Recipe for Persuasion Page 4

Zee gave him the kind of look only a happily-in-love person could give a single friend, especially one they believed had no idea what being in love felt like.

  “So, on to the next relationship, then?” Zee said, meeting Rico’s gaze over his almost-empty glass. “Frederico Webster Silva and his string of lovely women, each one of whom has gone on to make someone else a lovely wife.”

  “You sound like you’re trying to say something, mate. Blokes like you who have it all always have something to say about things you know nothing about.” Rico held up his club soda and clinked glasses with his friend.

  “Hey, all I know is that you’re my best mate and you have no interest in playing the field. You’re an excellent boyfriend—my old woman’s words, not mine. I don’t understand what it is you’re waiting for.”

  “I’m waiting for someone like Tanya who keeps the ball and chain tight without letting it chafe.”

  Zee let out the deepest sigh any human should be allowed to sigh. Seriously, if all those rabid female fans saw him moon over Tanya, there would be a serious threat to the poor woman’s life.

  “I do love my ball and chain.” Zee punched his phone screen and a sleepy “Baby? You all right?” came across the phone.

  “Never all right without you, love. My mates are knobs. I want to be home, baby. Home with you, not here with these hairy, stinky bastards.” Then he dropped his voice. “All I want is to be buried deep inside you right now.”

  Rico turned away and started scrolling through his phone, blocking out the lovestruck whispering.

  “You can stop pretending to check your phone now, I’m done being a sop,” Zee said when he was done, and Rico had to smile.

  “It’s okay. But only because Tanya deserves a sop like you,” he said less lightly than he’d intended.

  Zee didn’t notice, lost as he was in his groom raptures. The general belief was that only brides went into a wedding haze, but men were worse. Where brides tended to get lost in the wedding details, Rico had noticed that men tended to get hit on the head by the idea of getting to hold on to the woman who made them come apart.

  “I’m telling you, man. I want this for everyone. This single-minded need for a woman. No other shit in life comes close to this. You know what I mean?”

  I know exactly what you mean.

  It was a thought Rico hadn’t had in years. He didn’t allow himself to have it, ever.

  Zee was wrong in thinking that no other shit came close. Rico had spent the last decade proving that a lot of shit came close.

  It’s just that none of it came close enough.

  Rico shifted in his seat. The immobility from his propped leg made him restless in a way he couldn’t explain. Restless in a way he hadn’t been in a very long time.

  He reached for Zee’s drink. Not drinking had to be messing with his brain.

  Zee, being Zee, moved the glass out of his reach. Not that Rico would have actually broken doctor’s orders and taken a sip, but it was good to have someone to nudge you back into place when you slipped.

  “Bloody hell, I’m being an arse,” Zee said. “Here you are with Myra marrying someone else, and I won’t stop going on about things. Talk to her. She was really into you. It’s not like there was closure. You’re still friends. Maybe it’s not too late.”

  Rico had to laugh at that. “This isn’t one of your Bollywood films. I’m not going to ride into her wedding on a horse and whisk her away. As a matter of fact, there was closure. That’s why we’re still friends.”

  “You’re really not broken up about her marrying someone else, are you?” Zee looked abjectly disappointed, but Rico wasn’t sure if it was at not getting to witness the drama of a filmy reconciliation or at Rico’s inability to feel deeply enough.

  “Myra’s exactly where she wants to be. And I want her to be happy.”

  This was true. But Zee’s other assumption wasn’t. Rico would never admit it to Zee, or to anyone else, but Rico did, in fact, know exactly what Zee meant about single-minded need. Or he had once. Maybe pain receptors weren’t the only things that worked like jealous mirrors. Maybe pain wasn’t the only thing your brain refocused on when it was reminded of it.

  Zee and Tanya had always dug up memories of something. Someone, rather. Someone who deserved neither the comparison nor the single-minded devotion Rico had felt.

  Unfortunately, he’d been too young to choose how he reacted to her, and by the time she had proven herself unworthy of those feelings, it had been too late. Now here he was, relationship after relationship, unable to be that Rico again. The one who had no idea how to be emotionally unavailable.

