From Twinkle, With Love(69)

I put a hand to my mouth. “Oh my God,” I said softly. How had I turned into such a monster? How had I become this person who couldn’t even see what she was doing was so blatantly wrong? And after I’d apologized to Lewis and the others, too.

Sahil smiled softly down at me. “It’s okay, T,” he said. “We all make mistakes.”

“I can’t believe I … I couldn’t even see it, though.” I blew out a breath and looked at the stars glittering in the lake. “I think I was beginning to lose myself there, Sahil.”

“That’s okay,” Sahil said gently. “Because I’ll always be here to find you.”

I looked back at him. At his deep, kind brown eyes. Those bushy eyebrows. That strong, stubble-dotted jaw. “Why are you so nice to me?” I asked, my heart racing. I brought one hand up to stroke his jaw, his chin, his chest and, without even thinking about it, moved even closer to him.

“Because, in case you haven’t figured it out,” he murmured, cupping my face with one big hand. He brought his face closer; his lips brushed mine. “I’m a total fool for you.”

In the distance, I heard, “Yo, Neil! You made it!”

I jumped back. Sahil stared at me, his hand now cupping empty air instead of my face. “Are you okay?”

“Fine!” I said, smiling brightly. “I just … I have to go do something.”

“Right … right now?” His eyebrows were raised all disbelievingly.

“Yes. But! We’ll pick up where we left off, okay? I promise. Sahil, I’m ready now. To take things forward between us.” I held his gaze.

A slow smile spread across his face. “Really?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Really.” I took a deep breath, got up, and handed his hoodie back to him. Going up to Neil wearing his brother’s hoodie just felt wrong.

It was time. It was time to end this whole N thing once and for all. I had made my decision. Part of the shiny, future Twinkle dream or not, Neil wasn’t someone I wanted to be with. He was something I’d thought I desperately needed for a while. I’d needed to believe I was meant for bigger, better things, and the only way I’d known how to do that was to invent this love interest for myself who was bigger and better than me. But now I saw it: Neil wasn’t bigger and better than me. He wasn’t bigger and better than Sahil. He was just him, and we were just us. Sahil was the one for me. Sahil was the only one who made sense.

I had taken only a few steps when I heard crunching footsteps and then Brij was suddenly in front of me. I glanced at Sahil in confusion to find him watching us curiously. “Uh, hey, Brij,” I said. “I’m in a little bit of a hurry now, but we’ll talk later—”

“Twinkle, wait.” He was looking at me weirdly, his almost-black eyes bright and intense. He licked his lips and tucked his hands into his camo jacket. “I have to tell you something.” He glanced at Sahil. “Hey, Sahil.”

“Hey, Nath.”

Brij looked at me again. “Can we just …? Do we have to talk here?”

I sighed and tried not to let my impatience show. This was either about Maddie leaving with Lewis or the film, neither of which were high on my list at the moment. “Look, Brij, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of Sahil. Just … can you please make it quick? I have to go do something.”

He stared at me for another long moment in silence. I waited, my eyebrows up, and then sighed as I tried to push past him. “Okay, well, if you aren’t going to say anything, I’m just gonna—”

“I’m N.”

I stopped breathing. To be more accurate, it felt like the entire world stopped breathing. The wind kept whistling and pushing, but the rest of it—the stars, Sahil, the lake, the earth—everything stilled. After a while, I realized I was shaking my head and forced myself to speak. My voice came out like a croak, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Wait. What?” I stutter-laughed. “That doesn’t make any sense. Your … Your name is Brij.”

“You’re the only one who calls me that,” he said quietly, digging the toe of his shoe into the dirt.

“Right.” I heard the blood whoosh through my ears. “Because everyone else calls you Nath.” Nath. N. How had I not seen that? “And your middle name is …”

“Indresh.”

BINadmiringyou. Brij Indresh Nath. I nodded and swallowed. “You … you like me?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I did at first.” He glanced down at his shoes. “But then …”

“Maddie,” I said. It wasn’t a question. It was pretty clear to see that he liked her. That she liked him, too, even though she had temporarily lost the plot and was going after Lewis Shore for some reason.

He nodded. “I kept trying to make things work with you, wanting them to work because I’d already e-mailed you and you’d e-mailed back and everything. But the more I spent time with her …” He shrugged.

“That’s why you canceled our meet-up at the Perk. And why you sounded so unenthusiastic.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s okay. I was … I was about to tell, um, N tonight that I wasn’t interested. That’s where I was going.”