From the corner of her eye, Simran notices a group of teenage boys playing lacrosse. She still wonders if she fell for Kunal during one of his lacrosse games, when his aggression and testosterone surge helped him win (the way they still do). Her mind drifts to the most significant game she attended, when they became a couple.
Kunal never directly asked her to be his girlfriend; like many relationships where both people are friends first, things fell into place in an unplanned way. There was no first date or “will you go out with me” routine. To her parents, the adolescent years were purely for academics, to earn that “My Child Is an Honor Student” bumper sticker. All Indian parents saw relationships as taboo (and all Indian children eventually learned how to sneak around). Romance was an inappropriate distraction, something she only had through books or television.
Not that she had a chance at romance, anyway. She spent many middle school dances in the dark corners while her fellow classmates swayed to songs by Savage Garden and *NSYNC. (Side note: her parents forbade her from attending said dances once they learned there was slow dancing. According to them, only married people were allowed to slow dance. She had to tell them slow dancing was “out of style” in order for them to allow her to attend prom.)
Luckily, by high school, she learned that:
1. Bringing rotli and chickpea curry for lunch is not the way to make friends at school.
2. Large, thick glasses don’t pair well with low self-esteem.
3. A bowl cut is never excusable on an adolescent girl trying to leave the dork days.
Starting at the beginning of freshman year, she had found Kunal attractive in a way that was difficult to explain and often negated by her friends. He wasn’t the kind of boy most girls would look at, more likely to be described as “cute” than “hot” but still distinctive, with a babyish face on a manly body. An anatomical paradox. He also didn’t match the complete list she had made of qualities a guy had to have, but those were influenced by Bollywood movies; Kunal was real, so naturally, he had a leg up.
For months, she was happy to keep her emotions confined in the margins of her class notes and in whispered conversations with her girlfriends. She and Sheila had to give him a code name—“Sonya”—so her family wouldn’t find out. She did what any other girl touched with unrequited love did: fantasized about him, overanalyzed their interactions, told herself no girl would ever like him the way she did, and memorized tiny details about him, like the heart-shaped birthmark under his left ear and the way he always shifted back and forth on his white Nikes when he was talking to someone.
Sure, they were friends—good friends—but she knew as well as anyone that people had lower expectations for their friends than for a potential significant other. And it wasn’t a cliché-dorky-girl-liking-popular-guy scenario; if anything, it was almost the opposite: girl liking nerd and not feeling brainy enough for him, considering his last girlfriend had been the Science Olympiad champion and first chair of the orchestra.
On some level, she was aware that she was special in her own way, should not want anyone who did not want her, and all those other lessons she metabolized through the final seconds of Full House episodes. She tried her best to tuck her hope away and find gratitude in their friendship. Perhaps she was too influenced by Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the revered Bollywood movie where two friends end up together after not seeing each other for years, but she imagined that, at the very least, Kunal would look back on her one day—preferably when she was worldly and accomplished—and see her as “the one who got away.”
But things changed sophomore year, two weeks before finals. She raced to the park from a newspaper editor meeting so that she could watch Kunal’s lacrosse game. That day was the championship game, so a lot of their mutual friends were there, which gave her an excuse to show her face and see him play for the first time.
Unfortunately, her meeting ran late and she got to the park just as the game was ending. The place smelled like a mixture of sweat and freshly cut grass. After the clusters of parents and players cleared the field, she jumped off the squeaky bleachers to congratulate Kunal. Instead of running to the bench, she dawdled at the base of the first bleacher, determined to wait until he was alone. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him remove his helmet and shake his curly hair in a way that reminded her of a Gatorade commercial.
She approached him and blurted that she thought he played well.
“Thanks,” he said, his dark eyes almost appearing lighter with the residual adrenaline rush.
As he removed his gloves, he exchanged a quick “good game” with two of the other players. The rest of the team usually went out for pizza or ice cream after each game, but Kunal headed straight home to study.
Before she could think of anything else to say, his best friend, Edward, approached them. Edward had a massive overbite and hunched shoulders, thanks to a perpetually overstuffed L.L.Bean book bag. He and Kunal often bored the rest of the group with their geeky science-is-the-reason-life-exists conversations. They compared—and often competed with—report cards, SAT scores, and, later, college applications. But unlike Kunal, Edward never cared for sports and spent most of his after-school time with the debate team.
They all usually hung out in a large group on weekends, playing board games in someone’s basement or wolfing down French fries at Chili’s. But that day, Edward was acting more awkward than usual and immediately mumbled something about needing to get home once he noticed that Kunal and Simran were talking.
“What’s up with him?” she asked Kunal.
Kunal tucked his lacrosse stick under his arm and looked down at her. “I think he felt weird.”
“Weird? About what?”
He shifted his eyes, uncomfortable with the question. “He thinks we flirt a lot.”
Really?!
This wasn’t the first time someone had shared this sentiment, but it was the first time she heard it from Kunal.
“That is weird,” she said, trying to be nonchalant by avoiding his gaze.
“I don’t think it is.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” he affirmed. “Because it’s true.”
There they were—clear, simple, to the point; three words she had been fantasizing about for over sixty days. Her legs vibrated, and she was pretty sure that the people in the parking lot could hear her heartbeat.
It’s true? It’s true that we flirt?
How long has that been happening?
OH! MY! GOD!
Then, before she could bombard herself with more questions, he leaned down and kissed her. She debated with herself on what to do, how to stand, where to look, but by the time she settled on a coy smile that would make Jane Austen proud, he grabbed her chin and planted another kiss on the tip of her nose. This time, she felt his salty sweat as everything around them faded.