My Last Love Story (7 page)

Daddy…oh my Daddy…

The beach came to an abrupt end on a jut of rocks rising out of the sand. I had found my black hole to sink into.

I began to climb.
Please, no snakes, no crabs.
I could abide anything but snakes and crabs. I stepped on something squishy—
yuckity yuck
—and then something poked my sole, and I nearly lost my balance. I was barefoot, my slippers languished in Smriti’s car. I’d thought it sensible to remove them there. I’d stopped feeling sensible the minute I stepped onto the beach.

Tossing away the beer can, I clambered up the rocks on hands and feet. A great sense of accomplishment swept over me when I reached the top. It wasn’t high, just a few feet above sea level, but I felt like I’d climbed a mountain.

I breathed in deep and let it out. I flung my arms out, staring at the limitless horizon. Without the music blaring, I heard the waves whoosh and slap against the rocks. Without the bonfire, the full moon dribbled silver light onto the world.

My name meant silvery light in Persian. I was born on a full-moon night, and so my parents had named me Simeen.

My parents…

I dropped my arms as guilt stabbed at my chest.
No! Khodai, please, I don’t want to feel anything anymore.
If only I’d gone with my parents instead of arguing.

“I have plans for the weekend that don’t involve driving from temple to temple with a couple of old killjoys. I want to hang at the mall with my friends, okay? Why are you forcing me to go and not Surin or Sarvar? I’m almost fifteen. I can stay home alone. I hardly need you to babysit me.”

My last words to my parents had been antagonistic, churlish.

If only I’d gone with them…

If only I hadn’t been so selfish…

If only…

I remembered thinking that. I vividly remembered the feeling of sinking breath by breath into the quicksand of despair that night on Dandi Beach. I remembered screaming into the dark, raging at my parents, calling for them, begging them to come back.

Just come back, please. I need you. I lied. I need you, Daddy, Mumsy.

I screamed and cried and sobbed. I pleaded with Ahura Mazda to take me, too, to stop punishing me. I wished the sea would swallow me. I should’ve died with my parents. If I was dead, I’d stop feeling, stop grieving. I didn’t remember leaning over the edge, but I must have because, if only for a second, I was staring at a pile of shiny black rocks before I was yanked back hard.

Someone shouted, but I didn’t know who or why or what. A pair of arms locked tight around me. A hand pressed my face into a wet, warm chest.

He’d smelled of the sea and tasted of it, the night Zayaan had saved me. He let me go, only to push me into Nirvaan’s arms. Hopping from boulder to boulder, Zayaan had disappeared behind a large outcropping, only to reappear within seconds in swimming shorts.

With gentle but firm words, they’d calmed me. They sat me down on the sand and made me drink overly sweet Frooti from a Coke bottle. They petted me like I was a newborn kitten. And I, desperate to confess my sins, had spilled my guts.

Only after they’d handed me over to Smriti and I was on my way home with the taste of cake in my mouth, did I wonder how they had known it was my birthday or why I’d sipped Frooti from a Coke bottle. Only then did I recall what my peripheral vision had first registered but hysteria had censored.

Zayaan had been naked, totally completely
naagu
, when he saved me. And there had been a girl half hidden between the jut of rocks where he’d come from—a partially
naagu
horrified-looking girl.

I grinned in the dark, smearing the tears that had pearled in my eyes with a thumb before they leaked down my cheek. Reliving the Naked Savior incident always lifted my spirits, reminding me that life wasn’t all despair and darkness but could be sweet as a Frooti and funny, too. I thought of how much I’d laughed that night.

That first volcanic introduction had defined my relationship with the guys. That chance encounter had changed my world again, ripping me out of my shell, out of my grief, making me bold and greedy in a way I’d never been before.

I turned on my side, hugging my pillow. Exhaustion made my eyelids heavy, but I wasn’t anywhere near ready to fall asleep. Stars had popped up in patches in the blue-black sky. The rain clouds had finally been lured away, letting rain fall somewhere else for a change. I breathed in the gentle breeze blowing in through the open windows, fluttering the wind chimes on the deck.

Smells could trigger memories. Carmel’s salty, fishy odor would often take me home to Surat in spirit, reminding me of the beaches in Gujarat, family holidays taken at various beach resorts, and of the hundreds of happy days and nights I’d spent in Dumas and Dandi with the guys. All three of us were beach babies or beach horses or whatever people obsessed with the sun, sand, and water were called. We didn’t mind other vacation destinations. We’d taken plenty of holidays where not a single beach had been on the itinerary. But if you asked us where our favorite place to chill was, without a doubt, we’d say the beach.

I wasn’t done with the past though.

The guys had sought me out the morning after the beach party. To check on my health and state of mind, they’d claimed. After confirming I was indeed sound in both, the true reason for their visit was revealed. They’d put me through a subtle interrogation about how much I’d seen and what I’d inferred from it.

“Don’t gossip about us.” Zayaan’s low, hoarse baritone was as potent in daylight as it had been at midnight. “If you do, we won’t keep our mouths shut either.”

