“Ayesha.”
That was it. Just that one word. Her name. In a voice that was its own ghost.
She squeezed her eyes shut. One tight squeeze. Tight enough to hurt, tight enough to almost dislodge the false eyelashes Andre had pressed into her lash line one by one with the precision of a surgeon. Then boom! she was in control again and back to Ayesha on Ice.
Eyes blank, face set, she turned toward the voice.
Emmitt.
The impact of him was a body blow.
The entire universe stilled. Words weren’t a thing. Or sound. Breath? What was that?
Ayesha! Get a grip.
No grip. That’s how it had always been. She’d had no grip when it came to Emmitt Hughes. Not even a little bit. Not when she’d spied on him and Ajay playing Mario Kart and Minecraft and GTA for hours, for years. Not when she’d yearned and dreamed and spun stories with him at the center.
I’ve made my love for you, my god.
It was the cheesiest of lines from one of those Bollywood songs her parents had played on repeat at the restaurant. Amma had loved translating the over-the-top lyrics and explaining their nuances.
Back when Amma was full of stories and songs and laughter. Before Ajay.
Ajay.
Her brother’s unspoken name fell between them like a glass bauble and shattered.
“You remember Emmitt,” Edward had the gall to say.
Bela shot him a glare.
You didn’t tell me he would be here. Ayesha threw the silent accusation at her traitorous best friend, who gave her nothing more than another worried look.
No, Eddie. Remind me again who he is? The snarky words stuck in Ayesha’s throat. Old Ayesha would have said them. Old Ayesha said everything.
“Emmitt,” New Ayesha said, every feeling buried under her customer-is-king voice from the restaurant. “Nice to see you again.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in the long column of his throat. How was he still so darned beautiful?
One swallow, and then he smiled back. Banking feelings where no one saw them had been his thing. Emmitt the Wall. That’s what Ajay had called him. Her brother had been best friends with him since Emmitt had moved to Naperville in fifth grade after his parents’ divorce. Years of friendship, and he’d still held Ajay at that slight distance he’d been so good at. Something she would always wish she hadn’t cured him of.
You broke me, Ayesha. You broke every defense I’ve ever had against the world.
She, Ayesha Shetty—too tall, too dark, too outspoken, too intense, too ambitious, too everything for everyone else had been just enough to break through Emmitt the Wall.
“It’s nice to see you too,” he said gently, sounding . . . she dug through her brain to come up with the right word. Grown up? Contained?
Good. Because Ayesha was all those things now too. Not a grenade with its fuse pulled, ready to blow up the world.
“Oy, look! It’s Amit!” Bela’s father, Raj Uncle, bustled up to them, huge smile splitting his round face.
And just like that, they were all smiling.
“It’s Emmitt, Papa! Eh-mitt,” Bela scolded with no real heat. She was no longer embarrassed by her father’s heavy accent the way she’d been when they were younger. The way all the desi kids had been embarrassed by their parents when they were younger and now regretted.
“Amit . . . Aah-mitt! That’s how I’m saying, Bela!” Raj Uncle repeated and shook Emmitt’s hand with the kind of warmth that had made every desi kid in Naperville wish they’d been born into the Gupte family. Actually, every kid in Naperville, desi or not, had wanted that. Parents who were thrown by none of the stunts Bela and her little brother, Bipin, pulled, no matter how wild. Parents who let their children’s friends gather in their home and be as noisy, as hungry, as messy as they wished. Parents with a pool, and the coolest basement theater with a popcorn machine, and a fridge that was always stocked.
But it wasn’t just the material things. The Guptes always seemed to have time for their children and their friends, and very little of that disapproval all the other parents came wrapped up in, with her amma at the top of that list. They knew every child’s name, even though Dr. Gupte mispronounced each one and transformed it into an Indian name. This wasn’t easy with how popular Bela and Bipin had always been. There were a lot of names to mispronounce.
“Advaid,” Raj Uncle said to Edward. “How you never told me that Amit will be at wedding?” He patted his chest. “So much my heart is filled up to see all of you together again. Here. Home.” Then, giving up on holding it together, he wrapped Emmitt up in the biggest hug. “Welcome home, young man, welcome home!”
Emmitt the Wall, all six feet, four inches of him, leaner now than in his wrestling days but still built like Captain Effing America, squeezed him back, and when he pulled away, his eyes—eyes the blue of Ayesha’s grandmother’s sapphires—were wet. Her dodha’s cursed sapphires that Ayesha had begged her for despite the stories of the bad luck they brought because they were his blue.
“Thank you. I don’t know how I stayed away so long,” Emmitt said, eyes on Ayesha, thick lashes spiked with moisture.
It was a touching reunion and everything. But Ayesha knew. She knew why he’d stayed away, why he had left. It had been the greatest kindness. She’d asked him—pleaded with him—to leave, and he had. It’s how she had survived these past seven years.
Nothing had changed. Even now, looking at him pulled every cell in her being into one cohesive whole. Yes, Emmitt being gone was still essential to her survival.
Amma’s smile. The joy that had glittered in her eyes when she talked about Dr. Lady Parts. Risking that was not an option. Whatever it was that had helped Emmitt stay away, Ayesha hoped it took him back as soon as the wedding was done.
Chapter Three
Her buzzing phone cut through the time warp spinning around Ayesha. She disengaged from the group, and from Emmitt’s disconcertingly unaltered gaze, and found a quiet corner inside the house where the DJ’s sound checks weren’t quite as loud.
“Have you met him yet?” Amma wasn&#x 2019;t one for openers, preferring instead to start conversations square in the middle.
“What?” Ayesha lifted the louver of a blind and stared out at the group she’d just left, heart hammering. Emmitt was still staring at the door she’d disappeared through.
“Ayesha!” Amma said with the kind of impatience Ayesha hadn’t heard in her voice in years. Her before voice. It yanked Ayesha back to reality. “Your dodha just called to tell me that Dr. Samrat’s dodha told her that he is very excited to meet you. You cannot mess this up, kinni!”
The time warp had to be real, because her mother sounded downright autocratic now. The tone she’d used years back to let Ayesha know that she’d throw her out if she even thought about Emmitt as anything but her brother’s best friend.
You will be dead to me.
I’m your daughter, Amma!
And parents lose children all the time.
How absurd it had all sounded back then. Not in Ayesha’s wildest dreams had she imagined that fate could be cruel enough to make them pay so dearly.
Fighting with her mother, standing up for what she wanted, how easy it had all seemed. If choosing to love Emmitt meant being dead to her mother, then she would’ve gladly chosen it.