Her princess

Chapter 2

I woke with Anika's hand still in mine and a message from Rohan on my phone.

Sunday. Twelve thirty. Mum says bring your parents if they're free.

For several seconds, I stared at the words. Beyond the curtains, a vendor called from the lane. Anika slept facing me, her eyebrows drawn together as though somebody was asking difficult questions in her dreams.

I eased my fingers away.

Her eyes opened immediately.

“Where are you going?”

“Bathroom.”

“Suspicious.”

“Would you like a written application?”

“Two copies.”

She closed her eyes again. I took my phone with me.

In the bathroom, I reread Rohan's message. We had been together for seven months. Until recently, that number had seemed small enough to protect me from serious questions. Now everybody treated it as evidence that we were progressing toward something.

I typed: Can we talk before Sunday?

His reply arrived while I was washing my face.

Of course. Everything okay?

I watched water disappear into the drain.

Yes. Just want to talk.

Even in a message, I had chosen the easiest lie.

Anika was in the kitchen when I came out, cracking eggs into a bowl. She had changed into loose trousers and a grey T-shirt. Her hair stood up on one side.

“You look terrible,” I said.

“Good morning to you too.”

“Just on the left.”

“That's where I keep my personality.”

I reached up and smoothed the unruly hair.

My hand stopped when she looked at me.

I had touched her hair a hundred times. I had braided it before weddings, pulled leaves from it after picnics, held it away from her face when she was sick. This morning, I couldn't remember how to do any of that without feeling my pulse in my wrist.

“There,” I said, dropping my hand.

“Thank you.”

She returned to the eggs.

We ate breakfast by the balcony door. Somewhere downstairs, a child was protesting loudly against being dressed. Anika listened for a moment.

“Relatable,” she said.

“Your neighbors will think I'm the child.”

“They know you. They won't rule it out.”

She handed me the last piece of toast without asking whether I wanted it. I wondered how many things I had accepted from her simply because she offered them so naturally.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You've been doing a lot of nothing since last night.”

I set the toast down.

“Have you ever dated a woman?”

She didn't look shocked. Somehow, that made me more nervous.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Should I get references?”

“No. I just didn't know.”

“I dated someone when I was doing that training course in Pokhara.”

“The one you said ended badly?”

“Yes.”

I remembered sitting on this balcony while she cried, passing her tissues and insulting a person whose name I had never asked. I had assumed the person was a man. I had filled the silence with my own certainty and mistaken it for understanding.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

Anika rubbed her thumb along the handle of her cup.

“I told you I loved someone. You didn't ask anything else.”

The answer hurt because it was true.

“I would have listened.”

“You were kind to me, Mira. I know that.”

“But you didn't feel you could tell me.”

“Not then.”

I looked at the little basil plant beside the door. One leaf had gone yellow. I had been telling her to water it for months, as though maintaining a plant was the part of her life that required my attention.

“What about now?”

She met my eyes. “I'm telling you now.”

I nodded. My throat felt tight.

“Do your parents know?”

“My sister does. My parents don't.”

“Are you going to tell them?”

“Eventually. When I decide how.”

I wanted to ask whether she was frightened. Whether eventually meant next week or ten years. Whether she ever looked at photographs of ordinary weddings and felt shut out of a future everybody else seemed to receive automatically.

But she was watching me carefully, and I understood that she had already offered something difficult.

“Thank you for telling me,” I said.

Her shoulders loosened a little.

“You don't have to say it like I've donated an organ.”

“I'm trying to be mature.”

“A terrible strain. Eat your toast.”

I laughed, then caught myself wondering whether Sana knew. Of course Sana knew. Sana hadn't needed everything explained around a breakfast table.

Anika's phone rang. Her mother. She took the call near the sink, describing the rain, her work at the children's art studio, and the groceries she had remembered to buy. I listened to her voice grow softer. Whatever she couldn't tell her mother, the love between them was real.

