“Hi.”
I settle against him, enjoying the way my head fits in the curve of his neck, the way his hand plays with the ends of my hair.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “After…Do you want to talk about it or—”
That same alarm blares, and I mentally slam the snooze button again. “Not right now,” I say. “Soon, but not right now.”
I look down at the book still on his lap, watching as he turns the page.
“Why business?” I ask.
His shoulders tense. He stays quiet for a little while, his jaw so stiff I think he’s clenching his teeth. But then he forces out an exhale, and I can feel the muscles in his body relax.
“I’m studying,” he says. “I went back to school to study business.”
“Oh.” From the shiny, slick cover I’d thought this was a textbook. Maybe I should have assumed this, but from the way Nikhil had always talked about school…I never thought he’d go back. He’d made it sound like school wasn’t for him. That he preferred working with his hands, being active, instead of sitting in one place reading a book. He’d never said it in a mean way. Like he was judging me for studying all the time. He just made it clear that he couldn’t imagine ever doing the same.
“You’re finishing your degree?”
“No. Well, kind of. I’m getting my associate’s. Not a bachelor’s. I’m just at a community college. Not a four-year or anything.”
“Why?” I ask, still a little confused.
His shoulder tenses again, and I pull away to look at him.
“There’s nothing wrong with going to community college,” he says, the words flat.
I blink. “No. Of course there’s not. That’s not what I meant. You just…you never seemed that interested in going back to school before so—”
He’s quiet for a beat. “I didn’t choose to drop out, Meena. I had to. I had to leave when I learned…” He traces the corner of his textbook, his thumbnail flicking the edge of the page. “I only got into college because of my mother. Because she worked there. I should have figured it out sooner. I mean, I barely made it through high school. I came so close to failing senior year.” He swallows roughly. “I’m not like you. I’m not…School doesn’t come easily to me. It never has.
“I was always behind,” he continues. “Moving from place toplace, uprooting every school year, it took a toll on me. I couldn’t keep up, and my mom didn’t get it. She’d sit with me at night, trying to help me with homework, but nothing clicked for me.” He looks down, not meeting my gaze. “Some of my classmates gave me a hard time about it. Joking that I should be doing better. That I must be the only Indian kid who struggled with math. Or that it was because I was only half, that I must have gotten too many of my father’s genes and not enough of my mom’s.”
Anger streaks up my spine, and my hands curl into fists. “They were wrong,” I tell Nikhil. “On top of being horrible and racist, they were just plain wrong. You know that, right?”
Finally, he looks at me, and the doubt, the insecurity on his face, makes me want to find every one of those bullies and tell them Nikhil is ten times the man they’ll ever be. It makes me want to avenge him. It makes me want to fight.
“You’re smart, Nikhil. And it has nothing to do with school.”
He flinches, but I push forward, forcing him to hear me. “You know one of the things I first noticed about you, the thing that made you different from so many of the people I was surrounded by in law school, was that you’re comfortable not knowing something. Whenever we’d talk about things, you actually listened, and if there was something you didn’t know, you’d admit it. You’d learn more about it, and wait until then to form a conclusion and that…that’s such a gift. It’s astrength.
“And the way you see things. The connections your mind draws. The way you can look at slabs of wood and see the future, see the bookshelf or coffee table they can be. The way you look at a room and see exactly how to make it come alive, to bring in the right pieces and change it from a space with four walls into a home. The way you find a run-down property and can picture it as this flourishing inn. The way you look at me and see…”
I break off. I hadn’t meant to say that, but sometimes…it had felt like Nikhil was the only one who’d seen past the front I’d presented to the world. Who’d seen past the stressed-out, terrified girl who was afraid of failing and seen…someone else. The kind of person I hoped I was underneath. The kind of person I wanted to be.
I turn away, but his hand comes up to cup my face. His eyes are bright, and they draw me in, just like they always have.
“I see the woman who listened to me like everything I had to say mattered. Like what I thought meant something. Like it was valuable. This woman whose mind was…is…ridiculous.” He laughs lightly. “Brilliant and sharp. Driven and ambitious and sure of the future in a way I never have been. And the idea that she thoughtmywords were important, that she thoughtIcould be a part of that future, that she could feel just as sure about me…” His thumb strokes against my cheek, and I close my eyes.
I’ve missed this. I’ve missed being with someone who sees me this way, whoknowsme this way.
But thefuture. The alarm from before blares, loud and brash.
All the things he’s talking about, the person he saw, the way hefelt,that was all back then.
I pull away from him, catching how his face falls before his guard goes back up.
“I think it’s great you’ve gone back to school,” I tell him.
