Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(112)

“I spoke with Mishka. She told me that she met, you know—”

“The evil ex-Barbara,” Trisha supplied.

“You knew.”

Trisha was tired enough to deny it. But she couldn’t.

“How could you not tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“That my husband went out with his ex.”

Trisha rubbed her eyes. “Are you listening to yourself, Nisha? She’s his ex. E X. It’s Neel. The guy worships the ground you walk on. He paints your toenails! He sits through Ma’s postmortems. He massages Aji’s feet when she’s tired. Takes Mishka on dad evenings. Carries fashion emergency stashes for me because I can’t pick my own clothes out. He hasn’t ever hurt you or anyone in the family by word or action. Ever. Why isn’t that enough? What more do you want him to do? You might have seen him cry over someone ten years ago, but I saw him cry over hurting you today. And if anyone ever felt that way about me, I’d be brave enough to believe it.”

Great, now she’d made her pregnant sister cry even more. She reached out and touched Nisha’s shoulder. “Listen, remember how you told me that sometimes you have to be brave and put yourself out there? You also have to be brave to accept what you have, even if you’re terrified of losing it. Because not everyone gets what they want in the first place.”

Here she was delivering a long speech even though she was tired enough to pass out, and Nisha wasn’t even paying attention. She was staring openmouthed over Trisha’s shoulder. “Is there someone on your balcony?”

Trisha spun around and followed her gaze. Yipes! There really was someone on her balcony. A burst of adrenaline broke through her drowsiness and she jumped out of the car.

Nisha followed her out. “Neel?” Nisha shouted up at him. “What are you doing on Trisha’s balcony? And what’s wrong with your arm?”

He waved with his left hand. His right hand was hugged to his side at an awkward angle. “Can you come up and let me in? I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder. I climbed up the balcony to see you.”

Nisha ran into the building, Trisha close on her heels.

“Slow down, Nisha. The baby.”

“Shhh,” Nisha shushed her and they made their way up in the elevator to the second floor. Trisha thanked the gods for the day she had decided not to wait for the fourth-floor condo to become available.

NO ONE EVER talks about how weird it is to see your siblings making out with someone. Almost as weird as watching your parents do it.

Nisha and Neel wouldn’t stop kissing.

Which had to be hard to do with a dislocated shoulder. Which apparently was easy to do when you tried to climb up to a second-floor balcony when you were pushing forty. Trisha didn’t say that to him, though. Or maybe she did. Also, he’d done it with two dozen roses stuck down the back of his shirt. Those things had thorns!

When Neel tried to prove a point, he really tried to prove a point.

“It’s only you for me,” he said to Nisha. “Please don’t shut me out.”

That made Nisha cry again. Trisha too sniffed into one of the last remaining tissues in her home. Then Nisha told him she was pregnant. Thank God.

“I swear I was not trying,” she said sniffling into his shoulder, the one that wasn’t dislocated. “It just happened.”

Since they were being gross and swapping tongues again, Trisha left them in her room and threw herself onto the futon in her office.

“Nisha, sweetheart. I know. This is . . . it’s great. Why didn’t you just tell me? I would’ve come back,” she heard her favorite brother-in-law in the whole wide world say from the next room.

“I didn’t want you to come back. I didn’t want you to even know for another few days. But it’s . . . it’s almost safe. In two days it will be safe.”

“It’s going to be okay, baby. We have each other. We have Mishka. We have the Farm. It’s going to be okay.”

Then silence, which meant they were tongue swapping again.

“Go get his shoulder looked at,” Trisha shouted. It was the last thing she remembered doing before she fell into a boneless sleep.





Chapter Thirty-One


When Trisha woke up the next morning, Nisha was gone. Which felt strange. Having someone stay with you for two weeks altered your routines. She automatically pulled two cups out of the cabinet before popping her pod in the coffee machine, then put one back. For the first time in her adult life the idea of being alone made her lonely.

Nisha had left a sticky note on the machine saying “Went home with a hot judge. Go back to bed, you need sleep.”

She texted her sister to check if all was well and then opened her fridge and stared at its contents. Would she ever be able to think about food without thinking about DJ? Would she ever be able to do anything without thinking about DJ?

It was her day off, but of course she was going to go in to the hospital. She had to take care of things before she left for Africa—naturally she’d been able to talk Entoff into letting her go—and make sure everything with Emma was in order before she got on that plane. It wasn’t the thought of seeing Emma, however, that was making her heart chirrup like the myna birds in the Sagar Mahal aviary.

Her intercom buzzed and she jumped off her barstool in fright. She wasn’t expecting anyone.