My Last Love Story

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

With gentle but firm words, they 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, 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 as 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.

Maybe it was, in part, because of the way we’d met. That night on Dandi Beach had been a gift none of us had expected, and everything that followed only brought us closer.

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 teased with false bravado. Not that I wanted people to think I was some kind of nutcase 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 pick 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 allowed me to tag 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. 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.

5 (#uc240ec44-79e7-51c5-8b24-037e096f0417)

“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-opening 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.

I inhaled a bigger sip of my coffee, swirling it in my mouth before swallowing. Only then was I capable of reciprocating my husband’s good-morning wishes without croaking.

Ruffling his hair, I bent and took his mouth in a lazy kiss, mingling the tastes of minty toothpaste and delicious java on our tongues. Unlike me, Nirvaan didn’t need an adrenaline-boosting beverage to jump-start his day. He went straight for breakfast whenever it was ready, which was whenever I felt awake enough to prepare it. And I would. Soon.

The world was still dark, but the horizon had begun to pinken. Waves licked the shore like a frontline of gamboling puppies rootling in their mother’s teats. I groaned and stretched sleep from my bones, eager for my in-laws to arrive and for the fun and games to begin. I smiled, wondering what new mischief my father-in-law would instigate this weekend.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed Zayaan sitting on a lounger he’d dragged several feet away to where the porch turned around the house. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known he was there from the get-go. My sense of him had always been strong—I couldn’t ignore him if I tried—but I liked to pretend we didn’t have that connection anymore.

His eyes were closed, his lips restless in a soft-spoken ritual as ingrained in him as the making and drinking of coffee was in me. His face and chest hailed the Kaba from six thousand miles away, which one would assume was directly eastward. It wasn’t.

Years ago, on Zayaan’s very first visit with us in San Jose, I’d heard him explain to Nirvaan the intricacies of the qi’bla, the direction one faces while praying or giving dua—as the Khojas called it—and why he’d chosen northeast and not simply east or even southeast, which would be the direction a bird would take to fly between here and Mecca. It had to do with latitudes, longitudes, true north and the roundness of the Earth. I’d rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of facing any worldly structure or direction instead of directly into space, if one was inclined to communicate with God at all.

I, of course, had stopped bothering with ritualistic trivialities. I didn’t believe in any form of organized religion. While I might believe in a Supreme Being of some sort, His refusal to actively eradicate the evils in this world made Him a largely suspect entity in my mind—not to stress on the extremely unjust and personal grudge He had against me.

Disinclined to start another day fighting with Ahura Mazda, I sat down on the lounger by Nirvaan’s feet and, out of habit, I began to massage his blanketed foot while savoring my coffee. I wasn’t completely sure, but I didn’t think my husband had come to bed last night.

“Did you guys get any sleep?” I asked in a low tone so that I wouldn’t disturb Zayaan, who’d bent his head in respectful sajdah to Allah for the next segment of prayers. I might have lost my own faith, but it didn’t mean I’d disrespect another’s.

Nirvaan gave me a lazy smile and flopped his head from left to right in a no. Even with little to no sleep, he didn’t look tired or rumpled. He seemed pleasantly torporish. Zayaan would be, too, I imagined. He’d probably showered already, prepping for sajdah. At the very least, he had splashed his face, hands and feet with fresh water while I looked like the massacred thing the neighbor’s cat had left on our front porch last week.

I wasn’t exaggerating. I’d seen myself in the bathroom mirror not five minutes ago. My eyes were glassy and felt as if I’d rubbed sand in them, thanks to crying myself to sleep. My hair was a nest of knots, and my complexion was sapped of color because I’d tossed and turned fretfully all night, warring with a phalanx of subliminal dreams.

If that wasn’t proof that Khodai had it in for me, I didn’t know what was.

Nirvaan wiggled his foot under my hand. He winked when I looked up, as if he could see inside my brain. I scowled because he probably could.