“Promise me you will laugh every day. Fight every day. Do you know how beautiful you look when you’re angry? Promise me you’ll learn to cuss, learn to love again. Live again. Promise me you won’t give up on each other.”

Simi Desai is thirty years old and her husband is dying of cancer. He has two last wishes in his final months: first, that she’ll have his baby so that a piece of him lives on, and second, that she’ll reconcile with her old flame, who just happens to be their mutual best friend. And so over the course of their last summer together, Simi’s husband plans a series of big and small adventures for this unlikely trio, designed to help them say goodbye to each other and prove to Simi that it’s okay to move on without him—and even find love again.

Beautiful and poignant, Falguni Kothari’s My Last Love Story, will pull your heartstrings as only unforgettable love stories can.

FALGUNI KOTHARI is the author of unconventional love stories and kick-ass fantasy tales. Her novels are all flavored by her South Asian heritage and expat experiences. An award-winning Indian classical, Latin and ballroom dancer, she currently spikes her endorphin levels with Zumba.

She resides in New York with her family and pooch. She can be found online at www.falgunikothari.com and you can get the latest updates at bit.ly/FKNewsletter.

My Last Love Story

Falguni Kothari

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Falguni Kothari 2016

Falguni Kothari asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9781474083621

Praise for Falguni Kothari’s

My Last Love Story

“A profound and deeply emotional twist on the classic love triangle, My Last Love Story is a provocative tale of lifelong friendship tested by fate. Poignant and satisfying, My Last Love Story is ultimately the type of celebration of love and life that reminds us why we read in the first place.”

—Jamie Brenner, USA TODAY bestselling author of The Forever Summer

“At once heartbreaking, delightful, and completely unexpected. A must-read!”

—Sonali Dev, award-winning author of The Bollywood Bride

“[A] love triangle that defies all expectations and crosses all boundaries...and

moved me to tears.”

—Julia Tagan, author of A Question of Class

“Kothari transcends the expected.... A deeply affecting story about what it means to love.”

—Kathryn Craft, award-winning author of The Far End of Happy

“Equally heartwarming and heartbreaking, My Last Love Story takes you on a complex emotional ride that will have you examining the heart’s capacity for love long after the book is done.”

—Farrah Rochon, USA TODAY bestselling author

“Ms. Kothari’s writing is beautiful, lyrical and full of surprises.”

—K.M. Jackson, author of Romancing the Fashionista

“Smart and moving.... Falguni Kothari has written a tender novel with a passionate heart.”

—Soniah Kamal, award-winning author of An Isolated Incident

“[G]et ready to fall in love.”

—Megan Hart, New York Times bestselling author

“Darkly poignant, beautifully written, and heartbreaking.... As emotionally raw and demanding as the characters that inhabit its pages.”

—Nalini Singh, New York Times bestselling author

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Life & Lemons...

Acknowledgments

Questions for Discussion

1

Love is a dish best served naked.

As a child, those oft-quoted words of my father would have me rolling my eyes and pretending to gag at what I’d imagined was my parents’ precursor to a certain physical act.

At thirty, I’d long ago realized that getting naked wasn’t a euphemism for sex.

Neither was love.

It wasn’t my father invoking the expression just now, though, but my husband. Nirvaan considered himself a great wit, a New Age philosopher. On the best of days, he was, much like Daddy had been. On the worst days, he was my tormentor.

“What do you think, Dr. Archer? Interesting enough tagline for a vlog? What about Baby in a Petri Dish?” Nirvaan persisted in eliciting a response from the doctor and/or me for his ad hoc comedy, which we’d been ignoring for several minutes now.

I wanted to glare at him, beg him to shut up, or demand that he wait in the doctor’s office like he should’ve done, like a normal husband would have. Khodai knows why he’d insisted on holding my hand through this preliminary checkup. Nothing of import would happen today—if it did at all. But I couldn’t perform any such communication, not with my eyes and mouth squeezed shut while I suffered through a series of uncomfortable twinges along my nether regions.

I lay flat on my back on a spongy clinic bed sheeted with paper already wrinkled and half-torn. Legs drawn up and spread apart, my heels dug punishingly into cold iron stirrups to allow the fertility specialist’s clever fingers to reach inside my womb and check if everything was A-OK in there. We’d already funneled through the Pap test and stomach and chest checks. Like them, this test, too, was going swell if Dr. Archer’s approving happy hums were anything to go by.

“Excellent, Mrs. Desai. All parts are where they should be,” he joked only as a doctor could.

I shuddered out the breath I’d been holding, as the feeling of being stretched left my body. Nirvaan squeezed my hand and planted a smacking kiss on my forehead. I opened my eyes and focused on his beaming upside-down ones. His eyelids barely grew lashes anymore—I’d counted twenty-seven in total just last week—the effect of years of chemotherapy. For a second, my gaze blurred, my heart wavered and I almost cried.

What are we doing, Nirvaan? What in Khodai’s name were we starting?

Nirvaan stroked my hair, his pitch-black pupils steady and knowing and oh so stubborn. Then his face rose to the stark white ceiling, and all I saw was the green-and-blue mesh of his gingham shirt—the overlapping threads, the crisscross weaves, a pattern without end.

Life is what you make it, child. It was another one of my father’s truisms.

Swallowing the questions on my tongue, I refocused my mind on why we were here. I’d promised Nirvaan we’d try for a baby if he agreed to another round of cancer-blasting treatments. I’d bartered for a few more months of my husband’s life. He’d bartered for immortality through our child.

Dr. Archer rolled away from between my legs to the computer station. He snapped off and disposed of the latex gloves. Then he began typing notes in near-soundless staccato clicks. Though the examination was finished, I knew better than to sit up until he gave me leave. I’d been here before, done this before—two years ago when Nirvaan had been in remission and the idea of having a baby had wormed its way into his head. We’d tried the most basic procedures then, whatever our medical coverage had allowed. We hadn’t been desperate yet to use our own money, which we shouldn’t be touching even now. We needed every penny we had for emergencies and alternative treatments, but try budging my husband once he’d made up his mind.

“I’m a businessman, Simi. I only pour money into a sure thing,” he rebuked when I argued.

I brought my legs together, manufacturing what poise and modesty I could, and pulled the sea green hospital gown bunched beneath my bottom across my half-naked body. I refused to look at my husband as I wriggled about, positive his expression would be pregnant with irony, if not fully smirking. And kudos to him for not jumping in to help me like I would have.

The tables had turned on us today. For the past five years, it’d been Nirvaan thrashing about on hospital beds, trying in vain to find relief and comfort, modesty or release. Nirvaan had been poked, prodded, sliced and bled as he battled aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I’d been the stoic spectator, the supportive wife, the incompetent nurse, the ineffectual lover.

And now? What role would I play now?

As always, thinking about our life left me feeling even more naked than I was in the open-fronted robe. I turned my face to the wall, my eyes stinging, as fear and frustration bubbled to the surface. Flesh-toned posters of laughing babies, pregnant mothers and love-struck fathers hung from the bluish walls. Side by side were the more educative ones of human anatomy, vivisected and whole. The test-tube-like exam room of Monterey Bay Fertility Clinic was decorated in true California beach colors—sea-foam walls, sandy floors, pearl-pink curtains and furniture—bringing the outdoors in. If the decor was meant to be homey, it wasn’t having such an effect on me. This room, like this town and even this country, was not my natural habitat, and I felt out of my element in it.

I’d lived in California for seven years now, ever since my marriage, and I still didn’t think of it as home, not like Nirvaan did. Home for me was India. And no matter the dark memories it held, home would always be Surat.

“All done.” Dr. Archer pushed the computer trolley away and stood up. “You can get dressed, Mrs. Desai. Take your time. Use whatever supplies you need. We’ll wait for you in my office,” he said, smiling.

Finally, I can cover myself, I thought. Gooseflesh had erupted across my skin due to the near frigid clinic temperatures doctors tortured their patients with—like a patient didn’t have enough to suffer already. Medical facilities maintained cool indoor temperatures to deter inveterate germs from contaminating the premises and so its vast flotilla of equipment didn’t fry. I knew that. But knowing it didn’t inspire any warm feelings for the “throng of professional sadists with a god complex.” I quoted my husband there.

Nirvaan captured my attention with a pat on my head. “See you soon, baby,” he said, following the doctor out of the room.

I scooted off the bed as soon as the door shut behind them. My hair tumbled down my face and shoulders at my jerky movements. I smoothed it back with shaking hands. Long, wavy and a deep chestnut shade, my hair was my crowning glory, my one and only feature that was lush and arresting. Nirvaan loved my hair. I wasn’t to cut it or even braid it in his presence, and so it often got hopelessly knotted.

I shrugged off the clinic gown, balled it up and placed it on the bed. I wiped myself again and again with antiseptic wipes, baby wipes and paper towels until the tissues came away stain-free. I didn’t feel light-headed. I didn’t allow myself to freak. I concentrated on the flow of my breaths and the pounding of my heart until they both slowed to normal.

It was okay. I was not walking out with a gift-wrapped baby in tow. Not today. No reason to freak out.

I reached for my clothes and slipped on my underwear. They were beige with tiny white hearts on them—Victoria’s Secret lingerie Nirvaan had leered and whistled at this morning.

Such a silly man. Typical Nirvaan, I corrected, twisting my lips.

Even after dressing in red-wash jeans and a full-sleeved sweater, I shivered. My womb still felt invaded and odd. As I stepped into my red patent leather pumps, an unused petri dish sitting on the workstation countertop caught my eye.

The trigger for Nirvaan’s impromptu comedy, perhaps?

Despite major misgivings about the direction my life had taken, humor got the better of me, and I grinned.

Silly, silly Nirvaan. Baby in a petri dish, indeed.

* * *

One thing I’d come to love and respect about doctors was their ability to remain unruffled in the most bizarre circumstances.

A large mahogany work desk headlined the length of Dr. Archer’s office. I took my seat before it, my stomach twisting like Twizzlers. Nirvaan sat on my right, gregarious and talkative like always, as if all was right in his world, as if he had every right to reweave the very fabric of my existence forever and ever.

But there was an animation in him today that I hadn’t seen for some time now, and I let it wash over my qualms. If I overlooked the thinning hair, the tired curve of his spine and the melting muscles beneath his shirt, he almost looked like the man I’d married.

For better or worse, Simeen. I can’t say no to you.

He’d always been there for me. Always. No matter what I’d asked of him. Did he not deserve the same courtesy in return?

My husband caught me staring at his profile. He winked, grinning wolfishly, and my lips responded to his charm with a helpless smile.

Dr. Archer cleared his throat and began his spiel. He skimmed over our options—from the cost-effective natural fertilization via intrauterine insemination to the more expensive intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI. That method involved injecting a single sperm—Nirvaan’s—directly into my extracted egg in order to fertilize it. Dr. Archer explained how my eggs would be extracted and the zygote reintroduced into my womb for gestation.

I loved that he spoke directly to me. He addressed Nirvaan only sporadically. Childbearing was a woman’s prerogative, after all. Though, in my case, I’d hardly use the word prerogative. Coerced would be more apt.

My fingers hurt as I gripped the armrests of my chair. I wasn’t ready to be a mother. Not yet. Maybe I’d never be. The thought of being responsible for another person’s health and security scared me like nothing else. Nirvaan knew that—or he ought to know it.

I’d thought of children as waves crashing over a distant horizon. I’d discussed—or, no, we’d never discussed having a baby, Nirvaan and I. Not before we’d gotten married. Not after. Not until Nirvaan had been diagnosed with cancer, and the option of freezing his sperm before his first chemo had come up—a treatment that had left him irreversibly sterile.

I didn’t want to deny my husband his wish. But I did not want a baby. Not now. Not when our lives were in flux again.