That unsettled me more than an angry family would have. I knew how to argue with anger. I had no idea how to disappoint someone who loved me.

At home, Mum was peeling potatoes while Nabin stood beside her stealing slices of cucumber.

“You're alive,” he said when I came in. “I was preparing to inherit your headphones.”

“They're broken.”

“I know. I was going to complain about your estate.”

Mum looked up. “Did you eat?”

“Yes.”

“Properly?”

“Anika made eggs.”

“Good girl. Tell her to come tomorrow.”

I put my bag down. “Rohan invited us to lunch tomorrow.”

Mum's peeler stopped.

“All of us?”

“If you're free.”

She looked pleased in a way that made my stomach tighten. “Your father is home tomorrow.”

“It's only lunch.”

“Did I say it was anything else?”

Nabin held up a cucumber slice. “I would like to announce that I am also available for lunch, without any emotional implications.”

“Nabin, go and study.”

“I've been promoted to studying because of her boyfriend.”

He left with the entire plate.

Mum waited until his footsteps faded. “You're happy with him, aren't you?”

The question should have been easy. Rohan was good to me. He listened when I spoke about work. He had never made me feel small for earning less than he did. My parents liked his manners and the way he greeted my grandmother without being reminded.

“I don't know,” I said.

Mum set the potato down.

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Did you argue?”

“No.”

“Then why don't you know?”

I pulled out a chair. There was a tea stain on the table shaped like half a moon. Dad had left his reading glasses beside it.

“Sometimes I feel like everybody knows where this is going except me.”

Mum sat opposite me.

“Nobody can make that decision for you.”

I looked up, surprised.

“But,” she continued, “don't confuse fear with a problem. Every new stage of life is frightening.”

There it was. A door opened, then narrowed.

“What if I don't want that stage?”

“Marriage?”

“With him.”

Her expression softened. “Then you should tell him. A good person deserves an honest answer.”

I stared at her hands. The skin around her knuckles was dry from washing dishes. She had spent years teaching me to be polite, to consider other people, to finish what I started. Perhaps I had learned those lessons too well and missed the one about choosing what to start.

“Would you be angry?”

“Disappointed, perhaps. Not angry.”

I wanted to believe that answer could stretch to cover more than Rohan.

Before I could test it, she rose to stir something on the stove.

“Talk to him,” she said. “And tell me about tomorrow before I start making plans.”

I went to my room and shut the door.

On my desk stood a photograph from my twenty-first birthday. Ritu was holding a cake. I was laughing with my eyes closed. Anika stood behind me, one hand resting on my shoulder.

I remembered that night. My dress zipper had caught, and she had freed it with a safety pin. I had spent half the party complaining that she was busy talking to someone else. When she finally sat beside me, I had fallen asleep against her shoulder.

I had called all of that friendship.

I lay on the bed and scrolled through our messages. Grocery lists. Work complaints. Photographs of ugly shoes we thought the other should buy. Three separate arguments about whether I owed her an umbrella.

Then, six weeks earlier: Saw this and thought of you.

A photograph of a little silver crown in a shop window.

My reply: Finally, you recognize my position.

Hers: Unfortunately.

I put the phone face down.

It was possible to make anything look meaningful if you wanted it badly enough. I knew that. I had done it with boys at school, building entire romances from borrowed pens and accidental eye contact.

But I hadn't wanted to touch their hair simply because it was untidy. I hadn't kept their old shirts. I hadn't felt an unreasonable, embarrassing grief because they drank coffee with somebody else.

A knock came at the door.

Nabin entered carrying my headphones.

“You left these downstairs.”

“You were stealing them.”

“I prefer testing the succession plan.”

He put them on the desk, then looked at me properly.

“Are you crying?”

“No.”

“Good. Because I don't know what to do.”

“You could leave.”

“I know that one.”

He reached the door, paused, and came back to put a piece of chocolate beside my pillow.

“Don't tell Mum,” he said. “She thinks I'm saving it.”

After he left, I ate the chocolate and called Rohan.