Her princess

Chapter 6

On Saturday, Anika sent a message at ten in the morning.

Dinner? A date. To avoid administrative confusion.

I read it twice before replying.

Yes. I would like a date.

Her answer arrived a minute later.

Excellent. Eat lunch. You become argumentative when you're hungry.

All day, I tried to behave as though I was a person who went on dates with women regularly. I tidied my room. I finished the lettering for the bookshop presentation. I refused Nabin's invitation to watch a video about a man building a house out of bottles.

“Your loss,” he said. “The bathroom is controversial.”

At five, I stood in front of my wardrobe.

The problem with being friends for years was that Anika knew all my clothes. There was no chance of constructing a mysterious, fascinating version of myself. She had seen me with toothpaste on my chin, a fever, and a skirt tucked into the waistband of my tights.

I chose a dark blue dress she had once said suited me. Then I worried I was treating an old compliment as a contractual promise.

I put it on anyway.

Mum found me trying to fasten a bracelet.

“Where are you going?”

“Dinner.”

“With whom?”

“Anika.”

“Will you be late?”

“Not very.”

She took the bracelet from me and fastened it. Her fingers were cool against my wrist.

“You look nice,” she said.

“Thank you.”

For a second, I imagined telling her. Just adding two words to the answer I had already given. A date. Letting her face change. Letting the evening become something I couldn't plan.

Instead, I picked up my bag.

“Don't wait dinner for me.”

“I heard you the first time.”

I went downstairs feeling both relieved and disappointed in myself.

Anika was waiting outside a restaurant near the road we used to take home from college. She wore a white shirt, dark trousers, and her silver thumb ring. Her hair was pulled back, leaving a little strand loose beside one ear.

I wanted to move it. This time, I knew why.

“You look beautiful,” she said.

I stopped a little too abruptly.

“Thank you.”

“Are you going to stand there all evening?”

“Possibly. You've interfered with my functioning.”

She laughed and held the door for me.

The restaurant was small and brighter than I expected. A family occupied a table near the window. A couple beside the wall were sharing noodles and arguing about a phone charger. The room smelled of ginger and fried onions.

I looked around without meaning to.

Anika waited until we sat before speaking.

“Somebody you know?”

“No.”

“All right.”

I opened the menu. My hands felt clumsy.

“About Sunday,” I said.

Her gaze lifted.

“When I nearly let go of your hand.”

She folded her menu.

“You don't have to turn tonight into an apology.”

“I know. But I don't want to pretend it didn't happen.”

“Neither do I.”

The waiter approached. We ordered, then waited until he was beyond earshot.

“I wasn't embarrassed by you,” I said.

“I didn't think you were.”

“It probably looked like that.”

“I thought you were frightened.”

I swallowed. “I was.”

“What were you afraid of?”

“That somebody would know what it meant before I knew how to explain it.”

Anika nodded.

“I understand that. But I need you to tell me when something feels too much. If you reach for me and pull away without warning, I don't know where I stand.”

“You shouldn't have to guess.”

“No.”

I looked at the folded napkin beside my plate.

“I'm not ready to tell my parents.”

“I didn't ask you to.”

“I know. I wanted to say it clearly.”

“Thank you.”

“What are you ready for?” I asked.

She seemed surprised by the question, then pleased.

“To find out whether we're good together in a way we haven't tried before. To have time that belongs to this, instead of fitting it into everything we already do.”

“And?”

“To be able to ask for something without you hearing it as an instruction to become brave immediately.”

I smiled a little. “That one might require practice.”

“I suspected.”

Our food arrived, giving us both somewhere to put our hands. We ate and talked about the exhibition. Anika described a parent who had asked whether glitter counted as a washable material. I told her about my tea stain and Kabir's artistic advice.

“Can I see the drawings?” she asked.

I showed her photographs on my phone.

She studied them carefully rather than praising everything at once. It made me nervous and happy.

“This one,” she said, enlarging the window. “The light makes it feel like somebody is waiting inside.”

“That's the one Meena chose.”

“Your manager has excellent taste.”

“And you?”

She looked at me over the phone.

“I thought we had established that.”

I laughed and reached for my water too quickly. The glass tipped, spilling across the table. Anika caught it before it fell, then stared at the little flood between our plates.

“We'll have to include coordination in your development plan.”

“I was trying to be charming.”

“You can relax. It's too late for either of us to pretend.”

The waiter brought a cloth without looking surprised. I wondered how many dates he had seen interrupted by gravity.

After dinner, we walked toward a narrow lane lined with closed shops. A little bakery was still open. Anika bought two pastries and asked whether I wanted to sit somewhere.

