“I love all my sisters the same,” Jia said loudly, then leaned in and continued in a whisper. “My twin, followed by our middle sister.”
“Ayesha and . . .” He thought for a second. “Sadia.”
“Wow, you do have a good memory.”
Only for things he cared about, but he didn’t want to spook either of them by admitting that. “It’s from years of memorizing lines.”
“Sadia’s the one I identify the most with, probably. She’s all married and happy now, but she bucked my parents to marry the guy she loved when she was like twenty.”
“How did they take that?”
Jia glanced away. “They disowned her for a few years. Came around when she had my nephew and then really reconciled when her first husband passed away. But it was scary. I was only, like, thirteen, and I barely got to see her for years.”
Dev’s heart cracked a little. He’d seen the effects of parental estrangement in his own life. “That’s terrible.” For the first time, he wondered how his uncle had felt when his brother had been banished. Had the infamous playboy cried? Had he tried to see his brother? “Is that why . . . ?” He trod a little delicately. “Is that why you’re so eager to please your parents?”
She came to a halt at a stoplight. He moved closer to her. He told himself it was for protection, though there wasn’t much in the way of danger here. “I don’t think they’d ever do that again. They regret cutting her off.”
“But the fear is still there.”
“Yes.”
“I understand.”
“I suppose you do understand rigid family members.”
A car honked and Dev jolted. He’d forgotten that they were in a public place, while he’d been spilling family secrets. “We should head back to the garage,” he murmured.
“Yes, let’s do that. I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Time flies when you’re eating pancakes, I suppose.” Their walk back to the garage was quiet. He gave her a sideways glance when they approached her car.
“I can drive you home,” she blurted out.
“No, I’ll take a car.” It was already intimate, her coming to his home to fetch him. Her driving him back smacked far too much of a proper date. Especially combined with all the soul baring they’d done this evening. “Getting into your car is a struggle,” he teased, trying to lighten the mood.
It worked; she chuckled. He opened her car door for her. “Well, good night. I’ll see you soon.” He hoped he saw her soon. He started to extend his hand to her, but Jia took another step forward, closing the distance between them.
The hug was so fleeting and quick, he might have imagined it had he not taken the split second to imprint the feel of her whole body, from chest to thighs.
Dev didn’t go around hugging women in public, and he told himself that was the reason he stood there like a shell-shocked buffoon until his brain kicked into gear. He wrapped his arms around her and gave her a little squeeze. Warmth filled him, taking up all the empty spots inside him.
He inhaled, absorbing the delicate floral scent Jia wore. He let her go the moment her arms started to loosen. He wanted to ask what that had been. A pity hug? A friend hug? A business hug?
An I’m Interested in You for Real hug?
But he couldn’t ask any of those things because he feared the answer. So he merely stepped away.
“Good night,” she almost whispered and got in the car.
“Night,” he repeated. He watched her drive away, wondering if that was his fate for the immediate future. Watching her drive away after she’d doled out a small crumb of affection.
He pressed his hand against his chest. He feared even if it was, he would take it.
Chapter Thirteen
Tuesday 1:25 P.M.
Jia: do you like magic?
Dev: Is this an American pickup line?
J: Ha, no.
D: Magic stresses me out. I spend all my time trying to figure out how they do it.
J: Ah
D: Why?
J: someone offered me tickets to a show
D: I’ll come with you
J: No, I don’t want to stress you out!
D: It’s okay if you enjoy it, I will enjoy it.
J: It wouldn’t work anyway. There’s too many people there. Cameras.
D: Okay, scratch that.
J: I’ll come up with something more remote before then.
D: Yes, we should get to know each other more. Before your parents come.
Thursday, 8:22 P.M.
D: What are you doing?
J: Working. What about you?
D: Also working. Night shoot downtown.
J: Cool. I love seeing shoots.
D:
You will have to come sometime.
What are you working on?
J: Trying to work up some pitches for various brands. My metrics have been slipping a lot lately.
D: I’m sorry to hear that.
Thursday, 10:45 P.M.
J: What did you do??
D: What?
J: My mentions started getting flooded, and when I traced it back, it started with your old costar tagging me and raving about one of my videos??
D: I simply told her my niece thinks you are cool. It’s not a lie. I did not ask her to promote you.
J: This is going to look suspicious. People will put two and two together.
D: They won’t.
People see what they want to see.
J: . . . that’s true, I suppose.
D: Are you upset?
J: No. This is sweet. One tag won’t get me back to where I was, but you met my weekly goal in about twenty minutes so thanks, haha.
D: Not a problem.
Friday Morning
Jia woke up to her phone ringing. She groped for it on the pillow next to her head, then sat straight up. Ayesha! Finally. “I’ve called you a million times. What have you been doing?” Jia hissed, as soon as her twin’s face popped up on her phone.
“What have you been doing?” Ayesha yelped. “I go camping for a couple weeks and come back to all hell having broken loose.”
“Maybe that’ll teach you not to go camping.” She and her twin had always been glued at the hip, but when Jia had quit med school, their paths had diverged. It was weird to see Ayesha in their old shared bedroom alone, but also a relief that she herself wasn’t in that bedroom.
“Um, trust me, I’m never going camping again for other reasons.” Ayesha scratched at an obvious mosquito bite on her cheek. She was dressed sedately, in monochromatic colors, a gray long-sleeved dress and a gray cotton scarf wrapped around her hair. Ayesha preferred things she could mix and match easily. She was too focused on other priorities, like her career, to care about clothes.
Jia was aware that Ayesha was about as close to a perfect Pakistani American daughter as could be, but she’d never felt any envy or anger at her twin for that. If anything, she’d tried to emulate her, as her parents had always told her to do. Unfortunately, that had always led to her eventually growing bored. A bored Jia wasn’t a good thing. It led to her starting a tiny empire in her bedroom, for example. “You didn’t enjoy it like you thought you would?”
“Worst rebellion against our parents ever. They were right, they didn’t cross the ocean so their daughters could go sleep outside.”
Jia’s lips curled up. “I can teach you better ways to rebel.”