  She had taken that away from him. The reckless freedom of being emotionally available.

  After all these years of doing all he could to wipe away his memories of her, the realization hit him like a body blow.

  All he had succeeded in doing was building scabs, and blocking himself off emotionally. He was running around in a hamster wheel of his own making.

  Closure.

  The word ricocheted in his head, setting off a raging longing for relief.

  He touched his knee, where throbbing pain wrapped tight on the outside even as it pushed from the inside, the brace holding everything in place until he was healed and ready to go on as normal. Maybe it was time to cut open another wound and sew that torn muscle together too. Regain the use of other parts he had lost.

  Zee chugged what was left of his drink. His gaze bounced from the empty glass to Rico.

  “There’s plenty more where that came from. Go on. I’m fine,” Rico said.

  His friend studied him for another second, then opened and closed his mouth a few times. There was nothing he could say that Rico wanted to hear right now. Zee was smart enough to know this. He thumped Rico’s shoulder and headed to the bar.

  The guys rushed at Zee and lifted him up above their heads, carrying him to the dance floor, where EDM boomed against the walls and broke into strobes of fluorescent light. They could have done this anywhere in the world. The wedding was in London, where Zee and Tee were from. But they had chosen to come to Vegas for the bachelor party.

  Nevada was right next to California.

  That could be a coincidence, but what was it they said about coincidences? That there weren’t any.

  Rico leaned his head back and closed his eyes. The psychedelic lights continued to flash behind his lids. The pain on Myra’s face as she told him she was done with him danced there with the lights.

  I know you try, but it’s not enough. I’m sorry. Her eyes had brimmed with tears and accusation.

  Rico’s own lack of sadness at those words had felt like a hole inside him. Then there had been the relief. The worst part was that Myra had seen the relief and it had multiplied the accusatory hurt in her eyes.

  What you feel for me is fondness, not love. Love hurts. I can’t hurt you, no matter what I do.

  She had been right. He liked being with her, but losing her hadn’t shattered him. He hadn’t asked her why it was important for her to be able to hurt him. Truth was, nothing had hurt him in a very long time other than winning and losing matches.

  Sitting up, he pulled out his phone. Before he could think it through, he texted Myra. Did I say Congratulations?

  Maybe he should’ve cared what her fiancé thought about Rico texting her in the middle of the night, but Myra wasn’t a bone to fight over and Rico certainly didn’t give a shit about a man if he didn’t trust the person he was with. Myra had insisted they stay friends. He was friends with all his exes. The friendship had always been the best part of the relationships anyway. As was proven by the fact that he was godfather to Ryka’s baby girl, a commitment he took very seriously and an honor he was grateful for.

  There was only one ex he hadn’t stayed friends with.

  Myra’s response buzzed in immediately. Several times. Aren’t you in America? Isn’t it three in the morning there?

  Zee’s bachelor party’s just getting started.


  She sent him a smiley face followed by a few dancing-lady emojis, beer mugs, and, inexplicably enough, monkeys.

  Are you happy? he wanted to ask her. With this new guy?

  Because he wanted happiness for her.

  We set a date, she texted, before he embarrassed himself by asking that question. September 30th in Tuscany. You have to be there.

  Of course. I’m happy for you.

  I know.

  Dots danced on the screen as Myra typed more, then erased what she’d typed. For a long time he stared at the phone as dots appeared and disappeared but no new text came in.

  Zee shouted Rico’s name from the dance floor and the guys raised their glasses to Rico across the room.

  The room in Nevada.

  Right next to California. Where Rico had been the unhappiest he’d ever been in his life. But also where he had still known how to be happy.

  His best mate gyrated around the dance floor. Zee’s Punjabi Indian half always showed up in his dancing. He turned everything into a bhangra, shoulders popping, feet thumping. The wild beat of the dance captured Zee’s joy perfectly. He knew how to be himself without shutting any part of himself down. He knew how to be with someone he loved without holding himself back. He hadn’t lost that ability.