“You have a good chunk of information to sort through.” Dr. Archer wound down at last. The walls in his office weren’t the calming colors of the Pacific Ocean. They were the no-nonsense white of his doctor’s coat. “Meanwhile, we’ll start monitoring your cycle. You need to come in for a detailed consult next week, Mrs. Desai. We’ll do blood work and a preliminary ultrasound. Narrow down the best route for you. Prescribe medications for maximum ovarian stimulation and so forth.” He glanced at his desktop monitor. “I have Monday afternoon and Thursday morning open. Or you can call my assistant for later dates.”

“Monday’s great,” replied Nirvaan while I pretended to scroll through my largely appointmentless phone calendar.

Monday was only three days away. I could be pregnant by the end of the month.

My husband would be dead this time next year.

My breath turned to stone in my lungs. The white walls of the doctor’s office shrank. I thought I’d finally scream.

“Call whenever you’re ready.” Dr. Archer’s words were kind. His pale blue eyes were kinder. “Call if you have questions or any doubts. Your youth really is in your favor, and it’s not infertility we’re dealing with in your situation but extenuating circumstances. Even though we have a limited amount of your husband’s sperm to work with, we have an excellent success rate, Mrs. Desai. Rest assured.”

Hysteria bubbled up in my throat. He thought I was worried that this wouldn’t work. How do I confess to him—to anyone—that I was petrified it would?

2

On the drive home, Nirvaan jabbered inside the car while the rain played a harmonica on the Jeep’s roof—fast, then slow, loud and then soft.

Since I commanded the steering wheel, I was exempt from input on the baby-making plans beyond a well-placed hum or an indistinct nod. Normally, it took about twenty minutes to get home from the clinic in Monterey, but the downpour hampered our speed today.

By home, I meant the beach house we’d rented for the year in Carmel-by-the-Sea. We’d moved in barely two weeks ago, and we were still feeling our way around the resort-town community. We weren’t complete strangers to the area. Being so close to San Jose, where we’d lived for the first two years of our marriage, both Carmel and Monterey had been our favorite spur-of-the-moment getaways. We’d often discussed buying beachfront property as an investment or retiring to a seaside town in our winter years—all this, of course, before the cancer had forced us to move to LA and in with Nirvaan’s parents. We were living our dream now, in a fashion, as part of Nirvaan’s Titanic Wish List—the list so dubbed because of the magnitude of its scope and theme.

The beach house was ideally located for our needs—twenty minutes from the fertility clinic and a scant five-minute drive from one of the best cancer hospices in the country. The Bay Area boasted a temperate climate throughout the year, getting neither super hot or insanely cold. With Carmel Beach as a backdrop, Nirvaan truly had chosen the perfect place to die.

“Why didn’t you make the appointment, Simi?”

I’d expected the question, yet I flinched when Nirvaan asked it.

“Your treatment starts next week. Let’s concentrate on one thing at a time, honey,” I replied, collecting my wits.

“You’re trying to wiggle out of our bargain.”

“No, I’m prioritizing the important stuff.” I kept my eyes peeled on the rain-slick California highway. If I looked at him, I’d melt or say something I’d regret.

“The IVF is important. You promised we’d try, Simi.” His words were matter-of-fact, but I heard the accusation hidden in their folds well enough.

“We will. We are.” My voice wobbled, and I struggled to moderate it. “Once the radia—”

“No.” He cut me off, reaching over to rub my thigh.

I hadn’t realized my body was clenched so tight.

“Both procedures together. Whatever we do, we do together, like always or not at all,” he said in a tone that would not countenance an argument.

I wanted to scream at him for being such a bully, but I couldn’t because I had promised, and I’d never broken a promise to him in my life. I might lie to him—had lied to him many times about many things. I wouldn’t deny manipulating him, but I’d never broken a promise.

When the parish church loomed up like a stone beacon on the right, I eased my foot off the accelerator and took the exit onto the local roads, driving around the church building. A backlit signpost stood, water smudged, on the front lawn. Every single day, the pastor—an austere-faced though jolly man—would put up a new adage for the world to pontificate on.

Today, it simply read, “Trust in God. He knows what He’s doing.”

My face tightened at the patently false advertisement. Khodai didn’t know what He was doing any more than Nirvaan and I did.

Trust in God? The God who’d inflicted cancer on a fun-loving young man? The God who’d orphaned children and would leave a wife as a widow? The impotent God who’d done nothing while my eighteenth birthday turned into my worst nightmare?

Thank you, but no. I could never trust God as His executive decisions had failed to impress me so far.

And Nirvaan wanted to produce another soul for Him to torture.

The rain began to pelt down in fat musical drops as I zigzagged through the streets, filling the obstinate silence inside the Jeep. I was glad for the sound. It allowed me a reprieve from all words, emblazoned or spoken or thought.

At the tip of a quiet long road with nowhere left to go, I eased the car over a pebbled driveway and parked as close to our slate-blue craftsman-style home as I could. Ahead of us, a strange black truck with monster tires blocked the front of the detached carriage house, the rear covered in blue tarpaulin.

Before I could utter a word, Nirvaan chortled, “He’s back,” in a bizarre falsetto.

“So I gathered. But what’s he brought back?”

Instead of answering the question, Nirvaan unbuckled his seat belt in one fluid motion, grabbed my face between his hands and smooched my lips, as if our recent tense moments had never happened.

It was typical of him. Nirvaan stubbornly refused to let bad moods win. I approved of the quirk with great gulps of gratitude, as one moody bitch per household was quite enough.

“Happy birthday to us, baby.” He grinned from ear to ear as our noses eskimo-kissed.

I squinted at my husband. Our birthdays weren’t for another three weeks. Mine fell on May 31, and Nirvaan’s was on June 1. I wondered what kind of present had gotten him even more excited than the visit to the fertility doctor.

Nirvaan spilled out of the Jeep before leaping up the three steps onto the thick wraparound deck where our longtime friend, the third Musketeer of our pack, Zayaan Mohammed Ali Khan, stood under the aegis of the front porch. He, too, grinned like the Cheshire cat high on cream.

I’d steeled my nerves before looking at him, but even then a gasping ache speared my heart. Zayaan was the living reminder of all that was wrong in my life, all Khodai had taken from me as part of His grand plan to keep me in line.

Astoundingly, Zayaan and Nirvaan shared their birthdays. The fact was the deciding factor in their friendship that had been founded one summer on the streets of Surat, the year they—we—turned fifteen. Same birthday, same street address, same damn-the-world temperaments, where could they—we—go wrong, really?

But we’d gone wrong. Like a roller coaster plunging off its tracks, our world had splintered apart one awful night, and I’d been left bleeding and alone, as always.

Stop wallowing in self-pity. Control yourself, and get out of the car.

Nirvaan gestured at the truck and said something. Zayaan nodded in reply, still grinning. He held a nonalcoholic beer in one hand, a hand towel in the other. His thick mop of poker-straight hair stood up in glossy spikes, like he’d vigorously rubbed it with the towel, while the rest of him was drenched from shoulders to sandaled feet. His cotton shirt was soaked through and plastered against his torso, delineating every muscle beneath it.

My throat went dry. I was a sucker for broad shoulders and washboard abs, and Zayaan’s were quite deliciously on display right now.

Cursing the paradox of emotions he always spawned inside me, I pulled the red hood of my raincoat over my head, as much to serve as blinkers for my wayward vision as to protect my hair from the rain. With a tight grip on my nerves and my purse and the tote bulging with a dozen medical files, I got out of the car and dashed up the wet whitewashed steps.

Nirvaan grabbed the towel from Zayaan to mop the splashes of water from his own face and arms. Not so long ago, those arms had been thicker than Zayaan’s, the shoulders broader, the bulk of Nirvaan’s body heavier and stunningly sculpted. I’d not lied when I compared Nirvaan to Michelangelo’s David during our monthlong honeymoon in Italy.

I dropped my burdens on a rickety porch bench. Then I removed my raincoat and hooked it over a rocking chair to dry. I wished that my anxiety could be stripped off as easily as the raincoat.

“Those had better not be the death traps I expressly forbade you to ride.” I flicked a telling glance at the truck.

Nirvaan might not care if he died today or a year from now, but I bloody well did.

“Damn it, Zai. You don’t have to give in to every harebrained idea he jots down on that stupid Titanic Wish List. He’s not supposed to drive a car even, much less ride a motorbike.” It felt good to blast someone even if he wasn’t the target of my anger or worry.

For a second, it seemed Zayaan would chuck me under the chin, like he used to when I shrieked. My voice had an unfortunate nasal quality to it and a tendency to become shrill when I got excited or upset. But the hand moving toward me changed direction and gripped the banister instead.

Zayaan did not touch me anymore, not if he could help it. Zayaan had stopped touching me the day I asked Nirvaan to marry me.

Shattered Dreams was the title of an oil painting I’d seen in an art gallery in Mumbai once. The artist had rendered a perfectly featured, golden-hued portrait of a person. It was androgynous in composition, as you couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman staring out of the canvas. What had struck me—the observer—the most about the painting was that the artist had worked in a tornado through the beautifully daubed face, as if one had birthed the other.

Zayaan’s face had been a tornado of shattered dreams when Nirvaan and I had told him of our engagement on Skype, more than seven years ago.

It should’ve brought me relief, his aversion to touch me even after all this time. Instead, his solicitude left me empty and cold and slightly afraid.

“They’re not what you think, Simi.” Languid dark eyes snared me in their net, wary but not without humor beneath a fringe of sooty thick lashes.

I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. Take control. “Really? Those aren’t motorbikes?”

For years, I’d zoomed around Surat in a yellow Vespa scooter, and I felt confident that the vague T-bar shape under the tarpaulin was a bike. Two massive bikes, in fact.

“Last week, I physically barred you from walking into a Harley-Davidson showroom, so you enlisted his help?” I groused at Nirvaan.

How things had changed. When had I turned into a party pooper? A dozen years ago, I would’ve hurdled over the guys and staked my claim on the biggest, baddest bike available. Now I couldn’t even address my deepest fears to myself, much less voice them to my husband.

Zayaan’s lips curved upward in a smile that still had the power to devastate me. He looked at Nirvaan, and the smile broadened, turned wicked. My breath soughed out in a huff.

“Not bikes. Jet Skis!” the guys hollered in unison, slapping high fives above my head.

“Fucking A, I still can’t believe we won them.” Nirvaan whacked the towel on the bench and stabbed a finger in the air, just shy of Zayaan’s chest. “You were right to stick to our price. Fucker, you’re always right. Luck of the fucking devil.” He grabbed the thick wooden banister with both hands, seemingly ready to leap over and verify the rightness of the purchase with his own eyes, rain be damned.

Zayaan stopped him with a casual press of his hand on Nirvaan’s shoulder, saving me the trouble of lecturing my husband on the inadvisability of getting soaked with his weak constitution or falling and breaking his bones by vaulting willy-nilly over banisters dewy with rain. I threw Zayaan a grateful smile, but he’d turned his attention elsewhere. As had Nirvaan.

The truck and its marvelous contents held both men utterly rapt. Then, with raucous laughter and an F-bomb-sprinkled explanation, they described the events leading up to this momentous occasion.

Apparently, my thrill-seeking husband and his idiot best friend had bid on the Jet Skis in an online auction. Zayaan had spent the morning fetching the prize—our birthday surprise—from San Francisco. I refrained from pointing out that I was the only one surprised here, and I wouldn’t quite use the word surprise for what was roiling in my nervous system.

After a point, the dialogue turned bilingual, as it often did with us. The guys’ absolute favorite Gujarati curse word, chodu, made its appearance, replacing fucker intermittently.

