A Bollywood Affair (27 page)

28

T
he door to Samir’s room flew open.

“She’s pregnant?” Three women came rushing in. The pregnant one was first, her huge belly pushing in front of her, Samir’s Baiji was next, and the woman carrying a plate of food must’ve been Lily Auntie, who was supposed to bring the food up by herself.

Mili’s hand flew to her mouth.

Samir tried to get between her and their gaping faces. “Everyone out. You need to leave. Now.”

The pregnant one grabbed his shoulders and bodily pushed him out of her way. “We will not. What is wrong with you?”

“Rima, you’re supposed to be taking it easy. What are you doing?” He looked so helpless, Mili’s heart twisted some more.

“She’s pregnant and she just fainted in our home. You want me to stay down?” Whoever this Rima person was, she glared at Samir as if he were an imbecilic child. Despite herself Mili wanted to smile.

“Both of you be quiet.” Samir’s Baiji, who had the kindest eyes, gave them both a silencing look and walked straight to Mili. She took the plate from Lily Auntie and held it in front of Mili. The food smelled so good that Mili nearly passed out again.

“First eat something,
beta.
Then we can talk.” She ran the gentlest hand over Mili’s head. The look on her face was so affectionate, so filled with motherly concern, that for no reason at all Mili’s stupid nose started to run and without a second’s notice more her eyes flooded and tears started to flow down her cheeks.

Rima took the plate out of Baiji’s hands and Baiji pulled Mili to her. Mili pressed her face into her shoulder, lost all semblance of dignity, and sobbed like a baby. The tears felt so good. For the past two months, the pain in her heart had been constant, unyielding, her loneliness ghastly and dark. These ten minutes, this past moment, it was more than she could handle.

Sobs rose from the deepest part of her and soaked through her dry, starving heart. She should have tried to stop herself but Baiji’s soft muslin sari felt so good against her face, her arms so soothing around her, Mili couldn’t bring herself to even try. Finally, she felt the wetness soak through Baiji’s sari beneath her cheek and embarrassment took over. She pulled away, feeling so incomparably stupid she couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Her head hurt and her eyes stung.

Samir tried to get closer to her but Rima placed one hand on his shoulder. Mili couldn’t tell if she was holding him away or trying to soothe him.

“Go downstairs,” Rima said in a voice that brooked no argument.

“Not on your life.”

“Samir, give her a few minutes. Listen to me.”

“No, you listen to me. I’m not going anywhere. But you’re leaving. All of you. Now.”

Baiji wiped Mili’s cheeks with her sari and turned to Samir.

“Are you telling your mother to get out?”

“No, Baiji, I’m asking. Mili and I need to talk. Please.”

“What is there to talk about? You’re going to be a father. Evidently you’ve done something to hurt this girl very badly and it’s made you so miserable these past few months you’ve made us all sick with worry. Now she’s here. You’re here. Make it right.”

For one brief moment Samir looked like he was going to smile. Mili felt like she was going to smile, but neither of them smiled.

“Baiji, I can’t make it right if you don’t give us two minutes to talk.”

“So talk,” Rima said, looking like she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Virat!” Samir hollered.

“I’m right here.” Apparently Virat had been in the room all along.

“Please take your wife downstairs. Or I’m going to pick her up and take her down myself.”

“I think you’ve done enough sweeping women off their feet for one day, thank you. Leave this one to me.” Virat leaned over, picked up his pregnant wife, and headed out the door.

“Lily Auntie, you too,” Samir said. “Because I’ll carry you down if I have to.”

Lily Auntie scampered out of the room, giggling into her palm.

“Put me down, Virat. Baiji is watching,” Rima hissed at her husband, but she seemed perfectly content where she was.

Baiji stood. “I just found out my son got a girl pregnant before marriage. I think I can handle watching the other one carry his wife down some stairs.” She patted Mili on the head and handed her the plate. “Before any talking there will be eating. First she finishes the food.” She gave Samir a stern look.

Baiji didn’t get an argument from Samir on that. He herded them out the door, and watched until they were well and truly gone. He pulled the door shut and waited there for a few seconds, then quickly opened it to make sure no one had sneaked back up.

Finally he turned to her. “I’m sorry about that.”

To keep from responding Mili forced a piece of roti into her mouth. And then couldn’t stop. The food was delicious but the taste brought back so many memories of Samir cooking for them she had to keep choking back the tears, which apparently had decided they had stayed away long enough. And choking back the impulse to seek him out with her eyes.

He stood motionless, his hip leaning against a huge desk that looked like something out of one of those good-living magazines, all solid wood and polished surfaces. The entire room looked like something out of a very fancy film, only warmer and suffused with something far too familiar, someone far too familiar. But between the potent silence and the rich-people décor, he might as well have been standing across the earth.

“How could you not have told me sooner?” he said the moment she put the last morsel in her mouth. He took the plate from her hands and put it on the nightstand. “How long have you known?”

“I am not . . . I’m not pregnant, Samir.”

Her imagination had to be in overdrive because she could have sworn she saw disappointment dim his eyes. “Then why did you say you were?”

“I didn’t. You asked me a question and your family—”

“Fu—” he trailed off and began pacing the room, his fingers in his overgrown hair.

She reminded herself how angry she was with him, how filthy he had made her feel. But the pain and loneliness of the past months had been like a sandstorm, eroding through the giant dunes of her anger.

He turned his molten gaze on her. That gaze with its wounded vulnerability had stolen her head once, made her fall on him like a hungry animal. Now it made rabid fear rise inside her.

“I’m sorry. They aren’t usually so obnoxious. It’s just that—Why did you pass out then? Are you—you’re not sick, are you?” Raw panic flashed across his face. Tenderness and longing melted in his eyes.

