The Direction of the Wind: A Novel(61)

“We can stop. I’m sorry I got carried away,” he mumbled from the pillow.

Nita lifted his face so that she could see his eyes. She snuggled closer to his body, her cool skin craving the warmth he radiated.

“It’s okay,” she said softly, helping him roll back on top of her. “I want to.”

She saw his lips move as if he were seeking more reassurance, and she put her finger against them to quiet him and then wrapped her legs around him. They maintained eye contact as their bodies connected, the grin on his face showing he enjoyed the urgency he was bringing out in her.

Mercifully, he started to move faster, and she knew he was as excited by her as she was by him. His brown hair stuck against his forehead, damp with sweat. She wiped it away from his green eyes while they continued moving together, the two of them completely entwined. Eventually, he pushed deeper, and she felt a warmth inside of her.

He then immediately pulled out of her and grabbed a tissue from the nightstand to wipe her clean. “I got carried away. I meant to pull out sooner.”

She nuzzled her face into his neck, feeling just as spent. “It’s okay.”

And it was. Until the next morning, when she woke up and realized what she had done.



Her head pounded as she searched the floor for the jeans and sweater she had been wearing the night before. She had already pulled her underwear from between the sheets and slipped it on. She couldn’t figure out if she was hungover or maybe even still drunk, but she was starting to come to her senses and realize the consequences of her actions.

She heard the bed creak as Simon rolled over and let out a groan.

“What are you doing down there?” he mumbled.

“Just grabbing my things.” Nita tried to make her voice sound nonchalant as she knelt on the floor and pulled her thin sweater over her head.

Despite their actions last night, she was embarrassed to have him see her now without her clothes. She squirmed into her jeans while remaining seated on the floor and out of his view.

Simon poked his head over the bed until he made eye contact with her. “Are you going somewhere?” he asked.

“I should go back to my place,” she said.

“Your place?” he asked. “I thought you were done with Mathieu.”

She rose to her feet, bringing her hand to her forehead, trying to ease the throbbing she felt behind it. “I am. Er, I was. I just—I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Simon scampered up from the bed, the sheets bunched around his waist, and came closer to her. “What’s wrong? Is it something I did?”

She shook her head.

“Nita, what is it? Please tell me.”

His eyes bored deep into hers, and she had to look away. “We shouldn’t have done that last night. You’re with ?lise. And this, what we did, makes me no better than Mathieu with that girl,” she said softly toward the floor.

“You are nothing like him,” Simon said, his jaw tight. “Please don’t think that.”

She shook her head again. “We let alcohol interfere with our friendship.”

Simon sighed. “Maybe we needed it to prove we shouldn’t just be friends. I will call ?lise today. Tell her we shouldn’t continue our relationship.”

She met his eyes, knowing she was unable to give him what he wanted. She didn’t deserve someone like him after the choices she’d been making. Decisions he knew nothing of and would never respect if he did.

“Simon, I’m sorry. I need to go back and either work things out with Mathieu or get my things and go. But I can’t continue to rely on you to bail me out of this mess.”

He wrapped the sheets more tightly around his waist so they wouldn’t drop when he let go and put his hands on her shoulders. “We don’t have to move into anything, but you don’t need to run back to him just to get away from me.”

Her heart sank at him even having that thought. “I’m not trying to get away from you. But I need to figure out where my life is supposed to go, and right now, I don’t have any idea where that is.”

She grabbed her purse, confirming the photographs of Sophie were still in the inside pocket. As she moved into the living room, she saw the dried wine still on the floor and felt bad leaving him with that mess, but she knew she had to get out before he convinced her otherwise.

She walked slowly down the Paris streets, taking in the tourists passing by her and the shop workers loitering on the streets for cigarette breaks. She had grown up feeling like she was never going to be the perfect, dutiful Indian daughter her parents had hoped for. She had known she was different from the other girls. But she had never realized that she was capable of such disgusting acts as what she had just done. It was more than even she had thought she had in her. She reminded herself of the Gujarati proverb “Even in Kashi, crows are black.” She had heard the saying many times as a child but had never been to Kashi until a few months before her engagement. In that holy city, she had joined the throngs of Hindus who flocked there to bathe in the Ganga River, hoping to cleanse herself of the dark thoughts that had always surrounded her, so she could be pure for the man she would eventually marry. She’d observed the crows while she was waist deep in the river, holding her mummy’s hand as they waded in. Some birds had circled over the river while others rested on wooden posts, cocking their heads at the humans as if the people were intruding on their home.