"He does." Tanisha's voice was steady now, certain in the way she was always certain when she was sure of something. "I've known him my whole life. I've never seen him the way he is with you. He looks at you like—" She paused. "Like you're the only thing in the room that makes sense."
"He's never—"
"He won't say it yet," Tanisha interrupted. "He's terrible at it. Words are hard for him when they matter. But he shows it, Nimisha. He's been showing it for months and you've both been too scared to acknowledge it."
Nimisha looked at her hands.
Later - Library, 3:15 PM
Kritika found her there, which wasn't unusual. The library had become something of a Switzerland between various family factions—neutral territory where people went when they needed to exist without performing.
"Can I sit?" Kritika asked.
Nimisha gestured to the chair across from her.
Kritika sat with the careful posture of someone who had rehearsed this.
"I owe you an apology," she said. "Several, actually."
"You don't—"
"I do." Kritika's voice was firm. "I made your life harder than it needed to be. I didn't mean to, or—" She paused, honest with herself. "I didn't mean to consciously. But I knew what I was doing when I brought his favorite foods. When I usedthe nickname in front of you. When I accepted Saroj aunty's favoritism without pushing back on it." She met Nimisha's eyes. "I was in love with him, and I used every advantage I had, and I made sure you felt it. That was cruel."
Nimisha studied the woman across from her.
Kritika Mehra—who had loved Samarth since they were children, who had waited and hoped and watched him marry someone else, who had then done the very human thing of making that someone else feel small.
"Yes," Nimisha said. "It was."
Kritika blinked, apparently expecting a more diplomatic response.
"But I also understand it," Nimisha added. "I'm not particularly interested in being gracious about it, but I understand it."
Kritika laughed—surprised, short. "You're very direct."
"I've been accommodating for a year. I'm trying something different."
"You're good for him," Kritika said, shifting to what she'd clearly come to say. "Samarth. He's different now."
"He's adjusting."
"No." Kritika shook her head. "Don't do that. Don't minimize it." She looked at her hands. "I've loved him for most of my life. I know him—really know him. The way he's been these past weeks? I've never seen it. Not with anyone." She looked up. "He loves you."
The words landed in Nimisha's chest with the force of something she'd been trying not to want.
"He's never—"
"I know he hasn't said it." Kritika's voice was steady. "He shows it, though. Every day, in every way he knows how. And he knows he hasn't said it, and it's eating him alive, because he's never had to say it before and he doesn't know if he's allowed to." She paused. "He needs you to give him room to say it. He's working up to it."
Nimisha looked at the window, at the garden beyond it.
"And you?" she asked quietly.
"I'm going to be alright," Kritika said, with the firmness of someone who had decided this and meant to hold to it. "I loved a version of him that was never quite real. The real version—" She smiled, small and slightly sad. "—turns out to love someone else. That's not a tragedy. It's just life."
They sat together in the quiet library.
Outside, the Mumbai afternoon went about its business. Inside, something shifted between the two women who had been rivals without quite meaning to be.
