The party was Divya's idea.
Maya's friend had arrived in Mumbai for a conference — three days, the kind of professional trip that generated enough free evenings for catching up — and she had texted with the enthusiasm of someone who had been patient for four months and was done being patient: I need to see you. Properly. Dinner and then Rahul's thing in Bandra. Don't say no.
Maya had said yes before she'd thought about whether she should, because she was a person who missed her friends with a physical specificity, the way you miss a particular food — not a category, the actual thing, the way Divya laughed at her own jokes before she'd finished them, the way she ordered too much food and ate all of it without apology.
She told Atharva at breakfast.
He looked up from his phone. "Rahul's