While Gujarati was our collective mother tongue, all three of us spoke it distinctly, apropos to our individual ethnic backgrounds. Nirvaan’s dialect was harsh and guttural, even diluted by his strong American accent. He was a bona fide Gujjubhai, a typical man from Gujarat. Mine, due to my Persian Zoroastrian ancestry, was the softer, fancier Parsi Gujarati. Zayaan’s was softer, too, idiomatic to his Khoja or Aga Khani Muslim roots and flavored by the accent he’d acquired from the dozen or so years of living in London.

Having known the guys for half of my life, I’d become immune to their rough talk even though I rarely blasphemed myself. My mother, Feroza Batliwala, had been a true lady and had been determined to raise one. So, while I’d failed in the etiquette department as a teenager, I tried hard to emulate my mother as much as I could now in honor of her memory.

When Nirvaan exclaimed, “To hell with the fucking weather. Let’s test the bikes right now,” I drew on every ounce of self-control I had and kept my mouth shut.

If I brought up his health, it would only make him mad and more determined to throw caution into the rain. I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t jump on a water bike and ride it to Hawaii just to prove fate wrong. I honestly didn’t know which scenario scared me more—Nirvaan trapped under a motorbike, bleeding to death on a highway; Nirvaan getting Jaws-attacked in the Pacific after flying off the Jet Ski; or Nirvaan catching deathly pneumonia right before his scheduled chemo-radiation.

I placed my hands on my hips and glared—first at my husband and then his cohort. Even in my heels, I had to crane my neck to look at them. Both men were taller than average. Nirvaan was over six feet tall, and Zayaan was just shy of six feet. I was a hobbit compared to them at five foot three and slim as a beanpole.

Our heights and widths hadn’t matched even when we’d first met, but in every other way, I’d been their equal. No, I’d been their boss because I was older—a full ten hours older than Zayaan and close to twenty hours older than Nirvaan. Hence, I was a cougar in my husband’s delightfully twisted mind. Anyway, I’d been a budding teenage girl with promising girl-powers, and they’d been hormone-driven idiots. Of course I’d led them down a merry path. I still would when I plucked up the courage.

“I claim dibs on one and want mine painted periwinkle pink. The two of you can share the other one,” I declared cleverly.

This way, I’d command my own ride, and Nirvaan would be chaperoned by default. The cherry on top? I did not come off as the world’s naggiest wife.

Two masculine faces crinkled with confusion. The looks poured dread into my belly.

“Please don’t say you bought three Jet Skis.” How much money did they blow?

Zayaan took my statement as a personal affront, but Nirvaan laughed outright.

“No stinting, remember? Of course we bought three. Baby, are we or aren’t we the Awesome Threesome?” So saying, Nirvaan grasped me by the waist and hauled me up in the air. He spun us around and around until I was sure we’d fall and break our necks, all the while singing, “Happy birthday to us,” like a demented Donald Duck.

“Put me down, you idiot,” I shrieked, swatting at his shoulders.

He didn’t simply set me down. He slid me down his body, kissing me all through my descent. I felt dizzy, unsteady from his kisses, from the spins, and I wrapped my arms around him until the world righted itself. His heart beat strong and steady under my cheek.

Thud, thud, thud, thud.

I closed my eyes and burrowed into his chest. I didn’t want to let go, not just yet. Not ever, I vowed, tightening my hold on my husband.

He moved then, not to disengage us, but his body went taut, as if he were reaching for something and—

Oh, crap. I realized too late what he intended and wasn’t nimble enough to pull away in time.

Just breathe, I told myself. It’s only Zai. You know him. It’s okay. You know him.

“You’re insane, chodu,” Zayaan muttered right before I became the sandwich filling between two hard, half-wet, male bodies.

I couldn’t help the shiver that coursed through me.

The Awesome Threesome.

A long time ago, we’d been that and more to each other, and in the coming year, we’d probably draw on that bond like we’d never done before. We needed to become a well-oiled machine again, working in tandem to fulfill the promises we’d made to Nirvaan, trying to live a normal life when our situation was anything but normal.

I, Simeen Desai—a plain-Jane rebel, the mad Parsi chick—was living in a ménage with two gorgeous men, the twin knights of my life.

I concentrated on that fiction. In my mind, I perpetuated the fantasy we’d once imagined for us because to think about the truth of our situation, about the inoperable metastatic tumor inside my husband’s brain, was anathema to me.

3

The late spring drizzle didn’t let up for the whole day, leaving the guys and me housebound.

Personally, I didn’t mind it so much. Trips to doctors’ offices often left me sore, sour and in frantic need of my comfort zone.

I changed into a simple top and a pair of knit shorts. Then, too restless to just sit around playing video games with the guys, I started on my chores. I did two loads of laundry and vacuumed every square inch of the house, preparing it for Nirvaan’s parents, who were set to visit over the upcoming Mother’s Day weekend.

The beach house had come fully furnished and comfortably so. The furniture, if not new or color-coordinated, was made of sturdy cedar wood and wicker that had withstood the water-heavy ocean air and deposits of inadvertently smuggled-in sand for decades. There was enough storage around the house that I didn’t need to worry about clutter when bombarded by our constant weekend guests, and the carriage house with its own bathroom was a bonus even if in disrepair. Zayaan wanted to quick-fix it up—spray-paint the walls, polish the furniture, or replace it with cheap new pieces—and move in there, so we might all have some breathing room. But Nirvaan wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted the three of us together at all times, space or no space. And what Nirvaan wanted, Nirvaan would get.

He’d say, “Jump.”

We’d ask, “How high?”

He was dying. We were not. It was that simple.

It wasn’t that space was an issue when it was just the three of us. The house was sufficiently large with an inviting open layout. The front door led directly into the living area, two bedrooms and a master bath fell to one side of it, and a third bedroom, a tiny den, and another bathroom crowded the other. None of the rooms had any doors on them, except the two bathrooms. Thick damask curtains acted as doors to the rooms, giving one a vague sense of privacy when drawn.

I could go for hours without bumping into Zayaan, if I wished. The house was that spacious. The thing was, I didn’t seem to want to. I was getting used to him again. And no matter how resistant I still was about our living arrangement, my devious husband had counted on just that. Nirvaan wished I’d overlook Zayaan’s inadvertent transgressions—meaning, I should look more kindly toward his religion and his infamous Pakistani family, including his obnoxious mother. I’d perpetuated those lies for a long time, and I would continue to flame them. It was better the guys thought of me as a paranoid bigot than suffer the truth.

The nonstop rain had triggered a drop in temperature, both outdoors and indoors, and one of the guys had thoughtfully built a fire in the living room.

My chores done, I decided to serve lunch in front of the cheery crackling fireplace. I’d put together a nutritious bhonu meal of egg biryani and a Greek yogurt-based vegetable raita—a simple dish but plentiful—keeping the guys’ bottomless stomachs in mind. It’d taken Nirvaan a long time to rebuild his appetite, reawaken his taste buds that cancer medications had destroyed, and I dreaded the coming months that would leach it from him again. I was determined to spoil him as much as possible until then.

I wasn’t a great cook. I wasn’t bad, either, and could manage simple dishes well enough. But given a choice, I’d gladly surrender the kitchen to a more seasoned power, one of the reasons I looked forward to my in-laws’ visits. No one indulged my husband’s notoriously Gujjubhai palate better than his mother. My mother-in-law was the undisputed queen of the Desai kitchen, and I, her quasi apprentice.

That reminds me...

“I should stock up on groceries before your mother arrives. If you guys have special requests, tell me now.” I paused, a forkful of biryani dripping with yogurt poised before my mouth. “Don’t make me or even yourselves run to the store twenty times for ingredients.”

I exaggerated, but the guys did have a tendency to spring culinary demands when least expected. Like last week, Nirvaan had had a craving for Indian-style Hakka noodles in the middle of the night, and no Hakka noodle packets had been in the pantry.

Nirvaan chewed on his food and my question, when, suddenly, his face twisted into a frown, as if he’d tasted something bad. Or rather, he’d seen something unpleasant—my bun. I’d bunched my hair into a topknot, so it wouldn’t get in the way of my chores.

I sighed, reached up and pulled the rubber band off, letting the weight of my crowning glory drop. “Happy?” I rubbed my scalp and fluffed my hair out.

Nirvaan had developed this hair fetish after his own had fallen off during his first chemo. I understood his obsession, sympathized with his apprehensions, but sometimes, he took things a bit too far—and not just with my hair.

“You know what I like, baby. I’ll leave the satiation of my cravings in your skilled hands,” he said, giving me a syrupy smile.

I rolled my eyes at the not-even-clever double entendre. I could’ve pointed out that we were discussing the satiation of his cravings through his mother’s hands, but I thought better of it. The comment would no doubt trigger rebuttals, and I didn’t want the conversation to slide into the gutter.

“And you?” I darted a look at Zayaan, or more specifically at the fringe of hair flopping over his eyes. I’d worked out a system to deal with him. I would not get too close, and I’d stick to minimum eye contact.

“Everything Mummy cooks is delicious. Just make sure there’s enough left over to last until her next visit.” He smacked his lips together, clearly anticipating the forthcoming delicacies.

“Not that we don’t appreciate your cooking, baby. The biryani is orgasmic. No, seriously, I love it,” added Nirvaan.

The patently fake, obsequious tone made me snort. I was proud of my strengths, and I’d learned to live with my weaknesses. Cooking was neither. I just didn’t care about cooking enough to take offense that I wasn’t a master chef in people’s eyes.

“We can drop you at the market on our way to the marina,” offered Zayaan, briefly smiling at me before jerking his chin at Nirvaan. “We should get the Jet Skis checked out—serviced, gassed up and whatever else. Daddy will want a ride first thing tomorrow.”

“You’re right,” groaned Nirvaan. “Damn it. He’ll hog one all weekend. Thank God Nisha’s not coming, or between Aarav and her brats, we’d never get a turn.”

He was joking, of course. Nirvaan loved his sister, got along famously with his brother-in-law, and doted on his niece and nephew, who adored their Nimo in turn.

For reasons slightly more serious than the sharing of Jet Skis, I, too, was glad my sister-in-law had postponed her visit. We’d hosted Nisha and her family last weekend, and we would see them at our birthday celebration at Nirvaan’s parents’ house in LA at the end of the month. So, it wasn’t a huge tragedy to miss bonding this once.

I had no issues with Nisha, as such, but she’d started behaving a bit funny with me over the past few months, and I didn’t know what to make of it. She was probably worried about Nirvaan, I’d concluded, and unable to express her feelings about the tumor and its ramifications. It might explain her stiff attitude toward me. It was difficult to find the right words of support and solace in our kind of situation, and Nisha and I had never been chums to begin with.

In truth, I’d never even tried to get friendly with her—or anyone else since my fifteenth birthday. I’d been so blinded by the guys, so wholly satisfied by our friendship and what it’d brought to my life, that I hadn’t wanted any other friends. And after...after that night, I’d been too afraid to step out into the world. So, what would I have done with making friends, anyway?

Nisha and I had become passably friendly only after my marriage. But then, we’d had to, hadn’t we, for Nirvaan’s sake?

“Stop whining, chodu. I should be whining.” Zayaan flicked an uneaten clove at Nirvaan.

The spice bounced off my husband’s shoulder and landed on a white seashell embossed on the shrimp-colored fabric of the sofa. He pinched it up and popped it into his mouth. Nirvaan could eat anything remotely edible.

“You’ll get out of playing golf by faking fatigue or the bubonic plague, and I’ll be stuck on the greens with Daddy for hours or days. Fuck, I hate golf. It’s such a tedious game.” Shaking his head, Zayaan ambled into the open-style kitchen and dumped his empty plate and bowl in the sink. He twisted the tap on, running water over both.

