Oops ! I Married My Boss.

One Bed, Two Idiots

The monsoon arrived at 2:17 a.m. and took the living room with it.

Anaya woke to a drip, then a plop, then a long, wet, ominous groan from the ceiling, and by the time she reached the door in her oversized T-shirt, a brown waterfall was pouring onto the sofa where her husband had been sleeping.

"ARMAAN!"

"I'm awake!" He was already standing, in a damp shirt and wet socks, holding a steel bucket that was too small for the situation and a procurement report that was now soaked through. "The roof is leaking."

"I can see that!"

"I'm documenting it."

"With a report?"

"It's the only paper I had!"

By three, they had moved the bookshelf, rescued her laptop and filled every pot she owned. The landlord's phone went straight to voicemail, where a recorded voice said, with great serenity, I am sleeping. God is also sleeping. Call tomorrow. By half past three the sofa was a swamp.

They stood in the doorway of the bedroom, dripping. There was one bed in it.

"I'll sleep on the floor," said Armaan.

"It's a cold tile floor in July. You'll get pneumonia, and then I'll be a widow, and then your mother will blame me."

"The bathtub, then."

"You're six foot one."

"I'll fold."

"Armaan." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "We are two adults. It's a bed. We'll be mature."

"Of course," he said gravely.

Neither of them looked at the bed.

They were not mature.

First came the pillow wall. Armaan built it, a neat rampart of four cushions down the middle of the mattress, and inspected it with the satisfaction of a man who had just completed a flyover. Anaya tested it with one finger, and it collapsed.

"Structural failure," she said.

"It was a prototype."

Then came the blanket. Armaan slept like a man laid out in state, flat on his back with his arms folded, and he took exactly his half of the sheet and not one inch more. Anaya slept like a starfish shot from a cannon. Twenty minutes after the light went out, she rolled across, stole three-quarters of the blanket and flung one leg across his shins.

"Anaya."

"Mm."

"Your foot is on my knee."

"It's a very nice knee."

"You're asleep."

"I'm advocating," she mumbled, and snored.

He lay still for a long time. Then he did a thing he would deny under oath: he eased the blanket gently back over her shoulder and left his shins exactly where they were.

At four, neither of them was asleep.

The rain drummed on the window. The room smelled of damp cotton and the faint jasmine of her shampoo, and the dark had made everything quiet and strange.

"You can't sleep either," Anaya said.

"I'm calculating."

"Calculating what?"

"The cost of a new roof."

"You're calculating my roof?"

"It's our roof," he said, and she didn't tell him to stop.

She turned on her side. His profile was dim against the window, the scar a faint pale line. "Can I ask you something? Without you making it a business deal?"

"I'll try."

"Why did you let me do it? Not the k********g. That's obvious. You hated the wedding. I mean afterwards." She picked at the sheet. "You could've fought your parents. You could've told the whole room who you were. You married me."

He was silent so long she thought he'd drifted off.

"I was raised for one job," he said at last. "My father built ASR from a two-room office. Everything I've done since I was fourteen has been to keep it standing. I picked my college by his advice, my friends by his advice, and the girl he picked for me by his advice." His voice was even, and that somehow made it sadder. "Nobody ever asked what I wanted. They asked what the company needed. When you came through that lobby with a pillowcase, I thought, Here is the first person in my life who's done something without a plan."

"I had a plan."

"You had a hairbrush."

She smiled into the pillow. "You never said that. About the pressure."

"You never asked." He turned his head. "What about you?"

She considered lying. She lay with the rain on the glass and the nearness of him, and found she didn't want to.

"I was six when they died," she said. "Car accident. A distant aunt took me in for two years and then decided I was expensive. Niya's mother heard about it from a neighbour. She came to the hostel with a suitcase, and a lunchbox, and she didn't ask a single question. She just said, 'You're hungry, aren't you, beta?'" Her voice wobbled. "Her family paid my fees, my books, even my first interview suit. I've never been able to repay it. So when Niya said she was unhappy, I—"

"kidn*pped a man."

"I kidn*pped a man."

"You kidn*pped me."

"I did. And it was a catastrophic mistake." She hesitated. "Except, maybe, a tiny bit not."

His breath caught. He didn't answer.

"I don't want to be someone's charity case," she whispered. "I want to be someone's choice."

The rain went on. Slowly, in the dark, a hand found hers across the sheet. It was warm, and large, and a little unsteady. His fingers closed around her fingers, not tight, just there.

"For the record," Armaan said, very low, "I'd have chosen the girl with the hairbrush."

Anaya's throat closed. She couldn't speak, so she squeezed his hand instead.

Neither of them let go. Neither of them slept. When the first grey light crept through the curtains, they lay there still, side by side, hand in hand, staring at the ceiling, each of them desperately pretending that the other had fallen asleep.