  The skin under Rico’s brace itched. They couldn’t get the darned thing off him soon enough.

  He imagined the freedom of having his body back. Of being able to run and bend and move. For all the pain and discomfort, the surgery was going to give him that.

  He raised his glass to his wildly dancing teammates. Maybe it was time to stop wishing for things to happen magically and do the work to fix what was keeping him from what he wanted. A family, love, the ability to feel. Maybe it was time to finally leave Ashna Raje behind.

  Chapter Four

  Ashi hated the idea of being left behind. There was this thing that happened in her chest when Mamma was about to leave, like giant hands were crushing her ribs. The need to stretch her neck and gulp air pushed at her, but she couldn’t move because she was hiding.

  Hiding behind curtains was never the smartest idea, but Ashi had found that you could hide anywhere without the fear of being found when no one cared about looking for you.

  Still, she shrank into herself in her little alcove in the bay window of Baba’s den.

  “I will never let you use a child to tie me down.” Mamma’s voice had a way of getting deeper when she was angry. How many times had Ashi heard her mother say that the stereotype of the shrill woman had to be broken? That it was something the patriarchy used to prove us too emotional to care for ourselves? “Not that this marriage needs more deadweight to suffocate me.”

  Ashi’s hand tightened around the curtain that hid her from her screaming parents. Actually, they weren’t screaming, at least not yet, just hissing at each other in those muted whispers that adults used when they wanted to scream but couldn’t.

  “How can you say such a thing? How can you look at Ashi’s face and think such a thing?” Baba sounded how he always sounded around Mamma—nothing like himself but like a spoiled child who was trying to sound grown-up.

  Ashi loosened her grip on the fabric. Having the curtain collapse on her head would certainly give her away. If Mamma and Baba knew she had heard them, she’d never be able to face them again. The shame of knowing that her mother had never wanted her was bearable only so long as no one knew that Ashi knew. Shame had a way of multiplying when other people saw it. It made you naked and gross.

  “This isn’t about Ashi. Stop trying to use her. You put us in this situation. And now I get to make all the sacrifices. I get to be the mother who disrupts her life yet again, and you get your excuse to go off the rails and do what you do,” Mamma said in her deepened voice. The slit between the thick velvet curtains exposed her in slivers, making her look as though she were being reflected in a broken mirror.

  “In the end, that’s all you want,” Mamma continued. “To be His Highness Bram Raje, free to do whatever the hell your rotten heart desires. Don’t pretend you care about Ashi. Anyone with half a brain can see that you only want her here so you can make me look bad. Everyone knows that the child babysits you more than the other way around. She’s twelve, Bram. Have some shame!”

  “You’re abandoning your twelve-year-old again and you want me to have shame? At least I’ve never left her.”

  “Is getting drunk and passing out not abandoning her? Your brother and his wife had to take her in and you want me to have shame? This is the problem. You should have married a stupid woman, or at least one who lapped up your overentitled crap.”

  “If I’m such a bad father, you should stay here and protect her from me.”

  Mamma’s hand went to her forehead, her gold bangles crashing together on her wrist. Even in America Mamma never bothered to remove her bangles or the big red bindi she wore in the center of her forehead. She always dressed like she was in the Sripore palace, no matter where she was. Always in her starched white saris, with her waist-length hair in a bun at her nape. She didn’t care about fitting in or about not looking foreign, the way Ashna did when she dressed for school every day.

  “How low can you fall, Bram? When will you stop using people this way? I don’t leave her here with you, God knows I’m not that heartless. I leave her with Shree and Mina. Your brother and his wife are better parents to her than either one of us anyway. I’m the one who has to make the choice between my child and my work. You don’t. You get to have both. You don’t lose anything. Men never do. Your hands always stay clean.”

  “I lose you. I want you. And I don’t get to keep you. I love you.” Baba’s slurring always got more pronounced as these arguments escalated and their voices got louder. The glass of scotch on the table between them wobbled as Ashi’s vision blurred with tears.