It spoke volumes to just how entrenched Zayaan was in the Desai household that he addressed my in-laws as Mummy and Daddy. Even I didn’t do that. I couldn’t. Mummy and Daddy were honorifics reserved for my own parents alone even though I considered Nirvaan’s in the same light. I’d addressed my in-laws as Kiran Auntie and Kamlesh Uncle since I was fifteen, and I continued to do so after marriage. Neither my in-laws nor Nirvaan had ever questioned me on it even though plenty of our relatives had. I’d usually smile and shrug in answer to such nosiness.

The thing was, as a Parsi daughter-in-law, I could get away with a lot of things in the Desais’ predominantly Hindu household that another woman of similar faith would not have. Especially as we Parsis were known for our outspoken, eccentric attitudes. My own family hailed Freddie Mercury of Queen fame as a hero—a nonconformist outspoken Parsi, if there ever was one—and his hit song “I Want to Break Free” was the family motto. I sat on the fence regarding the hero worship even though I did love his music.

I cleared the remnants of our lunch onto a tray and took it into the kitchen, humming the catchy beat of Freddie’s song under my breath. Nirvaan brought in the empty beer bottles and soda cans, tossing them into the recycling bin. From the fridge, he drew a tall glass of the mixed berry smoothie I’d whipped up for him earlier and glugged a quarter of it down along with his provision of meds. There were a few more pills in the mix than there’d been last month, as his medications were an ever-changing cocktail. I looked for signs of discomfort or pain on his face and relaxed when none showed. His head would hurt when he overdid things, and we’d already had an exciting day so far. Maybe I’d persuade him to take a nap before we ran our errands.

Zayaan brushed past Nirvaan to the squat new coffee machine by the fridge and programmed in a double espresso, his after-lunch special. “You sure you want them going back on Monday?” He looked askance at Nirvaan as the machine chugged out black-brown liquid in a swallow-sized cup. “They’ll want to be here, Mummy especially, during the radiosurgery.”

I stiffened and then quickly spun around to face the sink to hide my panic. The antiquated kitchen had no room for a dishwasher, so I soaped up a sponge and started washing the dishes by hand. I was furious with myself for reacting so badly, so typically. And I’d thought Nisha needed lessons on how to behave around Nirvaan. Ha.

“Nah. They’re doing enough, man—driving up and down on weekends, Dad taking on my share of the business acrobatics—and...you know, Ba hasn’t been keeping well, either. He needs to take care of his mother, too. She’s getting old. Besides, the procedure won’t even take half a day. No hospital stay and no side effects. Not a biggie at all.” Nirvaan’s words were all but muffled under the thundering beats of “I Want to Break Free” spooling around and around in my head.

What kind of a wife fears taking care of her sick husband? What kind of a person quakes to hold an ailing man’s hand?

I could handle death—the finality of it, the suddenness of it. I’d lost my parents when I was fourteen, and while it had changed me forever, it hadn’t broken me. I could face death. What I couldn’t face was sickness. What I couldn’t bear was the corrosive odors of a hospital and the utter helplessness one experienced in the face of trauma. That was why Nirvaan and I had moved in with his parents when the cancer first tainted our lives. It was the reason Zayaan lived with us now.

I was a useless spouse.

* * *

If I was a poor example of a wife, Nirvaan was the epitome of an exceptional husband.

He forgave all my faults and loved me anyway. He didn’t expect anything from me I wouldn’t willingly give—or he hadn’t until the baby. That he had my heart and my devotion was no secret. He’d had it since we were fifteen. He didn’t try to change me, not in any way. Even when it had become clear he was my second choice, in love and in marriage, he had not faltered. Neither had he begrudged Zayaan’s place in my life. In fact, Nirvaan had always encouraged the unconventionality of my desires. Later, when he could’ve walked away for all those reasons, he’d stayed beside me and become the Band-Aid for my wounded soul.

I’ll tell you one thing for sure. It rocked to have Nirvaan for a husband.

Groceries, Jet Skis and a couple of other errands later, the guys and I made a night of it in town. By unanimous agreement and an available table, we drove to Hara Kiri, a Japanese steak house known for its gourmet teriyaki and teppanyaki menu. We parked the truck in a supervised lot down the street from the restaurant to ensure the Jet Skis would be safe.

It was still raining. Shallow puddles had formed in places where the earth was dented. The guys, as usual, were oblivious to the vagaries of weather, content with the deficient protection their unzipped hooded coats provided.

I was more circumspect. I cinched my raincoat about me and opened an umbrella large enough for a homeless man to use as a shelter. Without making a fuss, I hurried after Nirvaan and brought him under the red canopy and out of the rain. He shot me an amused grin and curled an arm around my waist, pulling me flush against his body, as we plodded forward.

Lately, life seemed to amuse him a lot. I guessed when one was about to lose his life, he had to choose whether to laugh or cry about it. I supposed the same could be said for anyone not about to lose his life, too. I recalled the Elbert Hubbard quote Nirvaan had printed out and stuck on the fridge at his parents’ house some five-odd years ago.

“Don’t take life too seriously. You won’t get out of it alive.”

Inside the restaurant, Nirvaan headed straight for the restroom while I tried to remove my coat, one-handed, while juggling my handbag and the dripping umbrella in the other. There were days when Nirvaan would experience moderate to severe incontinence due to a change in his medications or a reaction to some food. I hoped it wasn’t bad. Maybe Hara Kiri hadn’t been such a great idea...

“Here, give me those,” Zayaan said, tugging my bag and umbrella out of my hand.

Unencumbered, I shrugged off my raincoat, and he took it, too, handing my purse back to me before heading to the coat check. After the exchange, we didn’t speak or even look at each other as we waited for Nirvaan.

Sometimes, it saddened me that it’d come to this between us. This man was my soul mate, and through no fault of his, I couldn’t stand to be near him now. I found no humor in our situation, no matter what Hubbard had quoted.

“Are you okay?” I asked when my husband rejoined us. “Would you rather go home for dinner? Or somewhere less exotic?”

Nirvaan shook his head, saying he only had to pee and was fine, so we followed the sleekly dressed half-Asian hostess to the hibachi grill in the middle of the restaurant. The space was packed, every seat taken, every table laden with food and sake. I was glad I’d had the foresight to make a reservation through the restaurant’s mobile app. The hostess took our drink orders once we’d settled in our seats and sauntered off to fulfill them.

“Pink Shirt and Fake Tits checking you out, chodu,” said Nirvaan through the corner of his mouth. He had the menu open before him but clearly wasn’t interested in selecting his dinner from the listed offerings, busy as he was with scanning other delights. “Baby, scoot hither.” He conspiratorially leaned close. “Give those two lovely ladies a chance to corrupt our friend here. He deserves a reward for all his hard work today.”

I followed my husband’s line of vision to the women sitting on the opposite side of the massive grill. In the expanse between us, a quartet of Asian chefs danced about, flaming up masterpieces in the woks on the grills. Pungent garlicky aromas wafted up, making my mouth water and my stomach growl. Through the steam, I saw the women were indeed looking our way. A sideway squint showed Zayaan returning the favor with his signature mystery-man look—hooded eyes, calm but cocky expression, a hint of a leer curling his lips.

A flame of jealousy ignited in my belly. I wrenched my eyes away and looked down at the menu in my hands.

I didn’t understand myself at all. I loved my husband. We were happy together. I didn’t want Zayaan anymore—not in any capacity, other than as a good friend. I had pushed him away, locked up all memories of him for twelve years. I’d been very successful. But ever since our forced proximity, it had become impossible to maintain any sort of equanimity.

I didn’t want those women staring at my guys—both my guys. I wanted to stake my claim on them in front of the whole world.

I could brand Nirvaan, claim his mouth with lips and tongue, and there would be no mistaking my rights. Then I could lean into Zayaan and run my hand down the pearly-white buttons on his shirt to his heart. A kiss here, a touch there. I wondered if the women would take my actions as a warning or an invitation.

Here was the thing about places like Carmel-by-the-Sea where half of the populace was of an artsy temperament and the other half was mega rich—no one cared about ménage à trois or even ménage à twenty. In such places, kinky was normal.

Not that the guys and I had ever been kinky outside of our childish fantasies. We weren’t a sexual ménage. Had never been, would never be.

But our audience didn’t know that, did they?

I wasn’t drunk, truly. My sake bomb had only just been placed in front of me, so I couldn’t blame my insane cogitations on its consumption—not that I ever blamed alcohol for anything. I preferred to take responsibility for my own thoughts and fancies.

I didn’t know these women, but I did know how my guys would react if I actually gave in to my wicked desire. Nirvaan would guffaw if I made a spectacle of us. Probably egg me on to add a tabletop belly dance to the action. But Zayaan would bristle like an angry porcupine. He used to dislike public displays of anything. I didn’t think he’d changed all that much.

Anyway, I decided not to test the theory.

“Do stop staring, Zai. They might think you’re available.” I raised an eyebrow. “Unless you want them to think you are? But then whatever will Marjaneh think of Nirvaan and me? Bad enough that we stole you away from her charms for a whole year. That we couldn’t even protect her man from the big, bad California Barbies would be unforgivable. She’d never let you off her leash again.”

Marjaneh Shahrokhi was Zayaan’s girlfriend of two years and colleague of five. According to Zayaan’s mother, the couple was a hairbreadth away from getting engaged. Marjaneh was smart, pretty, moderately religious and sensible—the perfect woman for Zayaan. We’d met her on our last trip to London. I’d hated her on sight.

“What’s put your nose out of joint tonight?” remarked Zayaan, calling me out on the Mean Girls act.

It shut me up, as intended. I wrinkled my rather large Parsi nose with the inexplicable bump in the middle. The thing was an added insult on my plain-Jane face. I had a lovely peaches-and-cream complexion, courtesy of my mother, but no glamorous features to speak of, nothing to inspire a Leonardo to paint me as Mona Lisa.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. Both Zayaan and Nirvaan, during our hormone-crazed teenage years, had composed love sonnets in my honor. Some of them had been absolutely filthy limericks extolling the virtues of my various body parts, but I’d found them enchanting regardless.

In turn, I’d penned praise of their sinewy beauty. Nirvaan was the classic tall, dark, lithe type of handsome while Zayaan was ruggedly good-looking and very fair. Zayaan, without his golden tan and face stubble, was almost as pale as me. Our common Persian heritage, we’d deduced, during one of our trillion and one profound midnight chats.

Sometime over the past millennium, to avoid persecution, first the Parsis and then the Aga Khani Muslims, a sect of the Shiite Ismailis, had fled Persia to settle down on the mildly distant but welcoming shores of Hindustan—the shores of the State of Gujarat, to be precise—setting the precedent for a religiously and ethnically diverse yet secular nation.

The undulations of history fascinated all three of us. But while Nirvaan’s and my interest remained amateurish, Zayaan had studied the subject to death. He held degrees in world literature, sociology and Islamic studies from the University of London and Oxford. He spoke Farsi, Urdu and Arabic as fluently as Gujarati or English. Add in a smattering of Hindi, Latin and French, and we had an octolinguist. Nirvaan had coined the word a while ago.

Currently, Zayaan was working on a dissertation that hoped to shed light on the cross-cultural relationship between Muslims and their neighbors from the time of Ishmael through now. Zayaan was a super nerd. It wasn’t all he was, but it was the one quality that continued to stagger me. He worked for the Share Khan Foundation in several capacities, all mostly academic, and while it hadn’t been convenient for him to apply for a sabbatical at this point in his career, he’d done just that to come live with us. Of course, his superiors in London believed he was pursuing his doctorate in earnest, which he was.

But the simple truth was, Zayaan had come because Nirvaan needed him, and that was all that should’ve mattered to me. I was doing all of us a disservice by my behavior. Zayaan was the third of our triad. He had every right to be here with us, every right to say goodbye to Nirvaan. So why had I begun to resent his presence, their friendship, when I’d always been glad that they had each other before?

Nirvaan kissed my bumpy nose, tugging me back from the side trip I’d taken into the extraordinary complications of my life. He always claimed my nose gave me character, a sort of distinction. With an unholy gleam in his eyes, he looked over my head at the man who was his soul mate as much as I was.

