Putting most of the muffins in a large plastic container, she’d driven out to the site where he was working and called him to meet her in the parking lot. The security and safety signs made it clear no one was to enter the site without the requisite gear.
He’d walked out in dusty jeans and an equally dusty dark gray T-shirt, a battered brown tool belt around his hips. On his head had been a white hard hat that bore a couple of dents and scratches. His trusty work boots had completed the look. Sweaty and a little scowly from the strain of managing the business while worrying about his father, he’d looked better than any dream she’d ever had.
“I made you muffins,” she’d said when he reached her, feeling suddenly and oddly shy. “Banana walnut. And extras for your crew.”
A strange, unsmiling look… before he’d taken off his hard hat and kissed her so deep that her head spun. “You’re destroying me, Nayna Sharma.”
He’d just stepped back, Nayna’s heart thunder and the unvarnished masculine scent of him in her lungs, when a skinny man with ropy muscles and tattoos on both arms poked his head out from around the safety fencing and said, “Hey! Are you the one who thinks the boss is a sexy hunk?”
As Raj groaned, Nayna had found herself laughing, her shyness disappearing under the force of her need to claim Raj. “Yes!” she’d called out. “And a hot fling!”
“Crikey.” The man had scratched at his chin. “You done all right, boss. I guess I better keep reading that Sense and Shampoo book.”
“I think you need more work, Tino,” Raj had threatened darkly.
The other man had grinned. “Nah! I’m having a legal-like smoke-o.” But he’d wandered off to take his coffee break elsewhere, no doubt while spreading the news of the boss’s girl.
Raj had kissed her again before he left, his eyes impenetrable in a way that haunted her. But later in the day, he’d messaged to say that his crew had demolished the muffins and asked for more. “Good thing I took out two for myself before the others smelled your baking,” he’d written. “Tasted great.”
A simple message. Pragmatic even. Certainly not romantic.
Except he’d added a heart at the end.
Nayna kept glancing at that heart every so often. Raj was a bluntly honest man, up-front and strong. He wasn’t much for soft words. For him to add a heart to a message…
She hugged the warm glow of it close.
“Muffins later.” Her grandmother’s firm tone dragged her back to the present. “First, what are you going to do about this marriage business?” She took a sip of the tea Nayna had made her. “You know all four of them are talking about it anytime they’re together.” Putting down the teacup, she smoothed a hand down the dark green of her newest velour tracksuit. “That Dhiraj man has even found an opening in the bookings for his ugly golf building.”
Nayna had never wanted to get married inside, much less in a building designed in the seventies, with the attendant décor—complete with avocado-colored walls and orange linoleum that had been lovingly restored by Raj’s Dhiraj uncle. Outside, in the air, where she could breathe, that’s what Nayna wanted for her wedding when the time came.
Putting aside her laptop, she leaned forward with her forearms on her thighs. “I’m hoping they’ll come to their senses when Mr. Sen’s recovered. He’s very emotional right now.”
Her grandmother made a sound distinctly similar to a snort. “What he is, is a wily old goat.”
“He was hurting and panicking when he asked us,” Nayna began.
“He might’ve been,” Aji conceded, “but he also knew this was his one chance to get his own way. I mean, imagine the good luck of having a heart attack just when you need to convince your son to hurry his wedding along. No point wasting such a golden opportunity.”
Nayna stared at her grandmother. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Someone had to!” Aji huffed. “Now bring me that muffin.”
After demolishing half of it, she picked up the thread of their conversation again. “Indian parents, they’re very good at guilt.”
“You’re an Indian parent,” Nayna pointed out. “And you’re not—”
“That’s because I’m your grandmother,” Aji interrupted. “Ask your father how good I am at the guilt.” Her eyes twinkled. “I asked Madhuri’s doctor about this type of surgery, and he said it is a serious thing but that many, many people have the surgery every day. Raj’s father isn’t on his deathbed.”
Nayna slumped back against the sofa, swallowed hard. “But what if?” That was the crux of it and the real reason she hadn’t pushed back so far. “What if he’s one of the ones where it all goes wrong? Raj would never forgive himself if we’d denied his last wish.”
Her grandmother finished off the muffin before saying, “Are Raj’s feelings that important to you?”
“Yes.” The answer didn’t take any thought. “I see the future and I see him,” she whispered. “He’s the only man I can ever imagine myself marrying.” It should, then, have been a simple decision. “I just… I just wanted a little time to grow into my own skin, a little time to be plain old Nayna Sharma before becoming Mrs. Raj Sen.”
The wedding garland would bring with it the traditions and expectations that came with being the wife of a man who was the eldest son of his house, a man who was respected in the community for his acuity in business as well as his dedication to his family. Nayna loved all of that about Raj. Every tiny bit.
“I want to be Raj’s wife,” she said, the confession a rasp of sound, her throat was so tight. “But I don’t want to be Mrs. Sen, the woman who never puts a step wrong and is a paragon of a daughter-in-law, a woman the community looks to and points out to their daughters as an example.” Again, the feeling of constriction, the sound of cage doors slamming shut.
“But your Raj comes with tradition,” Aji murmured. “As Mr. Darcy did with his great big estate and all the responsibilities it meant.” A gentle smile that reminded Nayna of all the times Aji had watched the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with her. “To love one part of him is to love the other.”
She closed a soft hand over Nayna’s. “I think this boy, he is a good one. He doesn’t deserve a wife who looks always to the past and mourns what she might’ve had.” Aji wiped away the tears Nayna hadn’t felt herself shedding. “If you can’t go to him with an open heart, then love him enough to let him go.”
43
Avocado-Green Walls & the Time of Disco
Her grandmother’s words were still ringing around in Nayna’s head two weeks later when Jitesh Sen’s health took a sudden turn for the worse as a result of a rare complication that landed him back in surgery. The surgery didn’t last as long this time, but it was exactly as traumatic for the family.
When the medical staff brought him out onto the ward, he looked grayer, more diminished. Nayna knew that would pass, that he’d get his strength back, but she could see her own fear and worry magnified a thousand times over in the faces of his family—and in the faces of her own parents. They had truly come to embrace Raj’s family as their own.
She waited until she was alone with Raj to bring up the subject they’d been avoiding of late. It was the next day, as the two of them walked a wide corridor in a part of Auckland Hospital that was drenched in natural light. Sangeeta Sen and Aditi had been granted permission to sit with Jitesh Sen for the next half hour.
“Let’s get married,” she said.
Raj’s head jerked toward her, his dark hair tumbled and his eyes shadowed by purplish bruises. “It’s not what you want.”
Nayna closed her fingers over his fisted hand. “I told my grandmother that when I look into my future, I see you.” That part of things felt right, so right.
Raj was hers and Nayna was never going to give him up. And she wouldn’t look back. Her grandmother was right—doing that would fundamentally damage their relationship. She’d take this terrifying step into the unknown with hope and faith in what they were to each other. “I want to be your wife.”
* * *