  “You bastard, I’m not a thing you get to keep. I begged you not to force me into this marriage. But you let them pack me up like a piece of meat and hand me to you. How is that love? If you knew what love meant you’d have cared what I wanted. You’d have seen that this could never work. Not just because I had already chosen my life partner, but because you and I have nothing in common, even without Omar.”

  Baba stood, swaying on his feet so much that Ashna almost left her spot to keep him from falling over the coffee table and crashing through the glass. But he sat back down, unable to bear his own weight. His voice boomed. “Do not say that man’s name in my house. You hear me?”

  Mom looked over her shoulder. “Keep your voice down! All that child needs now is to hear you bellowing at me. Already she hates me, blames me for this mess.”

  Ashi didn’t. She didn’t blame Mamma. Mamma was not the one who had tied her parents up in this mess. Ashi had done that. She was the one who couldn’t be the kind of daughter who made her mother want to stay. She was the daughter who wasn’t enough for her father to give up whatever it was he got from his scotch.

  “What is wrong with the two of you?” Her aunt walked into the room and Ashi had the immediate sense that everything was going to be okay. “I could hear you shouting from the driveway. Where’s Ashi?” She threw a glance at the window seat Ashi was hiding in and Ashi pulled herself back. “Seriously, Shobi, come on! Give a thought to what you’re doing.” She took Mamma’s hand and patted it comfortingly.

  “She’s leaving again,” Baba said, barely making the words.

  “That was the deal,” Mamma said. “We had a deal that I’d do three months here and three months there. But if he’s going to make such a tamasha every time, how can I do this? How can I?”

  Mina Kaki tucked a lock of Mamma’s hair behind her ear. “You can’t argue with him when he’s like this. We’ll figure it out in the morning. But you two can’t do this with Ashna in the house. If you were going to have this conversation, you should have called me and I would have picked her up early. Where is she? Go look for her.”

  “I didn’t mean to have the conversation. He started
it.” With that, Mamma left to look for Ashi.

  “Bram, come on. Let’s get you into bed.” Mina Kaki called out to Aseem, Baba’s valet, and he rushed into the room. “I’ve told you to call me when they start arguing. The next time you don’t call, your employment here will be terminated.” Her aunt was the sweetest person Ashi knew, but she could bring down a hammer like no one else.

  Aseem made apologetic sounds and dragged Baba off the couch and into his study, where there was a daybed he used when no one could help him up the stairs to his room.

  “I can’t find Ashi anywhere,” Mamma said, coming back into the room.

  Mina Kaki stroked her arm. “I know where she is. Go up and calm down. I’ll take care of it. She doesn’t need to see you like this. Not just before you leave.” She tried to whisper so Ashi wouldn’t hear. She failed.

  Mamma, who went to battle with everyone about everything, never argued with her sister-in-law. Especially not about Ashi. She left and Ashi quickly wiped her cheeks on the flannel sleeves of her pajamas. It was her first grown-up pair, pink plaid instead of the soccer ball and lollipop prints she used to wear. Mina Kaki had taken her shopping for them. Mina Kaki shopped for all her clothes, and Ashi had wanted pajamas just like her aunt’s.

  “Is it okay for me to come in?” Mina Kaki asked from the other side of the curtain.

  Ashi let a sniff escape.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes.” Even so, Mina Kaki parted the curtain slowly, careful to allow Ashi a chance to pull it back if she wanted. But Ashi wanted nothing more than to crawl into her aunt’s arms right now. She was cold. The cold was trembling inside her chest.

  Mina sat down on the window seat next to her and ran a hand over Ashi’s head. “I’m sorry.”

  Ashi wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault, but if she said anything she would never stop crying and she couldn’t do that to her aunt. So when Mina Kaki pulled Ashna’s head into her lap, she went easily.

  Then, despite her best effort, she proceeded to wet her aunt’s linen pants with her tears as her aunt stroked her hair.