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Margarita-Induced Abandon
I notice him for the first time when I’m gyrating on Zainab’s glass-topped dining table in my underwear.
It’s his out-of-placedness that strikes me. Zainab’s apartment is jam-packed with teenage girls dancing with margarita-induced abandon and teenage boys enjoying the show. Loud-enough-to-be-heard-in-the-West-to-prove-we-listen-to-the-same-music-they-do rap music would blast my eardrums open if the alcohol wasn’t cushioning them. How dare this boy look like he doesn’t belong?
I leap off the table and teeter in Zainab’s newest heels all the way up to Mr Sober. “Hi,” I beam.
He notices my lack of clothing a pale pink blush suffuses his cheeks. “Hi.”
“What?” I push closer to him in pretense of having missed his Pulitzer Prize-worthy words. I can make out a faintly soapy scent emanating from him that suits his in-need-of-a-cut-haired, yellow-shirted, blue-jeaned look.
“Hi,” he shouts.
I hold out my Bacardi Breezer. “Want some?”
“No thanks,” he says. Politely. It just about kills me.
I raise my eyebrows. “You’re kind of boring, aren’t you?” Of course he’s interesting to me, but I want to get past the politeness. And possibly goad him into doing something boylike and depraved to prove he’s not...of the sexually-harassing-me variety.
He looks taken aback. “What?”
“I just feel like you’re insulting my cousin’s party by just standing there like some lame mama’s boy,” I say blithely.
“You’re drunk,” he mumbles before backing away.
I am. But he says it like it’s an insult.
“You’re cute,” I retaliate.
He blushes deeply and all but scurries away. I grin. Time for a new crush.
Mama’s Boy Can Curse
When I grill Zainab about Mr Sober, she informs me that his parents are family friends of hers and that he graduated from my all-girls, uniforms-required, believes-eighteen-year-olds-think-the-word-gay-means-happy school’s brother school last year. So he’s three years older than me but he still acts like a frightened deer around me.
“How long is this one going to last?” Shreyas asks, lazily pawing Zainab’s stomach.
“As long as you last before cheating on Zainab for the thirty-first time,” I smirk back.
“You just wish the thirtieth time had been with you,” he says angelically.
Zainab glares at both of us. She also tells me that I’m a predator and I need to stay away from her family friend.
I go to all three of my apartment building’s parties that week in hopes of seeing my prey. Apparently, either he isn’t as eager to see me or he didn’t make friends at Zainab’s party because he isn’t at any of them. But then, on Saturday night at Shreyas’, he is.
I don’t even bother watching Zainab pull her mouth away from Shreyas’ and scowl, or care about the hooting of the seven guys in the bedroom as I take his hand and pull him into the guest bedroom before he can react.
“What the hell?” he spits out.
I shake my head. “Wow. Mama’s boy can curse.”
He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Is it impossible for you to talk like a normal person?”
“Is it impossible for you not to be shy?” I ask.
He looks around frantically for an escape route, but I’m blocking the door. “What do you want from me?”
“Should I get some pen and paper?”
He squints. “What for?”
“For me to write down everything I want from you. And for you to write down everything you dislike about me so I can change them.”
“Maybe I prefer people who can be themselves,” he mumbles, looking everywhere but at me.
So. He can’t quite see past the bullshit, but he knows it’s there.
“You know what I’d do right now if I were to be myself?” I say.
He shakes his head, looking both fascinated and frightened.
I lean forward and press my lips gently atop his. His lips are soft, and when he kisses back, it’s, well, sweet. I don’t like sweet. I like rough and urgent and somewhat painful. But this…is good.
“So,” I say when I pull away. “How do you know Zainab? Do you go to college? When’s your birthday?”
He blinks. “Zainab told me to stay away from you.”
I smile reassuringly, even though Zainab was totally right and he’s not going to last any longer than the others. “Show her what you think of her orders. Be my boyfriend.”
“You don’t even know my name,” he says, looking flummoxed by my Hurricane Katrina approach.
“I do. Your name’s Deb. You’re nineteen, you went to my brother school, you’re Zainab’s family friend. Want to know my name?”
He grins wide, and I’m grateful for my information-extracting skills. “Kari,” he says. “Your name’s Kari.”
Sometimes it’s just too easy.
Fetching and Carrying
Except he does last longer than the others.
We go out on a date to Subway. He pays for my salami sandwich before I can think of finding my wallet, opens doors, and takes my hand when we cross the road in a part-proprietary part-gentlemanly way. The next night we go to Rajeev’s party and I don’t dance on tables or make out with anyone except Deb. It’s irritating to have him breathing down my neck when he isn’t about to nuzzle it, but it turns out that it’s easier to get drunk when there’s someone to fetch and carry my drinks for me.
By the end of the fortnight, I still haven’t dumped him.
“Why do you always ask about my day?” I say into the phone. I’m curled up on my bed, writing in my journal. “And why do you call me every night?”
“Because,” he says simply. “You’re my girlfriend and I like you.”
