The Vibrant Years(97)

“Tell me what the other part is.”

“I’ve never met anyone so complete in her own skin, someone who sees everyone else as complete too. I feel free around you, a deep, true freedom to be me. I’m sixty years old, Bindu, and I’ve never felt this way around anyone else in my life.”

She wrapped her arms around him, and he pulled her close. It was a perfect fit.

“Is that not enough?” he asked.

“It’s more than enough,” she said. Then she pulled back and met his absurdly green eyes. “I love you too.”

And then she told him everything. How losing Oscar had crushed the life out of her. How losing her father had stubbed out what was left. How she hadn’t known how to work around the grief and guilt. Maybe she’d punished herself for letting it happen. She’d told herself that she’d already had it all, lived, and now whatever life gave her was payment for that.

She told him about her marriage. Even the parts that she still didn’t understand. Why that level of submission had felt both wonderful and terrible.

Her marriage, like every other marriage on earth, had been several parts: one part good, one part difficult, but in more parts than both those put together, mundane. Like life itself. A habit that became more security than a burden. His marriage had been much the same. Solid, but abundant in both disappointment and comfort. Blessedly uneventful for the most part.

Bindu had only ever been able to share all the things she was thinking with two people. Her grandmother when she was a child, before something inside her started to rebel and become like no one else around her. And Oscar.

Her grandmother had always been gleefully proud and maybe a little afraid for her. Oscar had been dazzled by the power of their feelings. Lee listened to her words for what they were.

“Now what?” he asked finally as they sat down with cups of chai.

“Do you ever have a sense that everything you’ve ever wanted is within reach, but you’re afraid to reach for it?”

He looked at her in that way he had. Her skin prickled with the awareness of it. She felt at once young and timeless. “From the very first time I saw you, I’ve had that sense. As though it’s all right here. If I reached out, I could touch it.”

“Is that why you called me trouble?”

“I called you trouble because I thought my boring life was about to be upended. I was terrified.”

“That I did do, didn’t I? You look battered.”

“I was a fool. I’m the opposite of battered. I’m filled up, replenished.”

“I am too.”

He took her hands and stroked her fingers. “If you don’t reach for what you want, you’ll never have it. I know sometimes that feels safer than reaching for it and finding you were wrong. Or even worse, finding you were right and then losing it. Whatever it is about doing the documentary that you’re so afraid of, the only way to not let it win is to walk through it. You can’t walk around things without missing what’s most important about them.”

She picked up her phone and video-called Cullie. “Is your young man with you?”

“Binji, did you watch it? What did you think?” Cullie moved her body so Rishi appeared on the screen too. They were lying on the beach, her head on his chest, the ocean loud around them.

“It’s every bit as beautiful as Rishi said it was.”

He grinned, Oscar’s eyes flashing joy like floodlights in his face.

“Thank you for restoring it.”

“Thank you for watching it.” He teared up, and Cullie kissed him.

They were beautiful, those tears. Filled with his love for the celluloid he’d built back cell by cell, for Oscar, for his own art. Then he’d risked it for her granddaughter, whose preciousness was a gift.

“Rishi Seth,” Bindu said, hope racing like a drug through her system. “Let’s make that documentary. But you better make sure it wins us an Oscar.” Because Bindu Desai was ready to be a star.





Life.

You blink and it’s gone.

The passion. The boredom. The moment lived. The moment lost.

In the end, they’re just crumbs stuck in the creases of memory. Remnants of tastes left on your tongue.

Poornima knew this. She knew that she’d have one chance.

As the queen to an impotent king, she’d have this one chance before he took another queen.

One chance.

To bear an heir.

To choose a stranger for seven nights. One week to live.

If she chose someone she knew and the king found out, she’d be punished with death.

But she had one week.

One week to reclaim her love. To gather him up for a lifetime.

She’d walked away from him once when they’d given her to her king. Without a whimper.

Because voice was not among the many privileges princesses were awarded.

He’d moved on too. He claimed to love the wife he’d taken so he too could go on living.

But she was his queen, and she got to choose.

And for that one week she would settle for nothing but him. Nothing but all of him. His golden body. The soul that was the other half of her. All his love. Everything he was. He would never again take another without thinking of her.

And if they found out and beheaded her for it, so be it.