The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(40)

She lounged at her usual corner of his sunken-down sofa, like she’d never left. He stood, restless, on edge. She didn’t spare him a glance, taking in his living room instead.

“Want some tea?” Arnav said in Hindi. Chai chalega? Literally, Will tea do for you?

Why was he being nice to her? He’d dropped Nandini home, but couldn’t haul himself back to the station. Instead, he’d ended up outside the new Blue Bar, followed the car that had dropped her at her hotel, and now here she was, at his house after 3:00 a.m.

When she had first stepped on the stage, brassy smile in place, he’d nearly sprung from his seat in shock. Imagining he was making a mistake, he’d scrutinized her face. He hadn’t seen this seductive version before, but underneath all the glitter and sass, it was her—remote and somehow untouchable, the quality that had entranced him still intact.

He’d meant to bring her in, ask her a few questions, but by remaining silent in the car she’d gained the upper hand. Number one rule of interrogation, make the suspect you’re questioning sweat even before you’ve spoken a word. He was the one sweating. All for this girl.

Only she wasn’t a girl anymore. She’d said she was nineteen when he’d first met her. In the time she’d been away, she’d grown up. She wore different clothes now, instead of salwar-kameez, and the way she carried off the jeans and the collared T-shirt told him she wore them often. Her hips had grown heavier, and it wasn’t just her hips—it was her entire personality. Despite her jaded air, the Tara he remembered had a certain impudence about her, a sense of expectation and restlessness. This Tara knew her place in the world, had made peace with it. She glanced about, her gaze on the threadbare curtains, the faded paintings his mother had put up decades ago, but did not respond.

“I asked you a question,” he said.

“You kidnap me,” she said as she turned from her inspection of the sitting room, “and then offer me tea?”

“I don’t remember forcing you into the car.”

“So I may leave?”

“After you’ve answered my questions,” he said.

“Why haven’t you moved?” She tucked her hair back behind her ear, a gesture he knew so well.

“I’ll get you the tea.” Arnav escaped to the kitchen.

When he returned, she was looking through some of the medals he’d shoved in the old corner cabinet. They lay in a heap, gathering dust. He walked up to her as she picked up a tissue and wiped a medal, holding it gently by its now fraying ribbon.

“You still like cleaning up,” he said. It struck him that he had never brought Nandini here. That in his mind, his home had remained Tara’s domain. He’d never changed a thing about this aging bungalow. Not due to sloth, but because it had felt like an act of erasure. He realized how shabby the place must look to her, bare and empty.

“You won quite a few medals.” Tara kept at her task, not turning toward him.

“That’s all they do, give you a medal to shut you up.” Arnav put the cups down. No biscuits because there weren’t any. Why was he worrying about biscuits when she’d dumped him and run?

“Come sit here.”

She brought the medal with her, picking up a tissue on the way to the sofa.

When he handed her the teacup, her fingers trembled a little. So she was putting her acting skills to effective use. It was strange, now that he considered it, that he’d known her for less than two years. It seemed much longer.

He sat next to her and noticed her feet, toes curled. He remembered her cold toes in bed, on Sunday mornings when he rubbed her feet after she landed at his place, exhausted from hours of dancing on a Saturday night.

She sipped her tea. “You’ve become good at this.”

“I can find my way around the kitchen.”

“No wife to make tea for you?”

She wanted him to say the words. No one entering this barren space would mistake it for a married household. His mother was the homemaker—most of her efforts at upkeep had fallen victim to his benign neglect.

“I’m the one asking questions. No husband?”

She put the cup down and glared at him. “If you’ve brought me here to make fun of me . . .”

“Were you poking fun at me when you asked me if I was married?”

“Who would marry me?” And in a flash, she was the young girl he’d met in another lifetime.

He stared at her. “Anyone. You’re . . .” He paused, realizing what he was about to say. He needed to be clearheaded about this: get some answers and take her back to her hotel. Never see her again.

“Why did you leave?”

This. This was the question he’d asked her in his head, again and again, year after year. He’d thought they were close enough for her to give him a chance to stop her, or at least say a proper goodbye.

She reached for her cup and took a sip. “Why do you care?”

“You were all right the week before. Then you vanished. The girls said you and Zoya had taken off.”

He had watched the place for weeks afterward, asked his nascent group of khabri at the time, offered to pay them. It did seem like Tara had disappeared without telling him. He’d given up—why should he search for her when she didn’t even bother to say goodbye?

“You went to look for me?”