Being a girlfriend implies an exclusive relationship. But I have sort of drifted into monogamy for a while, so I let it pass.
“How 1980s of you,” I snipe.
“Well,” he says. “Does it surprise you to know that someone cares about how your day went?”
“Kind of,” I have to admit. “My parents are too busy gallivanting around the globe to ask how my day went…not that my day is ever as interesting as taking pictures of Mount Everest from a chopper on the way to some stupid case or, like, going to the White House for dinner to help defend the President’s niece.”
“What do your parents do?” he asks with sincere interest.
“Um, they’re lawyers.” Now I’m nervous. This is the simplest, most innuendo-free conversation I’ve had in a while. “Yours?”
“They own a business.” He’s being modest. His parents own a chain of hotels grander than the Hilton ones. “They don’t want me to go to college because they think MBAs have no real business sense.” He laughs. “I have no business sense anyway. What do you want to do, you know, later?”
I bite my lip. “What’s with all the questions?”
“I have this ambition.” I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “To be the Christopher Columbus of Kariland.”
“Well, you’ve already discovered what nobody has before.” I decide to be honest. “I don’t normally talk about my parents. I mean, why talk about what’s never there?”
“If I could be there, I would be,” he says sweetly.
“So come over.” Suddenly I want to see him.
When he hangs up, with a promise to be there in a few minutes, I tear off my Harvard T-shirt so I can put on clothes that’s easier for me to be flirty and nonsensical in. I live on the ground floor of my apartment, and in my haste, I’ve forgotten to draw the curtains before changing. My collarbone prickles with the feel of a gaze on it. I cross over to the window and stare down into Shreyas’ amused brown eyes.
“Perv,” I say, taking in the heady scent of his Davidoff Cool Water for men. “Like my D-cups?”
“Exhibitionist,” he retaliates. “Who wouldn’t?”
I pull my T-shirt back over my head. Shreyas moved into my building last year. Zainab and I were standing by the gate talking about her latest breakup when a huge Tata Sumo pulled up beside us. The guy who rolled down the window was one of the hottest I’d ever seen, with brown eyes that smirked and curly black hair cut short to accentuate his high-cheekboned face. “Which way’s apartment 3B?” he asked.
Zainab sort of pointed dazedly in its direction. I wrinkled my nose as he stared down at her curvy, compact body. “Do you really not know or do you just want to sleep with Zainab here?” I said, irritable both because he wasn’t looking at me and because I wanted him to.
He gave me a slow smile that somehow more insulting than the blatant you’re-a-doll-with-big-boobs checking-out thing he’d provided Zainab with. “That’s no way to greet a neighbour.”
“I’d be nicer if I wasn’t being choked to death by your perfume,” I said matter-of-factly.
Zainab’s manicured fingers dug into my arm. “3B’s right above you, Kar,” she said dreamily. I knew she was fantasizing about finding out Mr Perfume’s favourite music and blasting it in my room so he would hear it from above and think they had things in common.
Shreyas cocked his head. “So if Zainab here and I do sleep with each other, you’ll be the first to hear it, right, Kar?”
I sort of couldn’t hate him on principle after that.
Three days later, Zainab and Shreyas were going out, and Shreyas and I were friends.
He had his housewarming party on the third day. I was standing in the corner talking to a beer when a guy came up to me, said he was Shreyas’ friend Chris, and asked if he could kiss me. I kissed him instead. Not the most romantic first kiss, but at that point I was tired enough of being the never-been-kissed pajama-clad girl who takes online quizzes on Saturday nights to not have batted an eyelid if he’d just shoved his hands down my shirt.
I dated seven of Shreyas’ friends after Chris, two of them at the same time. We stayed friends after moving on. I started spending Saturday nights at random parties and in Shreyas’s pot-filled bedroom with my eight new best friends, and I was suddenly happy that my parents were never home.
I used to have friends at school. We’d do things like sleepovers and trolling the Internet for pictures of Chad Michael Murray. Of course, I used to get straight As, too.
I lean out of the window now to look at Shreyas seriously. “Do you think Deb is wrong for me?” I ask, as if it’s not at all weird to be discussing my almost sort-of boyfriend with my almost sort-of guy best friend out of a window.
Shreyas grins. “Remember when we watched that fire?”
Of course I do. It was Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and we’d gone up to the roof of my building to light rockets and firecrackers. A neighbour’s apartment had caught fire from one of their own firecrackers and instead of doing anything about it, Shreyas and I had simply stood there and watched the flames dance like a graceful geisha in a trance.
“What about it?” I furrow my brows.
“Maybe,” Shreyas says. “Maybe you need to be around someone who’ll make you want to do something to help out your neighbours if you see their house on fire.”
Maybe.
Deb and I have been going out for three weeks and six days. It’s a record. I’m even starting to wonder if I’m capable of getting to the two-month mark after all.
And then he has to ruin it all by touching my shoulder on our one-month anniversary when we’re sitting in his car and saying, “I love you.”