“That is not how grapes are meant to be consumed.”
“It's exactly how grapes are consumed. Kavita hand-fed me barfi for two hours during the henna. This is established Kapoor protocol.”
“Kavita is a seventy-year-old woman performing a maternal feeding ritual. You are a six-foot-three Canadian performing something entirely different.”
“Well, is it working?”
He scowls and takes the next grape from my fingers himself, deliberately, his eyes locked on mine, and bites it in half, and the look he gives me while he chews is so loaded with challenge andwant and exasperated affection that I have to shove an entire paratha in my mouth to keep from kissing him in broad daylight on a bench where any auntie with an iPhone could walk by.
We finish the grapes and the chai. We sit there, not talking, not needing to. Two men on a bench in a garden, both afraid, both enough, both choosing to stay anyway.
Somewhere inside the estate, Meera is recalibrating. Dev is likely packing. The WhatsApp group is updating. And the world is doing what the world does, which is being complicated and beautiful and terrifying.
But out here, under the neem tree, with his head on my shoulder and Oliver asleep on Mrs. Kasparian's couch seven thousand kilometres away, the world’s very simple.
It’s just us.
It has always been just us.
Chapter 23
Meera's Gambit
Arjun
My mother has invited the Home Secretary of India to dinner.
I discover this fact approximately forty-five minutes before the dinner itself, when Priya storms into the guest suite without knocking, finds me adjusting my cuffs in front of the mirror, and says, with the flat, controlled fury of a woman who is approximately three minutes from committing a crime, “Amitabh Verma is downstairs.”
I stop adjusting my cuffs. “I'm sorry?”
“Amitabh Verma. The Home Secretary. Of India. The man who controls immigration policy for one-point-four billion people. He is in the drawing room. He is drinking Mother's chai. And Mother is sitting next to him looking like a woman who has just played her best card.”
I look at Priya. Priya looks back at me. The mirror reflects two Kapoors staring at each other with the shared, bone-deep understanding of siblings who have watched their mother escalate from social manoeuvring to geopolitical warfare and are no longer surprised, only weary.
“She's threatening him,” I say.
“She's threatening both of you. Casey is a foreign national on a tourist visa. Verma controls immigration enforcement. Mother has just seated the two of them at the same dinner table and if you think that's a coincidence, you haven't been paying attention for the past thirty-three years.” Priya crosses her arms. “She's telling Casey, without saying a single word, that the Kapoor family has the connections to make his life in India very uncomfortable, and that if he has any sense, he will reconsider his position.”
“His position being engaged to me.”
“His position being in the way of her plans.” She pauses. Her expression softens from fury into something more complicated. “What are you going to do?”
“I am going to go downstairs and have dinner with the Home Secretary of India,” I say, “and I am going to ensure that Casey is not intimidated by a politician my mother has imported as a prop.”
“Casey doesn't get intimidated by anything. He got crosschecked by a six-foot-five defence-man in the OHL playoffs and got up laughing.”
“How do you know that?”
“We talk, Arjun. Some of us communicate with our sibling's partner like normal human beings.” She straightens my collar with a sharp, precise tug. “Go. And if Mother tries anything, I'll be at the table. Daadi will be at the table. And Kavita has made the lamb biryani, which means everyone will be in a good mood, which is either deliberate on Mother's part or a tactical error, because Kavita's biryani makes people sentimental, and sentimental people do not support deportation threats.”
Casey is in the bathroom when I relay the situation. He is brushing his teeth, wearing his navy kurta, his blond hair still damp, and he listens to the entire briefing with his electric toothbrush in his mouth and an expression of such profound, unflappable calm that I briefly wonder if he has misunderstood the severity of the situation.
“So your mom invited the guy who runs immigration to dinner,” he says, spitting toothpaste into the sink with the casual efficiency of someone who is not remotely concerned about geopolitical threats to his visa status. “To, like, scare me.”
“To imply that your continued presence in India, and potentially your Canadian medical career, could be complicated if the Kapoor family chose to leverage their political connections.”
“That's wild.” He rinses his toothbrush. He puts it in the holder. He turns to me with those steady blue eyes and a smile that is so completely, serenely unbothered that it is either the bravest thing I have ever witnessed or evidence of a fundamental inability to process danger. I cannot decide if this makes me more irritated by him or attracted to him at this point in time. “What's the worst that could happen?”