“I thought you said you and Jay didn’t have a relationship.” Parvati pulled a tub of ice cream from her shopping bag and tossed it to Zara.
“Spoon?”
“I thought your heart was broken and not your legs.” She headed for the kitchen. Parvati talked tough but she was a softie inside.
“I can’t get up when I’m in the depths of despair.” Zara collapsed back on the couch. “Why would he say that to me, Parvati? Why?”
“Because he loves you, I guess. That’s what people say when they fall in love.”
“But he can’t love me. I made it very clear that I was unlovable and that I couldn’t love him back. Everyone else has followed the rules. Why couldn’t he?”
“Hmmm.” Parvati tapped a spoon to her lips. “Could it be . . . ? Perhaps it’s because . . . I think . . .”
“He loves me,” Zara said with a dejected sigh.
“Bingo.” Parvati joined her on the couch and handed her the spoon. “It’s not something people can control.”
“But why?” she moaned. “I was looking for his perfect match. And then we got a bit distracted by our sexual chemistry. But we both understood that it wasn’t going to last forever. Nothing lasts forever. He would have gotten tired of having sexy times in all sorts of different places, and I would have gotten bored of having multiple orgasms, and we would have gone our separate ways.”
“Except it wasn’t just about sex.” Parvati pulled the lid off a second ice cream container. “You had fun together. He went to see you rehearse because it’s what you love to do. He took you to the City Club knowing that you’d go crazy when you saw Lin-Manuel Miranda. You—and I still can’t believe this—went on a hike because it made him happy. That give-and-take is called . . . wait for it . . . a relationship.”
“It’s a disaster.” Zara popped open her container. “He’s emotionally vulnerable. His mom is in the hospital. He has PTSD. This is not the right time for him to fall in love.” Her breath caught when an idea occurred to her. “Maybe he isn’t really in love. It’s just his illness talking. He thinks he loves me because he needs a connection, but now that I’m gone, he’ll realize it wasn’t real and we can go back to things the way they were. I should probably start looking for matches for him. I did promise to find him someone by the end of the season.”
“I’m pretty sure that despite the fact he’s not in a good place right now, his feelings for you are real,” Parvati said. “His eyes light up when he sees you. When we were hiking, all he cared about was showing you the waterfalls and the flowers and the damn birds and plants. If Faroz hadn’t kept pulling me into bushes and behind trees for hot forest sex, I would have been bored out of my mind. Jay wanted to share his joy with you. He wanted you to be happy. Do you know what Faroz said?”
“If you tell me, will you have to kill me?”
Parvati laughed. “He told me a long story about some CIA spies who met at Quantico but could never be together because they were always sent to different parts of the world. But every time they crossed paths, they realized their feelings hadn’t changed. Finally, they quit the agency and got married. Of course, it ended badly as all Faroz’s stories do. Some Russian agent found them and slit their throats while they were sleeping. But they died together. That’s the point.”
Zara glared at her. “That’s the worst story I’ve ever heard. Was that supposed to cheer me up? Are you telling me that if I hook up with Jay, some Russian agent is going to come and slit our throats, but it’s okay if we’re dead because that’s true love?”
Parvati sighed. “The point was they were meant to be together.”
“I’m not meant to be with anyone. That’s what I told him. I thought he understood that. I thought we were having a good time. And then . . .” She opened and closed her fist in the air. “Bombshell. I love you. Way to ruin a good thing.”
“You do realize that you’ve never done this after any other breakup.” Parvati licked her spoon. “There has never been any sobbing through Les Misérables while stuffing your face with ice cream. What do you think that means?”
Zara shrugged. “No one else ever said I love you.”
“You never gave anyone else a chance.” She put her feet up on the table and grabbed the remote. Usually Zara found something else to do when Parvati started flipping through crime shows and autopsy cases, but tonight they suited her mood.
She ate a spoonful of ice cream, but didn’t register the taste. “So, you’re saying it was opportunistic? If I’d given anyone else a chance, they would have fallen in love with me, too?”
Parvati paused at a true crime show. “I’m saying you let him in for a reason. You gave him that chance for a reason. Some part of you knew you could trust him with your heart. Now you’re hurting because that’s what happens when you love someone, and you can’t be with them anymore.”
When you love someone . . .
“Oh God.” Her heart skipped a beat, stuttered in her chest. She knew this feeling. The sickening devastation of loss. The terror of the unknown. The uncertainty about a future in which love wasn’t forever—it stopped.
At least she had thought it stopped.
But if it stopped, she wouldn’t be here on the couch eating too much ice cream and preparing herself to weep uncontrollably from the start of Valjean’s soliloquy to the moment he walked into the beautiful candlelight. Instead, she would be at her father’s loft celebrating that one of her cousins got a B-plus on a test—her father used any excuse for a party so he could play his drums and dance.
“Parvati . . .”
“Took you a while.” She scooped some more ice cream from her container.
“It hurts but it’s not destroying me.” She made a quick silent assessment of her body. No pain. No bruises. No restricted mobility. No weak joints or trembling hands. Yes, her heart ached, and yes, she felt sad. But with a little ice cream and some sorrowful singing, she had a feeling she’d be okay.
“That’s because you’re not eleven years old.” Parvati settled on a rerun of Autopsy: Confessions of a Medical Examiner and relaxed back on the couch. “You are in control of your life. You can make your own choices. You can write your own story—or musical, since it’s you we’re talking about. You can give this one a happy ending.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Her voice rose in agitation. “I crushed him, Parv. He said he loved me and I ran out of there like Hamilton tickets were on sale.”
Parvati tore her gaze away from the chainsaw-wielding medical examiner. “I hope you didn’t break anything on your way out.”