“Your apartment?” I suggested.

She looked at me. “If that's what you want.”

“I'd like to keep talking.”

“Then we'll keep talking.”

Upstairs, she switched on the lamp near the sofa. The room looked exactly as it had a week earlier. Same low table, same pile of books, same basil plant leaning toward the balcony door.

I put my bag down and stood uncertainly beside the chair.

Anika noticed.

“You know you can sit.”

“I used to.”

She smiled, but didn't come closer. “Nothing has to happen because you're here.”

“I know.”

I sat on the sofa. She took the other end and opened the paper bag. We ate the pastries from their wrappers because neither of us wanted to stand up for plates.

“What happened with the woman in Pokhara?” I asked eventually.

Anika looked down at the crumbs in her lap.

“You don't have to tell me,” I added.

“I can tell you some of it.”

I waited.

“She wanted different versions of us in different places,” Anika said. “When we were alone, she talked about a future. Outside, I was somebody she happened to know from the course.”

I thought of my own hand on the street and felt ashamed.

“Did she say she was frightened?”

“Yes. She was. I don't doubt that.”

“What ended it?”

“Nothing changed. I stopped asking because I thought being patient meant making fewer demands. Eventually I realized I was pretending not to need things I did need.”

I turned toward her.

“I don't want to do that to you.”

“I know. But wanting something isn't always enough to stop it happening.”

The words weren't unkind. They were too exact to be comforting.

“I don't want to promise something tonight and disappoint you next week,” I said.

“Then don't promise that. Promise you'll tell me what's happening.”

“I can do that.”

She looked at me for a moment.

“You can try,” she said.

I nodded. “I can try.”

For a while, we sat without talking. Outside, a scooter started, stopped, and started again. Anika folded her pastry wrapper into a small rectangle.

I reached across the space between us and put my hand beside hers.

She looked at it, then at me.

“Is this all right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I took her hand. Her thumb brushed the back of mine, and I looked down because watching her do it felt almost unbearable.

“Still all right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

I laughed, suddenly nervous. “We sound like we're moving furniture.”

“Furniture requires fewer conversations.”

I looked up. She was close enough that I could see a tiny mark beside her eyebrow, a scar from a fall she had told me about years ago. I had never wanted to touch it before.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked.

Anika's fingers tightened gently around mine.

“Yes.”

I leaned forward, then stopped because I wasn't sure which way to turn my head. She smiled, and the smile undid the solemn, perfect moment I had been trying to create.

“Come here,” she said softly.

Our first kiss was brief. I felt the warmth of her mouth, then the small breath she took when I moved back. My heart was beating so hard that I could hardly hear anything else.

“Oh,” I said.

Anika laughed, quietly and with relief.

“Good oh or alarming oh?”

“Good.”

She touched my cheek with her free hand. I closed my eyes for a second, overwhelmed by how familiar her fingers were and how unfamiliar it felt to be touched like this.

When I looked at her again, she wasn't laughing.

“I've thought about doing that,” she said.

I felt something in my chest loosen.

“So have I.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Recently,” I admitted.

“I appreciate your accurate reporting.”

I moved closer and rested my forehead against hers. We stayed that way until I began to laugh too, not because anything was funny, but because I couldn't hold all the feeling still.

My phone vibrated inside my bag.

I pulled back.

Anika's hand paused on my cheek, then fell away.

“It might be Mum,” I said.

“Check.”

It was Mum. Are you on your way?

I looked at the message, then at the woman beside me. A week ago, I would have complained about being treated like a child. Tonight, I understood that the answer wasn't as simple as demanding to be trusted.

I'm at Anika's. I'll leave in twenty minutes, I wrote.

Anika watched me put the phone down.

“You can go now if you need to.”

“I don't need to yet.”

I reached for her hand again, making the decision slowly enough that she could see it.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“That I don't want this to become something I apologize for every time I leave.”

She looked at our hands.

“Neither do I,” she said.

There was no easy answer after that. I hadn't expected our first kiss to end with one.

Instead, I sat beside her for the twenty minutes I had promised, holding her hand while we talked about things that mattered and things that didn't. When it was time to go, she walked me to the door.

“Next Saturday?” I asked.

“Are you booking every Saturday for the foreseeable future?”

“Only if you're available.”

She smiled. “Ask me during the week.”

On the stairs, I stopped and looked back. She was still in the doorway.

“Anika?”

“Yes?”

“The date was good.”

Her smile widened.

“Excellent feedback. I'll inform management.”

I went home with pastry crumbs on my dress and a message from Mum reminding me not to forget the key.

For once, I knew exactly where I wanted to return.