“Did I hear you insult my sweetie’s nose? You must be punished for it, you infidel. Kiss her nose, or lose your head. Oy! Kiss her nose, and lose your head since kissing her did have that effect on you once,” teased Nirvaan.

Then, out of the blue, he pushed me at Zayaan. I yelped, teetering unsteadily in my chair, finding balance against Zayaan’s chest, our faces not two inches apart.

Again, why do I love my husband? I struggled to right myself, blushing furiously.

“People are watching, for fuck’s sake.” With a tight grip on my arms, Zayaan settled me back in my seat before I fell over, trying to get away from him. “What’ll they think of us?”

Nirvaan put a hand on his cheek and gasped, “No! You pulled the LSKS card?”

LSKS was an acronym for, Loko shu keh shey? Or, What will people say?

It was the most common rhetoric Gujju parents—any parent, for that matter—badgered their children with.

My parents had plagued me with such questions in sigh-worthy regularity. What will people say, Simi, if you dye your hair purple? What will people think, Simeen, if you fail your exams? Don’t be rude to your grandmother’s sister’s grandniece’s mother-in-law. Behave. Behave. Behave yourself in public.

I started giggling. I was that flustered.

“Don’t encourage him.” Zayaan looked thoroughly disgusted with us.

We could do that to him. Only Nirvaan and I could ruffle Zayaan’s feathers that easily. Any minute now, he’d start lecturing us in Farsi.

Nirvaan’s arm snaked around my middle, pulling me back against his chest, as he sniggered like a college boy. His breath tickled my ear, making me whimper. Zayaan’s eyes went dark and glittery as he glared at us—not angry, not envious, but something in between.

My face was probably scarlet by now.

“What I’ve learned with this time bomb ticking inside my head, chodu, is that life is too short to live in regret.” Nirvaan’s laughter faded, his voice went low and hoarse, and I stilled in my husband’s arms. “Life is so fucking short, my loves. So, fuck the world and its fucking rules.”

Like a maestro at the helm of an orchestra, Zayaan steered his ruffled feathers back to smoothness. “Easy for you to say, chodu. You’ll be dead. We won’t be.” He broke off and clamped his jaw shut in an obvious effort not to say something regrettable.

There was a lot of that going around between the three of us—regret, broken words.

It wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation. It wouldn’t be the last, not with Nirvaan trying to cram a whole lifetime into one year or less. Both men were right in their own ways, but Zayaan’s point was undeniable. What Nirvaan expected from us would get tongues wagging, and they’d never stop. I didn’t want to care what the world thought of me or how I’d chosen to live my life. But did I really have the luxury to be a part of this world and not care?

I frowned into my sake. Experience had taught me to care, to be careful and to be private. I couldn’t change who I was, not even for my dying husband. But dare I try? I raised the sake cup to my lips and took a swallow.

And what of the child? The child who, if conceived, would be Nirvaan’s and mine...and Zayaan’s, too, in a way.

What would people say about such a child?

4

We got home earlier than expected. The guys’ intense exchange hadn’t ruined our dinner—we’d managed to slide the conversation back to a glossy, innuendo-filled level again—but it’d left us not quite in the jolly mood to go clubbing, like we’d originally planned.

I tucked the groceries away and then headed for the bathroom for a much-needed soak in the tub and some much-desired time alone. As my body relaxed in the warm pool of foamy water, I tried to do the same with my mind, immersing it in the historical thriller I’d downloaded on my e-reader. Every so often, I was jarred away from the intrigues of Napoleon’s court by the sounds of laser guns and bombs exploding beyond the powder blue walls of the bathroom.

The guys were trying to obliterate each other via their gaming avatars. I winced at a particularly loud bomb blast, followed by a string of clipped curses and a bout of heated argument about the best way to circumvent land mines and storm alien territory without getting blown to bits. Whoever had penned the phrase “boys and their toys” had known the male yins of the universe well. I remembered my mother muttering something to the effect in reference to my father and brothers pretty much every day.

I had a pair of them—brothers, I meant. Surin and Sarvar were both much older than me, and ever since the fatality that had taken our parents, they’d become more parents than siblings to me. I’d had a third brother, a sickly boy named Sam, who hadn’t survived his first year in this world. I had him to thank for my existence. If Sam hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have been born, as my parents had wanted no more than three children.

When I was little, my brothers would tease me about being a replacement, the spare wheel, the girl who’d destroyed the manly kingdom of the three Batliwala brothers. I’d scream for them to take their hideous words back, sob as if my heart was breaking, until the day my mother had sat me down and opened my eyes to the bullshit that was the male psyche.

Mean to begin with or not, Sarvar had become the kind of brother every sister should have. He didn’t hover or smother, but he was always there when I needed to pour my heart out. Sarvar was my anchor in the ocean of life, a safe harbor for tempestuous times. Lucky for me, he lived in San Jose, close enough to meet when we wished.

I have the Desais to thank for it. Ever generous and helpful, they’d somehow convinced Sarvar to move to the States right after my marriage. They’d sponsored his legalization documents and whatnot. They’d even offered him a managerial job at one of their motels, but he hadn’t taken them up on it. These last six years, Sarvar had expanded our family’s plastic business across the Americas, and so far, both my brothers seemed satisfied with the results. It’d been my father’s dream to expand Batliwala Plastics outside of India, and I felt incredibly proud that my brothers had made it come true. I liked to believe, in a small way, I’d had a hand in it, too.

Surin, seven years my elder, still lived in Surat, close to the factory we’d almost lost right after our parents’ deaths. The Desais hadn’t been able to convince him to immigrate to California. To leave India would mean selling Batliwala Plastics or trusting someone else to run it, and Surin would cut off his right arm before he did that. He’d fought so hard to keep the factory, sustain it and make it prosper. He’d shed sweat, blood and youth for it. He’d never leave it in someone else’s care. He couldn’t even bring himself to take a decent holiday with his wife and kids for fear the factory would collapse in his absence.

I hadn’t seen Surin in over three years because of that. He wouldn’t come to California unless there was an emergency, and I couldn’t go to India until...Nirvaan let me.

At times, I missed Surin as violently as I missed my parents. And then there were days when he’d cease to exist in my American reality. As if being out of sight, out of tangible reach, he’d become a ghost in my mind.

I stared at the words I held between my hands, unable to decipher them, as my mind slowly clouded with memories. My parents. My brothers. Surat. My life there. All I’d lost. All I’d gained. Nirvaan. Zayaan. My life here.

I leaned over the edge of the cast-iron tub and set the e-reader on the closed toilet seat. My movements upset the cooling water, and waves splashed against my breasts and back in protest. I pulled the plug, watched the water spool into the sieve and gurgle down the drain. If only I could rid myself of ghosts so easily.

I stood up and stepped out of the tub. Naked and shivering, I walked across the beige-tiled floor into the shower. Under a pounding hot spray, I soaped and loofahed my body. I can’t pinpoint when I started crying or if I cried at all. When my eyes stung, I convinced myself it was the soap. My breath hiccuped, and my skin puckered, but I stayed under the shower until the Antarctic threatened to melt through it. I got out then and wrapped myself in a towel. I didn’t look in the mirror, not even when I brushed my teeth and my hair. I refused to give my weakness a form, an image, another ghost to remember.

I slipped on a nightshirt and went straight to bed. I didn’t wish the guys good-night. I couldn’t. Nirvaan would know I’d cried, and it would upset him, make him feel guilty and sad, maybe even mad. He would leave his game and his buddy to comfort me. He would try to bring me solace with gentle words and lust-filled kisses. He might even succeed. He’d assure me that everything would be fine, convince me that I was stronger than this.

Maybe I was. My therapist certainly believed so. But I didn’t want to be strong. I wanted to run and hide, escape my reality, banish all feeling. I wanted to smash open the translucent perfection of my snow-globe world and simply walk away.

But I couldn’t do that. Not tonight. Not ever, if Nirvaan got his way and I had his baby.

So I lay in bed, stiff under the gray-and-yellow summer quilt, and wished for things I’d never had—like a normal life.

* * *

Sleep was a chameleon tonight. Sly and still, it kept changing color and time to hide from me. I counted sheep, but my mind kept drifting toward warmer shores, black-sand beaches and home.

My fifteenth birthday had dawned hot and oppressive over Surat, and it had remained so until its phantasmagorical end.

Summers were murder in Gujarat—arid, dusty and energy draining. But I hadn’t complained about the weather that year. That last of May’s days, my first birthday without my parents, I’d had many other concerns besides harping over a bit of sweat and grime.

Like the home I hadn’t allowed myself to like.

We’d lived in a four-bedroom flat on the tenth floor of a high-rise complex erected along the Tapi River. In addition to being the diamond and textile capital of the world, Surat had just been declared the cleanest and fastest-growing metropolis in India. As a testament to my father’s success, my family had, only recently, moved into the new cosmopolitan digs from a demographically Parsi neighborhood across town. We’d just begun the process of getting to know our neighbors when tragedy had struck.

With my parents gone, and both my brothers still earning their college degrees and living away from home—Surin had boarded with our father’s brother in Mumbai and Sarvar had lived in a boy’s hostel in Ahmedabad—my maternal aunt and uncle had imposed themselves in our home. My brothers were deemed too young and foolish to shoulder the responsibility of raising a young girl, so Uncle Farooq and Auntie Jai had thought it best to supervise my guardianship.

But that was only a pretense, we’d eventually realize. The real reason for the sudden familial love was my father’s business, which Uncle Farooq wanted to usurp.

Barely twenty-two, naturally, Surin was confused. He didn’t know whether to finish his studies or take over the business. He wasn’t ready to be the head of the family. Relatives from all over the world advised him in various capacities, but finally, any decision that impacted the three of us was on him. For six months, he’d tried to make sense of our father’s affairs, and from what I overheard him tell Sarvar late one night on the weekend before my birthday, he was afraid the business was crumbling about his ears. The factory workers, suppliers and clients who’d had implicit faith in my father’s business acumen had none in a mere boy’s, and orders had begun to drop like overripe fruit from trees. He’d decided not to go back to college by then.

Surin was overwhelmed by his responsibilities. Sarvar was worried about our future. So, I worried, too.

I didn’t like my uncle and aunt. I’d never liked them, but I didn’t tell my brothers that. I had no wish to add to their burdens. My mother had never spoken against her older sister, but I knew they hadn’t gotten along, either. I didn’t like how Uncle Farooq spoke to Surin, as if he were an idiot. I didn’t like how nosy my aunt was about my parents’ life insurance policies and our material holdings.

If Surin didn’t ask them to leave soon, I planned to run away. Where? How? When? The logistics didn’t matter. I felt trapped in my aunt’s presence. I wanted things to go back to how they’d been. I missed my mother terribly.

I didn’t want to celebrate my birthday that year. Friends from my old neighborhood offered to treat me to lunch, but I refused.

“I am in mourning,” I told them.

The truth was, it pained me to see them. They reminded me of my old life, of my parents and happy days, and I couldn’t bear it.

My brothers overruled my wish not to celebrate. They even brought home a birthday cake, as if we were a normal family. We went out for dinner, and I got money as presents, no other gifts. No one knew what to buy for me. It was always my mother who’d bought the gifts in our family even if the name tag on the gifts stated otherwise.

That night, Smriti invited me to a beach party. Smriti was a neighbor of similar age who I’d interacted with off and on since our arrival in the building complex. Before I could think of an excuse, Sarvar urged me to go and have fun. Surin frowned, clearly unsure of whether to allow poor hysterical me out of his sight since I’d spent the day locked in my room, weeping. But much to my disgust, he, too, nodded and smiled in encouragement. It was the one and only time I wished my aunt would butt in and barricade me in my room. But, nope, she didn’t.

