“Have you met Dr. Samrat Hegde?” Bela said as Emmitt joined the circle. “He was just telling us how long a cervix can stay dilated at five centimeters.”
Emmitt’s brows disappeared into the hair falling over his forehead. “That’s . . . fascinating.”
“Oh hey, that’s the guy—” Samrat pointed his glass at Emmitt.
“I’m Emmitt.” Cutting him off, Emmitt pumped his hand vigorously. “So, how long does an . . . umm . . . cervix . . .” He swallowed. “Do that?”
“Do what, Emmitt?” Bela asked sweetly.
“Stay . . .” Emmitt the Wall turned to the doctor again, reaching for all his stoicism. “Di . . . dilated.”
He looked so tortured that Ayesha had to fight her smile, and the brutal warmth that gripped her heart.
“Five centimeters seems like the sticking point,” Samrat declared yet again, making Emmitt take a shaky step away from him.
“I went from zero to ten in one hour,” an auntie said. “But you know what that means? You start pushing too early, and then”—she made a splitting action with her hands—“I tore in the way of a threadbare sari.” She pointed at her crotch, lest anyone miss the body part starring in her metaphor.
“I had fifteen stitches,” another auntie offered.
“I had twelve internal and twelve external.” This auntie raised ten fingers. What the action lacked in accuracy, it made up for in impact.
Samrat’s face lit up. Edward and Emmitt turned varying shades of green. Bela and Ayesha pressed hands into their bellies.
“Mine passed meconium in utero, and the doctor had to puncture the amniotic membrane.” The auntie with fifteen stitches, who used her hands with the deftness of a kathak dancer, held her hands twelve inches apart. “The instrument they use looks just like a giant crochet needle.”
Samrat took a savoring sip of his drink. “We can’t very well leave the baby in its own feces.”
A sound between horror and a laugh spurted out of Ayesha.
Emmitt turned to her as if the sun had just pushed through the clouds.
“We must mingle.” Bela grabbed a very grateful Eddie and dragged him away, making a gagging face behind Samrat as she left.
“All this talk of childbirth has made me want to dance,” an auntie said. “Come on!”
“In a bit,” Ayesha and Emmitt said together, and Ayesha’s cheeks warmed again.
“Don’t you like to dance?” Samrat asked her, his tone making it clear how much he liked it himself. A point in his favor. He wasn’t bad looking. But that rat-in-scrubs image just wouldn’t get out of Ayesha’s head.
She shrugged.
He mistook her lack of enthusiasm for demureness, because he grabbed her hand. “Don’t be shy. I can teach you.”
Emmitt cleared his throat. Could he please stop doing that?
She disengaged her hand from Samrat’s, avoiding Emmitt’s gaze. “Maybe later.”
A bhangra number started, and Samrat’s shoulders started bobbing. He threw a longing look at the dance floor, where the aunties were beckoning wildly.
“Go ahead,” Ayesha said. “I’m happy to watch you.”
With a grateful smile, he was gone with admirable speed.
“He’s a catch,” Emmitt said, voice growly.
He was, actually. But with the way her body was feeling standing this close to Emmitt, she couldn’t say it.
Her lack of response seemed to intensify the growliness in Emmitt’s voice. “Fascinating conversationalist too.”
“Nothing wrong with loving your job.” Yes, she snapped it.
His brows rose again, emphasizing the heavy fall of his hair. It had always been impossible to keep it off his forehead. She’d loved pushing it back, exposing his whole face.
“How’s your writing going?” he asked.
The question landed like a punch to her ribs. Her arms wrapped around herself.
His eyes softened. His jaw hardened.
Turning around, she walked away from him, needing to put distance between them. Please don’t follow me.
“Ayesha, wait.” God, why did his voice have to slide down her skin like a damned monsoon shower in stifling heat? “I’m sorry.”
Why are you sorry? she wanted to scream. I pushed you away. I broke your heart. I took your work away from you. Why are you sorry?
But she did stop, and he walked around her and faced her. “Don’t you say anything you feel anymore?”
I don’t feel anything anymore. “No.” She broke into a run, making her way into the house.
This time he didn’t follow.
It had taken him all of fifteen minutes to unravel her and see all there was to see about New Ayesha.
Coming back to the Gupte house was a bad idea. She wasn’t ready for the memories, wasn’t ready to be New Ayesha here, where Old Ayesha had thrived.
After locking herself in the powder room, she stared into the mirror. The character-in-front-of-a-mirror scene. One of the first discussions they’d had in her creative writing class at the College of DuPage. Starting a book with a scene like that was the laziest way to describe a character, Professor Bahri had said. And yet, every story had to have a scene where the character questioned their identity, a metaphorical mirror scene.
When Professor Bahri had given them an assignment to write one, Ayesha had missed the point and written something extravagantly dramatic about someone witnessing a murder in a mirror.
That drama had nothing on this. One look at Emmitt and she couldn’t glance at herself in the mirror without seeing him too.
Resisting the urge to splash her face with water and pull her curls into a bun, she turned away from the mirror and left the bathroom, restlessness dodging her steps.
Her phone buzzed with a text from her mother, who hated texting.
And?
And Ayesha needed to shake off this need to seek Emmitt out, to have him shake the words she’d lost out of her, to touch him.
Stop worrying, Amma, she texted back.
She needed to find Samrat and erase the scrub-clad-rat image. But instead of the backyard, her feet carried her to the basement. One step in there and her heart started hammering.
The cavernous space hadn’t changed one bit. A copper bar spanned one wall. Next to it a parquet dance floor gleamed under a disco ball. They’d danced night after night away here.
The way Emmitt had looked at her when Samrat had asked if she liked to dance did a slow spin inside her head.
She’d loved few things more than dancing. Bela and she had performed their hip-hop versions of Bollywood numbers as a team at every talent show and won every time.
Emmitt the Wall had been surprisingly good on the dance floor.
Mostly I just love to hold you when you dance.
Thorns collected in her throat.
The need to have his hands on her collected deep in her belly, along with the need to let the music take her again, free her from herself.
She passed the room where Emmitt had spent that summer. Where she’d forced him to sneak her in. Where she’d given him no choice but to relieve her of her virginity.
Just like she’d forced him to leave, after the three happiest years of her life.
Now he was back. Here in this house.
The corridor that led to the cellar came alive with memories as she crossed it.