years too.
I lift a hand to my hair before I realize it, and try to play it off by tucking a piece behind my ear. Does he notice the occasional strand of silver sparkling here and there? The sharp cheekbones that were once hidden beneath the fuller, rounder cheeks of my youth? Time has changed me, though it shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t care what he thinks. But it’s been six years. I’m not the girl he remembers. And for some reason, I care.
“Meena?” he asks again. His brows crease, new lines I’ve never seen before forming on his forehead. “What…what are you doing here?”
When I thought of this moment, I imagined doing something dramatic. Like pulling out the papers and waving them in the air. Telling him he needed to sign on the bottom line or he’d be sorry.
But all of that sounds silly now.
His gaze flickers, flitting down toward my left hand. I’m tempted to curl my fingers into a fist, but I leave them loose, relaxed at my side. As if I don’t know what he’s doing. What he’s checking for.
Shake and I are nothing if not practical. We may not have been ready for that step, but we’d already talked about rings. We’d set up email alerts for sales at a few jewelry stores, but then we’d broken up, so there’s no engagement ring for Nikhil to stare at. Nothing for him to ask questions about. Nothing for me to explain.
“Nikhil,” I say, and his eyes shoot back to mine. “It’s been weeks and you haven’t responded to anything. None of my emails. None of my calls.”
He scoffs. “Right.Youremails.Yourcalls.” His words are harsh. Mocking.
“My lawyer’s emails,” I amend. He rolls his eyes, and I immediately regret my attempt at a conciliatory tone. “You know what I mean.”
“I don’t,” he shoots back. “I never do.”
Oh. So, it’s going to be like this. I square my shoulders. “You need to sign them, Nikhil. We need to just get this over with.”
He shifts his weight to one side, leaning his body against the garage wall.
“What’s the rush?” he asks.
I resist the urge to cringe. I’m usually smoother than this. Subtler. I know how to play it cool. To pretend like I don’t need anything. All my negotiating tactics, all my skills seem to have vanished. I’ve let him glimpse the one card I was supposed to hold on to.
It’s like being back around Nikhil has reduced me to the age ofthe person I was back then. Emotional and volatile and so…young.
I change the topic. “Why did you paint over the brick?”