Unbeknownst to me, Surin had already asked my aunt and uncle to leave our home. Within a month, they’d be gone for good.

I squeezed into the back seat prison of a silver-colored Maruti, jammed from door to door with five other girls.

“Whose party?” I belatedly asked.

“Nirvaan from C building,” replied Smriti, the designated driver.

Smriti and I resided in Ram Bhuvan B, and besides her and a few of her friends, I knew no one.

“He moved to California two years ago and comes down every summer to meet his grandparents. He throws the best parties. They’re wild and...” Smriti paused to grin at me through the rearview mirror. “There will be lots and lots of booze. Imported.”

All the girls in the car giggled at the revelation, except me.

“I know what you’re thinking. Gujarat is a dry state, so no boozing. But who follows rules these days, na?” Smriti said when I remained silent and slightly horrified by her disclosure.

“Even government officials don’t follow rules,” added a pigtailed girl, riding shotgun, in a patronizing tone.

“And Nirvaan has connections. I mean, his father has connections and a green card, so he’s allowed,” Smriti said smugly.

Connections or not, dry state or not, fifteen-year-olds should not be boozing.

What if we got arrested? Would the American boy’s father bail us out? I wondered if Smriti had thought this through.

Too late, it occurred to me, if she was my age, she wasn’t old enough to drive.

Crap.

What was I doing here? Why had Sarvar pushed me out the door? Couldn’t he stand my company for even one evening?

I wasn’t an adventurous soul. I was wary of crowds, basically a homebody. That wasn’t to say I was timid or obedient. I wasn’t. But my bratty nature had been blown to bits, along with my sense of security, the night the police had called and informed us about the accident. A drunk driver had rammed his truck into my parents’ car, killing them on the spot. The accident had happened on the highway near Udvada as my parents drove back from a visit to the fire temple that housed the world’s oldest Atash Behram, the sacred fire Zoroastrians paid homage to. The irony of my parents coming to mortal harm while on a holy pilgrimage wasn’t lost on me. I’d lost my faith in Ahura Mazda that night.

So, that was how I knew if we got into trouble, neither God nor a green-card holder would come to our aid.

I stayed quiet on the drive while the other girls laughed and yakked around me. When we hurtled down the highway past Dumas Road, I was startled out of my silence.

“Arre! Kya jai che, Smriti? Where are you going? You missed the turn for Dumas Beach.”

“We’re going to Dandi,” said Riddhi, the girl squashed against me. “Dumas is overcrowded, yaar. No privacy at all. Dandi is our go-to place for these types of parties.”

What in Khodai’s name did she mean by “these types of parties”?

It struck me that I was way out of my comfort zone here, and for the rest of the hour-long drive to Dandi, I alternated between cursing my luck and crossing my fingers. I also begged my parents to watch over me as my brothers clearly were doing an awful job of it.

The car bumped along Dandi road until the concrete disintegrated into sand. We drove past a massive black granite plaque jutting out of the ground with Dandi March and a long commemoration carved on its face. This was where Mahatma Gandhi had led thousands of protesters on April 6, 1930—including my freedom-fighting grandfather, Rustum Batliwala—in the Salt Satyagraha in defiance of the British Raj and their overbearing tax laws on Indians. It was a historical landmark, but contrary to its fame, it was not very touristy.

Smriti parked the Maruti next to a jumble of cars. Remixed pop pumped out of a massive music system from the roof of a van. Bunches of girls and boys flooded around an enormous beach bonfire. Half of the girls from my group had already disappeared into the throng.

I became Smriti’s shadow. I went where she went, drank what she drank and danced when she danced. I talked little and tittered a lot. When you knew no one, it was easy to lose your inhibitions. I didn’t have to make an impression or accept pitiful condolences from strangers. I didn’t have to listen to geriatric aunts compare my looks to my mother’s or my nose to my grandfather’s, the same one who’d fought for India’s freedom. I was no one here, no one important. I could forget my burdens for tonight, forget that I was orphaned.

I finally got why Sarvar had pushed me out the door—not that I forgave him for it, but I understood. There was life beyond death, and it was all around me. I tried to have fun. I tried very hard.

“That’s him!” yelled Smriti, waving her arm in a sort of dance move.

“Who?” I shouted back, squinting in the direction of her wave. “Nirvaan?”

“Yeah. He’s so chikna, na?” She laughed and shimmied to the beats of a pop song.

“I see several chikna-looking boys there.”

There were many, many cuties to wade through. Most of the guys were shirtless. Most of us girls were in cutoffs and thin T-shirts or tank tops. It was nasty hot, even with the tepid sea breeze. The bonfire aggravated the heat, but it was necessary for light and ambience.

My mother had loved dining by candlelight. Firelight is a boon to women, she’d told me once. It erases age and enhances our natural beauty.

She was right. We glowed golden brown.

Black sand sparkled beneath naked feet, mirroring the night sky. Dozens of coolers poked through the sand like half-buried treasure chests, openly displaying their glittering booty of imported beer, sodas and water bottles. The beer, naturally, depleted faster than the rest of the drinks. I’d consumed three cans so far. As most of us were quite buzzed by then, and sweaty and stinky to boot, it was no surprise when some partygoers began to cool off in the water. It was stupid and dangerous to swim in the sea in the middle of the night. But at fifteen, stupid meant cool, and dangerous was even cooler.

Dandi Beach, like many others along Gujarat’s coastline, was endangered land. Due to overdevelopment and deforestation, the unstable coast had succumbed to the Arabian Sea. But I ignored everything my father had cautioned against. I dived into the water, breaking free of all restraint. I didn’t panic when I lost sight of Smriti in the floating crowd. I was a worry-free bird tonight. I didn’t care if Surin found out I’d been boozing. I didn’t care that my father would have disapproved of my midnight swim. He wasn’t there to lambast me, was he? No, he was dead. And Surin...

Surin...with his stupid threats of locking me in my bedroom, of washing his hands of me and leaving me to rot with Auntie Jai. I wished Surin were dead instead of my parents.

My gut heaved like the buoyant waves, making me vomit and cry. I clawed my way to the shore, and after grabbing another beer, I started running down the beach.

Why did you die, Mumsy? How could you die and leave me so alone?

I wanted to curl up in a dark hole and sob my heart out. I ran farther and farther away from the party. Had I been thinking straight, had I not been upset, I would never have set off alone. I ran past cars, kids, desertlike vegetation and the hemline of dilapidated shacks, abandoned and eerie little huts, along the sand. The villagers had been forced to move inland to safer ground. The government had started projects to save the beaches, but it was a long-haul process, and most of the villages had become ghost towns. I knew all this because Daddy had been passionate about saving the environment.

Daddy...oh, my Daddy...

The beach came to an abrupt end on a jut of rocks rising out of the sand. I had found my black hole to sink into.

I began to climb. Please, no snakes, no crabs. I could abide anything but snakes and crabs. I stepped on something squishy—yuckity yuck—and then something poked my sole, and I nearly lost my balance. I was barefoot, my slippers languished in Smriti’s car. I’d thought it sensible to remove them there. I’d stopped feeling sensible the minute I stepped onto the beach.

Tossing away the beer can, I clambered up the rocks on hands and feet. A great sense of accomplishment swept over me when I reached the top. It wasn’t high, just a few feet above sea level, but I felt like I’d climbed a mountain.

I breathed in deep and let it out. I flung my arms out, staring at the limitless horizon. Without the music blaring, I heard the waves whoosh and slap against the rocks. Without the bonfire, the full moon dribbled silver light onto the world.

My name meant silvery light in Persian. I was born on a full-moon night, and so my parents had named me Simeen.

My parents...

I dropped my arms as guilt stabbed at my chest. No! Khodai, please, I don’t want to feel anything anymore. If only I’d gone with my parents instead of arguing.

I have plans for the weekend that don’t involve driving from temple to temple with a couple of old killjoys. I want to hang at the mall with my friends, okay? Why are you forcing me to go and not Surin or Sarvar? I’m almost fifteen. I can stay home alone. I hardly need you to babysit me.

My last words to my parents had been antagonistic, churlish.

If only I’d gone with them.

If only I hadn’t been so selfish.

If only...

I remembered thinking that. I vividly remembered the feeling of sinking breath by breath into the quicksand of despair that night on Dandi Beach. I remembered screaming into the dark, raging at my parents, calling for them, begging them to come back.

Please come back. I need you. I lied. I need you, Daddy, Mumsy.

I pleaded with Ahura Mazda to take me, too, to stop punishing me. I wished the sea would swallow me. I should’ve died with my parents. If I were dead, I’d stop feeling, stop grieving. I didn’t remember leaning over the edge, but I must have because, if only for a second, I was staring at a pile of shiny black rocks before I was yanked back hard.

Someone shouted, but I didn’t know who or why or what. A pair of arms locked tight around me. A hand pressed my face into a wet, warm chest.

He smelled of the sea and tasted of it, the night Zayaan saved me. He let me go, only to push me into Nirvaan’s arms. Hopping from boulder to boulder, Zayaan disappeared behind a large outcropping, only to reappear within seconds in swimming shorts.

With gentle but firm words, they calmed me. They sat me down on the sand and made me drink overly sweet Frooti from a Coke bottle. They petted me like I was a newborn kitten. And I, desperate to confess my sins, spilled my guts.

Only after they’d handed me over to Smriti and I was on my way home with the taste of cake in my mouth, did I wonder how they had known it was my birthday or why I’d sipped Frooti from a Coke bottle. Only then did I recall what my peripheral vision had first registered but hysteria had censored.

Zayaan had been naked, totally completely naagu, when he saved me. And there had been a girl half-hidden between the jut of rocks where he’d come from—a partially naagu horrified-looking girl.

* * *

I grinned in the dark, smearing the tears that had pearled in my eyes with a thumb before they leaked down my cheek. Reliving the Naked Savior incident always lifted my spirits, reminding me that life wasn’t all despair and darkness but could be as sweet as a Frooti and funny, too. I thought of how much I’d laughed that night.

That first volcanic introduction had defined my relationship with the guys. That chance encounter had changed my world again, ripping me out of my shell, out of my grief, making me bold and greedy in a way I’d never been before.

I turned on my side, hugging my pillow. Exhaustion made my eyelids heavy, but I wasn’t anywhere near ready to fall asleep. Stars had popped up in patches in the blue-black sky. The rain clouds had finally been lured away, letting rain fall somewhere else for a change. I breathed in the gentle breeze blowing in through the open windows, fluttering the wind chimes on the deck.

Smells could trigger memories. Carmel’s salty, fishy odor would often take me home to Surat in spirit, reminding me of the beaches in Gujarat, family holidays taken at various beach resorts, and of the hundreds of happy days and nights I’d spent in Dumas and Dandi with the guys. All three of us were beach babies or beach horses or whatever people obsessed with the sun, sand and water were called. We didn’t mind other vacation destinations. We’d taken plenty of holidays where not a single beach had been on the itinerary. But if you asked us where our favorite place to chill was, without a doubt, we’d say the beach.

Maybe it was, in part, because of the way we’d met. That night on Dandi Beach had been a gift none of us had expected, and everything that followed only brought us closer.

The guys had sought me out the morning after the beach party. To check on my health and state of mind, they’d claimed. After confirming I was indeed sound in both, the true reason for their visit was revealed. They’d put me through a subtle interrogation about how much I’d seen and what I’d inferred from it.

“Don’t gossip about us.” Zayaan’s low, hoarse baritone was as potent in daylight as it had been at midnight. “If you do, we won’t keep our mouths shut, either.”

“Is it gossip if it’s the truth?” I teased with false bravado. Not that I wanted people to think I was some kind of nutcase or suicidal. I wasn’t. Or I was over it by then.