She had been in hell because of him. She could not let that look take her back there. “I’m fine. I just hadn’t eaten.”

“You hadn’t eaten?” Again that rawness in his voice, again that concerned caress of his gaze. She had to get away from him. Give him back his stupid
haveli
and just get away from him.

“Samir, please don’t. I can’t.” The sound of his name trembled on her lips, made her voice crack.

He stepped back and schooled his features into a mask. Not quite Pompeii, but he tried. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to . . . It’s just that—”

“Why did you sign the
haveli
over to me? You can’t do that.”

“It’s yours. Your
naani
was right to ask for it.”

“No, she wasn’t. You were right—there was never a marriage.”

His eyes softened. No, they more than softened, they bled with understanding. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m sorry you had to see Virat and Rima like that.”

Mili blinked. She had been startled when Virat had introduced himself. She hadn’t expected to see him here. But it was the near physical impact of seeing Samir again that had taken everything over. She wrapped her arms around her knees and pressed her face into them. Twenty years of thinking she loved someone and she hadn’t even registered meeting him. And Rima, so she was his wife—Samir’s
bhabhi.

Oh God.

How many times was she going to play those conversations in her head? How many times was she going to relive that month? From the first moment she had laid eyes on Samir she had been able to think of little else. And for most of that time the pain had been blinding. And here he was, looking at her in that way that had put her in this situation in the first place.

She got off his bed. “I already told you, you were right. We didn’t have a marriage.”

Samir didn’t respond. He just looked at her like he wished she would say more, like his life depended on her saying more.

She really had to get out of here before this went any further. He was too much of a slippery slope for her. “Please don’t put me through this again. I can’t have anything to do with you. Please.”

His face softened even more, and she knew he could see right through to the horrible storm inside her. “Mili—”

“No, Samir. No.” She put her hand up for him to stop, for him to stay away from her.

He stopped in his tracks. But he didn’t move back. “Just tell me what you want. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Take the
haveli
back. I don’t want it. You can’t just give me something that big.”

 

Samir had never in his adult life felt this helpless. She was turning him back into the whiny pushover he’d been as a child. But he wasn’t that pathetic child anymore. He could and would give her whatever the fuck he wanted. He had given her everything anyway. Everything that was his was already hers. It meant nothing without her. “I’m not taking the
haveli
back.”

“You gave her the
haveli?
” This time Virat barged into his room with a bowl in his hands.

“For God’s sake, Bhai, can you people at least knock?” He had never before raised his voice to his brother. Right now he had to fist his hands to keep from pushing him out of his room.

“You gave our ancestral property to a girl you got pregnant and you want me to knock?”

“Get out.”

Virat skirted around him as if he weren’t shouting like a madman and headed straight for Mili. He handed her a bowl of
kheer.
“Baiji sent me up with dessert. It’s crazy good.”

“Get out, Bhai, or God help me I will bodily throw you out.”

“You’ve never talked to your brother like that. What’s wrong with you?” Rima followed Virat into the room, one hand supporting her stomach.

Along with the anger already exploding inside him, terror gripped Samir in the gut. “Rima, you need to stay off your damn feet.”

From the look on Virat’s face he was on Samir’s side on this one. Thank God. The two of them grabbed Rima and pushed her into a chair.

“Baiji!” She had the gall to call for help.

“What is going on, Samir?” Baiji was at his bedroom door in an instant. She had always been spry but this was ridiculous.

Samir grabbed his head, then grabbed Mili’s hand and tried to pull her off the bed. “We’re going for a drive.”

Of course she didn’t comply.

“You are not going anywhere. She’s pregnant and she just fainted. She’s not going anywhere until she sees a doctor.” Baiji challenged him to argue with her and threw a protective look at Mili.

“You’re pregnant, Mili?” Great, now Kim was up here too.

“Should we take this downstairs? Why leave Sara out?” Samir stood between Mili and his family and glared at them. He was too afraid to look at Mili. She had looked so fragile before they had all come barging in.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Sara shouted from downstairs in a voice that did not belong to a woman who hadn’t been able to get a word out a few months ago. “Mili, you didn’t tell me you were pregnant.”

Samir grabbed his head and sat down on the bed next to Mili. He was about to let out another yell, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mili’s lips quirk. Not a whole lot, just a little bit. And for a moment, just for a flash, her eyes twinkled. She caught him looking. A sweet memory of how things had been passed between them. But then it was gone and she looked terrified by what had just happened.

Samir stood up, shielding her from all those curious eyes. He didn’t want anyone to see her like this, like a wounded animal. He faced his family. “Mili is not pregnant.” Then he shouted it down to Sara. “Mili’s not pregnant.”

“I heard you the first time. Keep going,” Sara shouted up.

Behind him he heard a sound. It was suspiciously close to a giggle. He spun around. Her hand was pressed into her mouth. Behind her delicate fingers hid the most beautiful thing—not quite her full-blast one-twenty-watt smile—but a smile nonetheless.

Samir forgot what he’d been saying.

“What are you talking about?” Baiji said behind him.

“Then why did you say she was?” Rima added.

Samir raised his eyes heavenward and her eyes sparkled. “I didn’t,” he said, soaking up her smile before turning around. “Anyway, the point is she’s not pregnant and she doesn’t need a doctor. What she needs is ten minutes to talk to me without having all of you violate every tenet of civilized behavior.”

“But why would you give her the
haveli
if she’s not pregnant?” Virat asked, ignoring Samir’s rant entirely.

“Why would he give her the
haveli
if she
were
pregnant?” Rima asked.

“He’s not giving me the
haveli,
” Mili said behind him, and walked around him to face everyone.

“I am,” Samir said.

“Why?” This from Baiji.

“Because her dowry saved it from being auctioned. It’s hers.”