Her princess

Chapter 3

Rohan suggested a café near my office. He arrived before me and ordered two coffees, then moved mine out of the sun when I sat down.

“Your message sounded serious,” he said.

I wrapped my hands around the cup. Across the café, a waiter was trying to balance a tray with one elbow while answering his phone. I wanted to watch him until this conversation was over.

“Did you invite my parents tomorrow because you want to talk about marriage?”

Rohan looked surprised by the direct question.

“Not a formal proposal. Just getting the families together.”

“For that reason.”

“Eventually, yes.”

I nodded, although nothing in me agreed.

He leaned forward. “Have I rushed you?”

“I think we've been moving because nobody thought to ask whether I wanted to.”

His eyebrows drew together. “I've asked you things, Mira.”

“I know. And I've said yes when I wasn't sure. That's my fault.”

“Which things?”

“Meeting your family. Planning holidays. Talking about next year like it was already decided.”

“You could have said no.”

The words were fair. I had expected him to give me something easier to resist.

“I should have.”

He sat back. A motorbike sounded outside, loud enough to interrupt us. I watched his face while he waited for it to pass.

“Do you want more time?” he asked.

I could have accepted. Another month. A smaller lunch. Fewer questions. There were so many ways to postpone hurting someone, and I had become good at all of them.

“I don't think time will change what I feel.”

He looked down at his coffee.

“Oh.”

I had rehearsed explanations on the way over. About confusion, expectations, the difference between affection and wanting a future. Now they sounded like ways to decorate a simple injury.

“I'm sorry.”

“Is there someone else?”

I swallowed.

“I've realized some things about myself. I don't understand all of them yet.”

“That's not what I asked.”

“I have feelings for someone. Nothing has happened.”

The waiter brought a plate of biscuits we hadn't ordered. Neither of us touched it.

Rohan nodded slowly. “How long?”

“I don't know.”

He gave a short, unhappy laugh. “You don't know much today.”

“I know it isn't fair to keep dating you.”

For a moment, his expression hardened. Then he looked away, toward the door.

“I wish you'd told me before I involved my mother.”

“So do I.”

I waited while he rubbed his palms over his knees. This was a side of him I had rarely seen, stripped of jokes and easy plans. I wanted to comfort him, but reaching for his hand would have been another kindness he couldn't use.

“I'll cancel tomorrow,” he said.

“I can speak to your mum, if you want.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He stood. “I don't want to be friends immediately. Please don't send me a message tonight asking if I'm all right.”

“I won't.”

He hesitated, looking at my untouched coffee.

“Get home safely.”

Then he left.

I stayed until the coffee was cold. Breaking up had not made me feel brave or free. It made me feel like someone who had finally opened a drawer and found the mess she had been pushing into it for months.

When Mum called, I answered.

“Tomorrow isn't happening,” I said.

She was quiet.

“You talked?”

“Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

“I don't know.”

“All right. Come home when you're ready.”

She didn't ask me to defend the decision. I thanked her, though the word came out badly.

Outside, the rain had stopped. The pavement shone in the late afternoon light. I walked without deciding where I was going until I realized I had taken the road toward Anika's studio.

On Saturdays, she helped run art sessions above a small bookshop. I had promised to help put away supplies after the children's exhibition, then forgotten entirely. Now I stood beneath the sign, wondering whether I had come because of the promise or because I couldn't think of another place to go.

From upstairs came a child's voice.

“No, that's the grandmother.”

“I apologize to the grandmother,” Anika replied.

I climbed the stairs.

The room smelled of paint and sharpened pencils. Paper flowers hung from string near the windows. Anika knelt beside a boy who was explaining a family portrait in which everybody appeared to have six fingers.

She looked up when I entered.

“Mira. You're early.”

“I can wait.”

“Or help. We have a glitter emergency.”

She pointed toward a table that seemed to have suffered a small, festive explosion.

For the next half hour, I collected pencils, capped paint jars, and helped a little girl find the drawing she had hidden because she thought it was ugly. Anika crouched beside us and asked the girl to explain it.

“It looks like rain,” the girl said.

“It does.”

“But it was supposed to be a tree.”