They took me to lunch—a blatant bribe. If I blabbed to anyone about the naked bits, the girl’s reputation would be ruined, and the guys’ wouldn’t fare any better.

What I hadn’t known then was that Zayaan couldn’t afford a tarnished reputation. His father was the administrator, the mukhi saheb, of the local jamaat khana, which was the Khoja community center-cum-mosque. No matter what sort of mischief Zayaan got up to behind closed doors, in front of the world, he had to be the no-nonsense mukhi saheb’s son.

I was super-duper intrigued by the naked naagu bits. I was appalled, at first, but intrigued more. I’d spent the night picturing all kinds of debauchery, and I couldn’t get the image of a girl sandwich out of my head. I felt breathless just thinking about it. To be completely truthful, I felt hideously jealous.

I wanted to be the sandwich filling. I wanted the growly-voiced guy to press my face into his chest while the American-accented guy with the quick hands massaged my back. I’d smooched a couple of boys from my old school. It’d been nothing impressive, just some suction action on the mouth accompanied by a waterfall of slobber. Totally yuck.

I imagined smooching Zayaan and Nirvaan and decided it wouldn’t be yuck at all.

I felt naughty. And for the first time in six months, I felt alive.

I put forth a bold proposition in exchange for my silence. I offered myself up as their secret second helping. Not that Anu, the sandwich girl, was much of a secret. The guys had openly vied for her attention, like Archie and Reggie over Veronica. Other kids in our complex would bet over who’d win a date or a kiss or something much cruder from her. Most would put their money on Nirvaan. He was, after all, a homegrown boy even if he was an expat now.

Zayaan, on the other hand, had moved to Surat only a year ago from Pakistan. Plus, he made the other kids wary with his quietly clever disposition and grown-up manner. He had a job already. Zayaan helped his father run the jamaat khana. He was being groomed to step into his father’s footsteps. He wasn’t overfriendly or spontaneous like Nirvaan. Neither did he throw awesome parties. Money was an issue for him. He never seemed to have any, so Nirvaan would pick up his tab.

Zayaan was night to Nirvaan’s day, yet they shared everything. It was soon apparent that no one but me—and Sandwich Anu—knew the extent of their sharing.

Nirvaan, after a stomach-clutching hooting session, took me up on my offer and allowed me to tag along wherever he went. Zayaan refused to be blackmailed. I’d set myself up as Betty, and in true Archie Comics–style, nothing I did thawed Zayaan.

If I’d known then how sacred a clean reputation was to him, I could’ve forced the issue.

My behavior should’ve embarrassed me. It didn’t at all. I was fed up with being a good girl, and I had come to the conclusion that good things happened to wicked people, and vice versa.

I didn’t seem to threaten Anu darling’s space, either. Naturally not. I was plain faced, where she was gorgeous. Flat and gangly like a ten-year-old boy, where she was voluptuous and sultry. I had short boyish hair. I’d walked into a salon one day and hacked off my locks, unable to care for it without my mother’s guidance. I’d cried for two whole weeks in the aftermath, and nothing my brothers said, complimentary or not, had cheered me up. I sported a tapeli-cut hairdo while Anu’s hair cascaded down her back like a movie star’s. She treated me like the guys’ pesky younger brother instead of the enemy I’d set myself up as.

Pretty soon, the dynamics of our pack began to change and solidify. For every moment the guys and I spent apart, we would spend twice as many together. In keeping with my bold metamorphosis, I kept up with their boisterousness. We raced scooters on highways, played pranks on elderly heart-attack candidates and jumped off walls of our complex into the Tapi River, earning ourselves the Awesome Threesome sobriquet from our peers. We did everything naughty and some things nice.

Sandwich Anu faded into the background within a month. I never heard of her again.

It was serendipity. I believed, with every atom of my being, that my parents were behind my change in fortune. I was convinced the guys were my birthday presents from them.

The day Nirvaan flew back to California, we’d made a pact to keep our threesome awesome and shining forever. For three reckless years, we’d managed.

Then the world had intruded on our idyll.

5

“G’morning, baby.”

From his perch on the lounge chair, Nirvaan watched me stare at the coffee machine as it hummed and spit out my early morning manna in a giant coffee mug. The mug was white and had a black-and-gray sketch of Eeyore wandering about the Hundred Acre Wood, wondering, “What’s so good about this morning?” It was my favorite morning coffee mug, a gift from Nirvaan’s niece and nephew, Nikita and Armaan, on my last birthday.

I added three drops of hazelnut creamer into the steaming liquid, stirred once and took the first eye-opening sip. The morning slowly came into focus. Hands wrapped about the hot mug, I joined my husband on the deck as he reposed like a snug bug in a rug, waiting for the sun to dazzle the world anew. It was a mandatory item on the Titanic Wish List, under “smell the roses,” to witness all sunrises and sunsets from this day forward for as long as each of us lived.

I inhaled a bigger sip of my coffee, swirling it in my mouth before swallowing. Only then was I capable of reciprocating my husband’s good-morning wishes without croaking.

Ruffling his hair, I bent and took his mouth in a lazy kiss, mingling the tastes of minty toothpaste and delicious java on our tongues. Unlike me, Nirvaan didn’t need an adrenaline-boosting beverage to jump-start his day. He went straight for breakfast whenever it was ready, which was whenever I felt awake enough to prepare it. And I would. Soon.

The world was still dark, but the horizon had begun to pinken. Waves licked the shore like a frontline of gamboling puppies rootling in their mother’s teats. I groaned and stretched sleep from my bones, eager for my in-laws to arrive and for the fun and games to begin. I smiled, wondering what new mischief my father-in-law would instigate this weekend.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed Zayaan sitting on a lounger he’d dragged several feet away to where the porch turned around the house. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known he was there from the get-go. My sense of him had always been strong—I couldn’t ignore him if I tried—but I liked to pretend we didn’t have that connection anymore.

His eyes were closed, his lips restless in a soft-spoken ritual as ingrained in him as the making and drinking of coffee was in me. His face and chest hailed the Kaba from six thousand miles away, which one would assume was directly eastward. It wasn’t.

Years ago, on Zayaan’s very first visit with us in San Jose, I’d heard him explain to Nirvaan the intricacies of the qi’bla, the direction one faces while praying or giving dua—as the Khojas called it—and why he’d chosen northeast and not simply east or even southeast, which would be the direction a bird would take to fly between here and Mecca. It had to do with latitudes, longitudes, true north and the roundness of the Earth. I’d rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of facing any worldly structure or direction instead of directly into space, if one was inclined to communicate with God at all.

I, of course, had stopped bothering with ritualistic trivialities. I didn’t believe in any form of organized religion. While I might believe in a Supreme Being of some sort, His refusal to actively eradicate the evils in this world made Him a largely suspect entity in my mind—not to stress on the extremely unjust and personal grudge He had against me.

Disinclined to start another day fighting with Ahura Mazda, I sat down on the lounger by Nirvaan’s feet and, out of habit, I began to massage his blanketed foot while savoring my coffee. I wasn’t completely sure, but I didn’t think my husband had come to bed last night.

“Did you guys get any sleep?” I asked in a low tone so that I wouldn’t disturb Zayaan, who’d bent his head in respectful sajdah to Allah for the next segment of prayers. I might have lost my own faith, but it didn’t mean I’d disrespect another’s.

Nirvaan gave me a lazy smile and flopped his head from left to right in a no. Even with little to no sleep, he didn’t look tired or rumpled. He seemed pleasantly torporish. Zayaan would be, too, I imagined. He’d probably showered already, prepping for sajdah. At the very least, he had splashed his face, hands and feet with fresh water while I looked like the massacred thing the neighbor’s cat had left on our front porch last week.

I wasn’t exaggerating. I’d seen myself in the bathroom mirror not five minutes ago. My eyes were glassy and felt as if I’d rubbed sand in them, thanks to crying myself to sleep. My hair was a nest of knots, and my complexion was sapped of color because I’d tossed and turned fretfully all night, warring with a phalanx of subliminal dreams.

If that wasn’t proof that Khodai had it in for me, I didn’t know what was.

Nirvaan wiggled his foot under my hand. He winked when I looked up, as if he could see inside my brain. I scowled because he probably could.

His smile expanded, and he sat up to rumble in my ear, “Guess what we were up to all night long?”

“Nothing good, I suppose?” The fine hairs on my body stood to attention when he brushed his lips across my cheek and took a gentle bite of my jaw.

Nirvaan was such a tease.

He gave a sinister chuckle. “Depends on who you ask.”

I leaned back a fraction and stared into the twinkling depths of his eyes. “You did not take the Jet Skis out without me!” I exclaimed, forgetting to whisper. I would’ve heard the commotion of the motors, surely?

Nirvaan tried to look guilty. The failed antic gave up his game because I knew him well, too. I buffed his shoulder with a fist and rolled my eyes, sure now that they hadn’t ridden anywhere in the dark. Nirvaan rocked back against the lounger, his shoulders shaking with quiet mirth. He, too, was mindful of keeping mum during Zayaan’s prayers.

“The photos have been scanned and uploaded, Simi.” He took my hand and brought it to his lips, gloating with accomplishment.

“What? All of them?”

I was impressed. On Nirvaan’s request, a few months ago, his parents had brought back a suitcase full of old photos from India. They were pictures of Nirvaan mostly, from his birth onward, but about a thousand of the three of us were bundled in the lot. I’d been sorting them out in chronological order for the past many weeks and getting damn frustrated by the sheer volume of the task. Plus, critical and unimpressed by my younger tomboy self, I’d threatened to burn the ones with me in them. I’d been joking, but Nirvaan wasn’t taking any chances, so ever since, he’d housed the suitcase in Zayaan’s room. I wasn’t aware he’d been doing something with them.

“Is that what you’ve been doing on the nights you don’t come to bed?” The borderline accusation in my question gave me pause. I sounded jealous, like a shrew-wife pissed off at her husband for spending more time with his mistress than herself.

It had been my job to sort out the photos, and I hadn’t done it. It was my job to make my husband happy and comfortable, and I wasn’t managing that, either. Couldn’t I do anything right?

Nirvaan gave me a sharp glance but chose not to answer. He groped for the tablet hidden beneath the blanket and switched it on before handing it to me. The pictures hadn’t only been uploaded but sorted, dated and organized into albums, too. He’d even made movies from some.

A funny, fluttery thing awoke inside me when I tapped an album titled Jab We Met. The title was stolen from a blockbuster Bollywood rom-com. The album, not the movie, was about the summer the three of us had met. I’d fallen asleep thinking of that summer. It sometimes spooked me how in sync Nirvaan and I were, how in sync all three of us were.

The first picture was of us blowing candles on a giant chocolate cake. I looked dazed, which accounted for my total memory loss about this part of the night. I couldn’t remember cutting the cake even though the picture was irrefutable proof that I had, and from the looks of the subsequent photos, I’d enjoyed smashing some of it on the guys’ faces.

“My Frooti was spiked. It had to be,” I declared, yet again in defense of my actions.

Nirvaan pleaded the fifth, as usual.

I frowned into my empty mug. “I need more coffee if we’re going to rehash our lives, one picture at a time.”

Rehashing the past was on The List, too. Nirvaan wished to recount and relive every moment of his life. He was creating a slide show to play at our birthday bash and wanted to make sure he didn’t forget a single person or event he was grateful for. I found the whole idea unnecessarily Hallmark-ish and morbid. Plus, you couldn’t really sieve the good moments out without stirring up the bad.

But it wasn’t my biopic, was it? I snorted, thinking if I ever got sentimental enough to create one, mine would play out in five pictures flat. Okay, maybe six.

“Wait. It’s almost light, baby.” Nirvaan tipped me onto his lap when I half rose from the lounger to get more coffee.

I usually had two mugs before breakfast.