“Is it gossip if it’s the truth?” I tested with false bravado. Not that I wanted people to think I was some kind of nutcase and/or suicidal. I wasn’t. Or I was over it by then.

They took me to lunch—a blatant bribe. If I blabbed to anyone about the naked bits, the girl’s reputation would be ruined, and the guys’ wouldn’t fare any better.

What I hadn’t known then was that Zayaan couldn’t afford a tarnished reputation. His father was the administrator, the Mukhi Saheb, of the local Jamaat Khana, which was the Khoja community center cum mosque. No matter what sort of mischief Zayaan got up to behind closed doors, in front of the world, he had to be the no-nonsense Mukhi Saheb’s son.

I was super-duper intrigued by the naked
naagu
bits. I was appalled, at first, but intrigued more. I’d spent the night picturing all kinds of debauchery, and I couldn’t get the image of a girl sandwich out of my head. I felt breathless just thinking about it. To be completely truthful, I felt hideously jealous.

I
wanted to be the sandwich filling.
I
wanted the growly-voiced guy to press my face into his chest while the American-accented guy with the quick hands massaged my back. I’d smooched a couple of boys from my old school. It’d been nothing impressive, just some suction action on the mouth accompanied by a waterfall of slobber. Totally
yuck
.

I imagined smooching Zayaan and Nirvaan and decided it wouldn’t be yuck at all.

I felt naughty. And for the first time in six months, I felt alive.

I put forth a bold proposition in exchange for my silence. I offered myself up as their secret second helping. Not that Anu, the sandwich girl, was much of a secret. The guys had openly vied for her attention, like Archie and Reggie over Veronica. Other kids in our complex would bet over who’d win a date or a kiss or something much cruder from her. Most would put their money on Nirvaan. He was, after all, a homegrown boy even if he was an expat now.

Zayaan, on the other hand, had moved to Surat only a year ago from Pakistan. Plus, he made the other kids wary with his quietly clever disposition and grown-up manner. He had a job already. Zayaan helped his father run the Jamaat Khana. He was being groomed to step into his father’s footsteps. He wasn’t overfriendly or spontaneous like Nirvaan. Neither did he throw awesome parties. Money was an issue for him. He never seemed to have any, so Nirvaan would end up picking up his tab.

Zayaan was night to Nirvaan’s day, yet they shared everything. It was soon apparent that no one but me—and Sandwich Anu—knew the extent of their sharing.

Nirvaan, after a stomach-clutching hooting session, took me up on my offer and began to tag me along wherever he went. Zayaan refused to be blackmailed. I’d set myself up as Betty, and in true Archie Comics-style, nothing I did thawed Zayaan.

If I’d known then how sacred a clean reputation was to him, I could’ve forced the issue.

My behavior should’ve embarrassed me. It didn’t at all. I was fed up with being a good girl, and I had come to the conclusion that good things happened to wicked people, and vice versa.

I didn’t seem to threaten Anu darling’s space either, naturally not. I was plain-faced, where she was gorgeous, and flat and gangly like a ten-year-old boy, where she was voluptuous and sultry. I had short boyish hair. I’d walked into a salon one day and hacked off my locks, unable to care for it without my mother’s guidance. I’d cried for two whole weeks in the aftermath, and nothing my brothers said, complimentary or not, had cheered me up. I sported a
tapeli
-cut hairdo while Anu’s hair cascaded down her back like a movie star’s. She treated me like the guys’ pesky younger brother instead of the enemy I’d set myself up as.

Pretty soon, the dynamics of our pack began to change and solidify. For every moment the guys and I spent apart, we would spend twice as many together. In keeping with my bold metamorphosis, I kept up with their boisterousness. We raced scooters on highways, played pranks on elderly heart-attack candidates, and jumped off walls of our complex into the Tapi River, earning ourselves the Awesome Threesome sobriquet from our peers. We did everything naughty and some things nice.

Sandwich Anu faded into the background within a month. I never heard of her again.

It was serendipity. I believed, with every atom of my being, that my parents were behind my change in fortune. I was convinced the guys were my birthday presents from them.

The day Nirvaan flew back to California, we’d made a pact to keep our threesome awesome and shining forever. For three reckless years, we’d managed.

Then, the world had intruded on our idyll.

“G’morning, baby.”

From his perch on the lounge chair, Nirvaan watched me stare at the coffee machine as it hummed and spit out my early morning manna in a giant coffee mug. The mug was white and had a black-and-gray sketch of Eeyore wandering about the Hundred Acre Wood, wondering,
What’s so good about this morning?
It was my favorite morning coffee mug, a gift from Nirvaan’s niece and nephew, Nikita and Armaan, on my last birthday.

I added three drops of hazelnut creamer into the steaming liquid, stirred once, and took the first eye-brightening sip. The morning slowly came into focus. Hands wrapped about the hot mug, I joined my husband on the deck as he reposed like a snug bug in a rug, waiting for the sun to dazzle the world anew. It was a mandatory item on the Titanic Wish List, under Smell the Roses, to witness all sunrises and sunsets from this day forward for as long as each of us lived.