Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(123)

Trisha sat down close to Ma and snuggled up to her. “But there were so many little slips. Like when I yelled at you when you got a bad grade in that art class instead of sympathizing with how hard it must have been. You loved art class so much.”

But she had sucked at it.

Ma smiled another wistful smile and took another sip of Trisha’s wine. “Or like when I asked Nisha how she could have done something as stupid as run a stop sign when I should have asked her how she was after she totaled that car her junior year. But she was calling me. Of course I knew she was okay. I can always tell from your voices, you know.”

She wrapped her arm around Trisha’s shoulders and rubbed. “Especially this one. Her voice gets dry and raspy as though in trying to hide her sadness she strips it of everything.”

Warmth prickled beneath Trisha’s eyelids and that dry raspiness scraped along her throat.

“And Ashi chatters. It’s the only time the girl chatters. All that silence and then when she’s afraid or lost, she tries to drown out the sound of her panic with her words.” Ashi handed Trisha another glass.

“And me, Ma?” Nisha said needily, and they all laughed, because yay, Nisha being normal!

“You get mean.”

“I do not!”

“You do,” Ma said calmly. “You forget to be poised and patient when you’re really upset. Like you’re angry that your poise didn’t keep the bad thing from happening. The opposite of this one, who gets poised when she’s upset.” Ma turned to Trisha again.

“Who knew you were such a therapist,” Nisha said. “And this is me being mean, because I am upset right now.”

Ashi popped the cork off another bottle of wine without any of her chef’s finesse and topped everyone up, except Nisha, of course. Nisha had told the Farm about the baby, and they were all dealing with it using the ostrich theory and pretending that there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of. “To Ma!”

“To Ma,” they all said and Ma downed half her wineglass just as Yash strolled over, showing not a trace of the exhaustion Trisha was feeling just thinking about him having spoken to two hundred people today.

“To my oldest baby,” Ma said and took another sip.

“I think your youngest baby needs you right now to hold him back a little bit,” Yash said, throwing a look over his shoulder at Vansh who was grinning at HRH and three other men who looked like they were going to have joint coronaries.

“Is Vansh being Vansh?” Ashi said.

“Yup, he’s making a case for giving California back to Mexico.”

They all groaned, and Ma took another long sip and then went off to save the day.

A silent something passed between Yash, Ashi, and Nisha. They had been treating her like someone on the verge of a breakdown all evening. “I’m fine,” she wanted to scream, but she just took another sip of her wine.

“I think we’re all squared away,” a voice said behind her, a voice she did not need to hear right now, not with this particular audience watching.

All three of them made a show of looking over her and around her at the man whose presence she could suddenly feel with every part of her being. It had been thirteen days, five hours, and some fourteen minutes since she’d laid eyes on him.

Do not close your eyes.

All three of them grinned widely at him.

“Fabulous dinner.” “Exquisite.” “That chicken makhani was the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” “And those corn papad crisps. I thought I was going to die.”

Trisha’s ears felt like there was a tornado swirling between them. Her entire body felt like it was going to melt outward. She felt color rise across her skin. Never in her life had she experienced such mortification.

DJ cleared his throat. “Hullo, Trisher,” his deep vibrating voice said and everyone fell silent. “May I have a word, please? Alone. If you don’t mind.”

Don’t shake. Don’t cry. Don’t do anything but turn around. Turn around!

Two siblings jumped off their barstools in tandem and one cousin sprang up straight. God, could she make them disappear? Please.

Yash placed a hand on her shoulder and turned her around.

“Hi.” Fabulously. Articulate.

DJ smiled and her limbs loosened. But it was a tentative smile, filled with questions.

“Can we step outside for a moment?” He gestured to the French doors that led to the terrace.

Someone pushed her from behind and she started walking.

DJ WATCHED TRISHA standing on the balcony beneath a cloudless star-sprinkled sky and a sense of déjà vu rolled over him. He’d seen her standing like this on this very terrace just about a month ago. How on earth had he gotten her so wrong?

The ocean breeze made springy locks of hair bounce around her face and fall across her cheeks like stray ribbons of confetti left floating around after a celebration. She used the backs of her wrists to shove them off her face. He could almost hear her mentally cursing whoever had decided to do this to her hair.

Their eyes met and her cheeks colored. For all the complexity of her brain, there was such a simplicity to her. And he’d missed it, no matter how much it had smacked him in the face.

He walked toward her, and she pressed a fist into her belly, trying to affect calm with that straightening of her spine and squaring of her shoulders that he had mistaken for uptightness. “Thanks for agreeing to speak to me,” he said.