“Then perhaps it's a tree in the rain.”

The girl considered this and decided to take it home.

I watched Anika clean the last table. There was blue paint on her wrist, close to the place where I had felt her pulse beneath my fingers the night before.

“You're quiet,” she said after the final parent left.

“I broke up with Rohan.”

The cloth stopped moving.

“Oh, Mira.”

She put it down. “Do you want to sit?”

I shook my head, then nodded. She pulled out a chair, waited until I sat, and took the one opposite.

“Did something happen?”

“He wanted our families to have lunch tomorrow. I couldn't do it.”

“Couldn't do lunch?”

“Couldn't keep pretending I knew what came after it.”

She listened while I told her about the café. I repeated the part where he asked me not to check on him. Saying it aloud made me cry at last.

Anika moved the tissue box toward me.

“You cared about him,” she said.

“I still do.”

“I know.”

“Then why couldn't that be enough?”

She didn't answer immediately. Through the open window came the sound of somebody pulling down a shop shutter.

“Did you want it to be enough?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Because you wanted him?”

I wiped my face. “Because everything would have been easier.”

Her expression changed, but she said nothing.

I looked at the drawings taped to the wall. Houses with impossible windows. Mountains taller than the sun. A family holding hands beneath a sky painted completely orange.

“When did you know?” I asked.

“About liking women?”

I nodded.

“I noticed before I admitted it. Then I spent a long time trying to explain it as something else.”

“Like what?”

“Admiration. Curiosity. Wanting to be somebody's best friend.”

My eyes filled again.

Anika leaned forward slightly. “Mira?”

“I think I've been doing that.”

She stayed still.

“I don't know what to call myself,” I said. “I don't know whether I have to know already. Yesterday I thought I understood my life. Today I can't even look at an old photograph without wondering what I missed.”

“You don't have to decide everything today.”

“Everybody keeps telling me that.”

“Good. Occasionally, everybody is useful.”

I laughed through my tears. She smiled, but there was caution in it now.

“Does this have anything to do with the question you asked last night?”

“Yes.”

“And Sana?”

I closed my eyes. “Unfortunately.”

“You were jealous.”

It wasn't a question.

“I was horrible.”

“You dropped a spoon. I wouldn't involve the police.”

“I wanted her to stop making you laugh.”

Anika looked down at her hands. For the first time that afternoon, she seemed unsure what to say.

“I thought you were annoyed because I'd invited someone you didn't know.”

“I've watched you make new friends for years. I tell myself I'm afraid of losing my place. But I don't feel this way about Ritu's friends.”

“And your place with me?”

I looked up.

“What place do you want?”

The room had become too quiet. I could hear the ceiling fan turning unevenly above us.

“I don't think I only want to be your friend,” I said.

Anika took a slow breath.

“Mira, you've had a difficult day.”

“I know.”

“I don't want you to say something because I'm here and you're hurting.”

“That isn't why.”

“It might feel clear right now. Tomorrow could feel different.”

I wanted to argue, to pull every memory between us onto the table and demand that she see what I had finally seen. Instead, I made myself listen. Her carefulness was another kind of honesty, and I owed her room for it.

“Okay,” I said.

She looked relieved, then almost disappointed. Perhaps I imagined the second part.

“I should go home.”

“I can walk you downstairs.”

We put the remaining supplies away. I rinsed the brushes while she checked the windows. We worked in the familiar rhythm we had used for years, except now every ordinary movement seemed to carry a question.

At the door, she reached for the light switch.

“Anika.”

She turned.

“Can I ask you one thing before I go?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever wanted me to want a different place?”

Her fingers slipped away from the switch.

She didn't answer quickly.

“Yes,” she said.

I gripped the strap of my bag.

“When?”

“Mira.” She smiled without much happiness. “You don't get the whole history on the staircase.”

“Then have tea with me tomorrow.”

“We have tea all the time.”

“I know. I'm trying to ask differently.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “You can ask me again tomorrow.”

I nodded. My eyes were still swollen. Rohan was still hurt. At home, there would be questions I couldn't answer yet.

But Anika was looking at me, waiting for me to decide whether I meant it.

“Then I'll ask you tomorrow,” I said.