I waited, shifting to get comfortable against my husband’s chest. His arms came around me along with the blanket, and I felt warm even though I hadn’t been cold in my thick flannel robe and woolen socks. My husband warmed me from the inside out. He always had.

I raised the tablet high and took a picture of us.

“Dawn of the Dead,” said Nirvaan, critiquing my handiwork when I showed it to him.

I ignored the fact that he was right. “Shut up. You’re ruining the mood.” I clicked another one. It was an improvement, and with a bit of photo editing, we wouldn’t appear so insipid. There.

Not to be outdone, the sun rose majestically, and in a never-ending flash, it brought the sea, the beach and the gulls in front of us into the light.

For all its ugliness, the world was a beautiful place.

I didn’t think I’d ever tire of watching a sunrise. I knew I’d never forget the feel of my husband’s arms around me. And though I wanted a second cup of coffee quite badly, I stayed put until Nirvaan’s stomach gurgled against my back.

We started another day on a laugh.

Pleased and heart-happy, I stood up and made my way back into the kitchen where the coffee machine diligently refilled my mug. I propped the tablet on the counter and set it to display a slide show, grinning fondly at a picture of the three of us in our youthful folly, piled one behind the other on a bright yellow Vespa, blasting hapless pedestrians with cold masala milk from cheap plastic pistols. I had been the instigator and the driver of the Masala Milk Adventure. It’d been my scooter, after all.

Just as I began to prep for a batch of semolina veggie waffles, the house phone rang. We’d installed a landline, as cell phone reception was a bit wonky in some parts of the house. My cell worked only near the front door and in the kitchen.

“Hello?” I chirped into the cordless instrument, sandwiching the phone’s receiver between my ear and shoulder. I pulled out peppers, carrots, peas and some other stuff from the fridge, keeping one eye on the slide show. I wondered suddenly if Nirvaan had included Sandwich Anu’s pictures in the album. I was not going to be a happy beach bunny if he’d dared.

“Hello?” I repeated with impatience into the static silence of the phone. It was too early for telemarketers, so I checked the caller ID. London codes. Crap. It was too much to hope that it would be one of Zayaan’s sisters or colleagues and not his mother.

“Simeen, I’m trying to reach Zayaan. He’s not answering his mobile. Is Nirvaan okay?”

The softly anxious voice had the same hair-raising effect on my nerves as a live telecast of a terrorist beheading. Forget Sandwich Anu. Gulzar Begum Mohammed Ali Khan was the true bane of my existence. And there was no way Nirvaan hadn’t uploaded her photograph into the tablet as part of a nice Khan family portrait. Khodai! Did that mean Zayaan’s bastard brother was in there, too?

I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I would not let evil thoughts poison my day.

“He’s peachy, Gulzar Auntie. Zayaan dua bole che, so his phone might be off.”

I didn’t add that she should’ve checked the time difference between England and California before calling us at the crack of dawn. It wouldn’t have gone down well if I had. Zayaan’s mother did not like me and was civil to me only because her son would stand for nothing less. I reciprocated in kind for the same reason and because my mother had taught me to be polite to my elders—even bigoted, rude ones who’d raised a monster and let him loose in the world.

It was Zayaan’s father who’d adored me, approved of me—inasmuch as a pillar of the Khoja community could approve of a non-Muslim girl his son had brought home one day. I didn’t know if I would’ve converted to Islam had things worked out the way we’d planned. I knew Zayaan had expected me to when we talked of marriage. Aga Khani Muslims were a liberal lot, and for the most part, they followed very different customs and weren’t considered real Muslims. But Zayaan’s mother belonged to a staunch branch of Sunni Khojas, and to please her, her family had strictly practiced certain Islamic customs.

I’d sometimes imagine myself married to Zayaan because that would mean that night had not happened. I’d sometimes imagine my parents were alive. They would’ve approved of Zayaan but not of a religious conversion. They would’ve adored Nirvaan. My parents, devoted Parsis though they were, had been broad-minded people. Bottom line, they would’ve wanted me to be happy.

A sigh shuddered out of my mouth. It was pointless to think about the past, but I couldn’t seem to escape it. Maybe Nirvaan was right with this slide-show business. Maybe we were the sum total of our memories...and fantasies.

“Have him call me when he’s finished praying.” Zayaan’s mother’s exasperated voice broke through my musings.

She’d been talking, but I’d tuned her out.

I peered through the patio doors. Zayaan’s eyes were open, his head turned to one shoulder. He was almost done, but I held my tongue.

“Of course,” I said, preparing to hang up.

“How are you, beta?” she asked before I could.

Compassion rang in her voice, and her use of the endearment beta, or “child,” rendered me speechless.

I wanted to smack her down with a flippant, Oh, I’m peachy, too. So looking forward to widowhood. Any tips on how to get on?

But I forced the bitchiness back into my intestines. “I’m fine. Thank you,” I answered instead.

How dare she. How dare she offer sympathy now when she never had before. How dare she call me beta in that sickly sweet tone.

Zayaan’s mother had a knack for making me feel like shit, but I’d strive to be polite for my own mother’s sake.

“How are Sofia and Sana?” I asked in return.

Zayaan’s sisters were several years younger than me, and I got along just fine with them. They were open-minded, honest women, more like Zayaan than their mother.

“Are they around?” Say yes, so we can quit this absurd attempt at a conversation, I mentally urged her. Why didn’t she hang up?

Why didn’t I?

On the dawn-tinged deck, Nirvaan performed a series of twisty torso stretches. He had on a full-sleeved orange swim shirt and black wetsuit-style shorts and was obviously champing at the bit to try out the Jet Skis.

I flapped my hand to catch his attention. Save me, my hero.

“No, beta. Sofia went out with friends straight from work, and Sana is getting ready. We’re having dinner at Waseem’s house.”

Zayaan’s youngest sister, Sana, was engaged to Waseem Thakur, the prescreened, fully approved—by Gulzar Begum—Khoja from East London.

“That’s nice,” I muttered.

She began a familiar lament about her remaining two children who refused to bring her similar solace. She’d blamed me for Zayaan’s single status for a long time, even after I’d married Nirvaan. She’d blamed me for a whole lot worse twelve years ago. I’d believed her then. I’d been too young, too frightened and too confused not to succumb to the authority of an adult, and she’d taken advantage of it.

I wasn’t that naive anymore. If I chose to blame myself now, it was in full cognizance of my own actions.

Nirvaan came into the kitchen, grinning like a shark, as if he enjoyed seeing me tortured.

Dog.

On cue, Zayaan’s mother brought up Marjaneh, the perfect bride for her perfect son, and I pounced. A dog was so much shark fodder.

“Oh. Here’s Nirvaan, Auntie. He’s dying to talk to you.” Grinning, I shoved the phone into his hands but not before I heard the gasp.

Narrow-minded, judgmental creature that she was, I’d shocked her by my word choice. Too bad, but I’d quit dancing around the word death and its variations a long time ago. When cancer lived in your home, inside your husband’s body, there was no avoiding the word or state.

“What the hell, Simi?” Nirvaan whispered as he pinched my butt. He was a trooper, though. He pressed the receiver to his ear, and with innate flair, he began to charm the devil out of Zayaan’s mother.

My husband could sell fur to a bear for a profit without much effort. I left him to it and resumed the breakfast preparations.

“You’re coming for the party, Auntie. No excuses,” he said after a whole lot of rubbish conversation.

Hearing him, I wilted like a week-old rose. Much as I’d hate Gulzar Begum raining on my parade, I’d have to suck it up. After all was said and done and forgiven or not, she was Zayaan’s only living parent. Sure, guilt was the forerunner in that relationship, and she took immense advantage of her son’s feelings. Zayaan’s father and brother were dead. Zayaan was the only male left in his family. His mother knew just where to drive in the screws. But I also knew Zayaan loved his mother and thought the world of her. He’d want her at his thirtieth birthday bash—and Marjaneh, too.

I wilted some more.

Zayaan came into the house, a prayer book pressed between his arm and torso. He went into his room, and within seconds he came out empty-handed. He gave me the evil eye, letting me know that, deep in conversation with Allah or not, he’d heard every word I’d said to his mother, and he was aware of every negative vibe flowing between here and London.

I wasn’t sorry for any of it or for the way things were between us—they couldn’t be any other way—yet an apology jumped to my lips. I bit it off and poured yellowy batter onto the heated waffle plate instead.

Fifteen minutes later, the mama’s boy hung up the phone and joined us on the deck to consume three ice-cold waffles. He ate them without complaint.

Nirvaan wouldn’t have been so obliging. He would’ve fed the floppy waffles to the seagulls and demanded a reorder from the house chef. And because Zayaan hadn’t complained and he always defended me to his mother, I brewed him a consolation cup of double espresso. As apologies went, it was unremarkable, but it made him smile.

A long time ago, my whole existence had revolved around Zayaan’s smile.

I took a deep breath and, on a ten-count exhalation, I let the past fade from my mind. I leaned over to kiss my husband. He was my life now.

Next order of the day, the guys dared me to a Jet Ski race, and lots more pixels were added to the Jaws album.

6

Kamlesh Desai was a one-man riot with a deep-chested guffaw he was unafraid to overuse.

It was easy to see where Nirvaan had gotten his energy and charm even though the father-son duo looked nothing alike. My father-in-law was a small, spare man with a big mustache and a full head of hair. Even as he pushed toward sixty, it was a natural jet-black. He swore that the daily application of a hibiscus-infused coconut oil was the secret to his hair’s health. He kept it parted to the left and combed it several times a day in an offhand unconscious manner with a small maroon comb he carried in his wallet at all times.

I loved my father-in-law’s little quirks. I could watch him for hours and never get bored. For such a petite man, he had a king-size personality and an even bigger heart.

Compared to her husband, my mother-in-law was a mouse. She was quiet and serious but in no way timid. My in-laws were equal partners in life and in business. You picked up on it immediately from the moment you met them. They reminded me so much of my own parents that I sometimes found it impossible to be around them without getting emotional. But the same also made it easy for me to love them.

I used to tease Nirvaan that the only reason I’d married him was because I was madly in love with his father. And since I couldn’t have my main man, I’d settled for his gene pool.

“Your uncle just can’t sit still,” my mother-in-law muttered, shaking her head at her husband who was expelling his inexhaustible energy rather loudly into a karaoke mic.

Smiling at my gyrating father-in-law, I winced when the surround sound suddenly blared off-key and filled the house with shrill maniacal bleats. Besides enthusiasm, he had zero aptitude for singing.

It also amused me that my mother-in-law never addressed her husband by name, not directly, not even when she spoke of him in context. It was always “your uncle” or “your daddy” or “Mr. Desai” or “my husband” or “that man,” if she was angry with him, but never simply “Kamlesh.” It was an old Indian custom—I supposed, a sexist one in the guise of respect—which forbade a wife to call her husband by his given name. I had no idea why my mother-in-law still practiced it.

She was a modern woman. She wore Western clothes, even shorts on occasion, though never for community or religious functions or in India. She was a workingwoman, had been for most of her life. My in-laws had come to America, leaving their six-year-old daughter and two-year-old son with their parents, to build a better life for their family than the one they’d had in India. They’d come in search of the American Dream and found it.

Kamlesh Desai had worked at gas stations and grocery stores while Kiran Desai had cleaned houses and cooked for people until, between them, they’d saved enough money to invest in a California highway motel. Still, they’d worked three jobs each, pouring their savings into their first motel and then another and another. Eventually, they’d quit the other jobs and focused their energies on expanding their motel business. Once their green cards had come through, they’d brought their teenage children to LA and settled down there.

My in-laws were self-made, hardworking people, even now.

So it baffled me that my mother-in-law still held on to an antiquated custom in a country she, too, refused to call home. My own parents had addressed each other by name and a whole slew of endearments, including bawaji and bawiji, which most simplistically translated to “Parsi man” and “Parsi woman.”

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