part0022

Meher nodded. Her eyes were clouded with worry. “Yes. We are all each other’s best friends, but we have all been keeping secrets. Havent we?”

Avi nodded. He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I don’t know…Anu and Charlie. Charlie wouldn’t talk about it in the bar, he just kept drinking whiskey pegs. I finally called him a cab and sent him home. Did you know?”

Meher nodded. “I did. Anu told us the day he broke up with her. I wanted to hit him and hug him at the same time.” Then a terrible thought struck her. “You’re not going to…with me, right?”

“I’m not going to with you, yenna, manaivi ?”

Meher bared her deepest fear then. “Leave me. If I ever get breast cancer and I lose my hair or my…” She pointed vaguely at her torso. “If it ever gets too much for you.”

Avi glared at her. Then he brushed past her in silence, actually moving her shoulders aside as he did. When he was at the end of the living room he said, “You’re not sleeping on the same bed as me tonight. You can sleep anywhere you want just not next to me.”

Meher was hurt. Beyond belief. But she was exhausted too. All the drama of the last few days had put her on emotional overload. Everyone was keeping secrets, no one was who they were. Her own body had betrayed her in the worst way possible.

And now, Avi…how could he just leave her like that when she needed reassurance most?

As if she’d conjured him out of her thoughts, he stalked back out. Kept a pillow and blanket on their overly large sofa. “I’ll sleep here,” he grunted. “You need to rest. You can sleep inside.”

Meher’s face crumpled. “Why are you talking like this, Avi? What’s wrong with you?”

Avi gave her a speaking glance. “You have to ask me that, Meher?”

“Yes. Apparently you’re keeping secrets from me too.”

Avi sat down on the sofa. Hard. It was an audible thump. “I have no secrets from you, Meher. My heart and my body and my soul, my salary and my bike and this house I bought for you, my brain and even my cooking is for you. Why would you even think that I’d leave you, Meher? WHY?”

Avui put his head in his hands. He sounded anguished.

Meher stood still. “Avi…”

“I left you with Anu and Shashi that day when you wanted me to go. When all I wanted was to be there for you. I thought space was what you needed. So I left even though I left my heart there with you. You didn’t even realize it, did you?”

Meher closed her eyes as regret and guilt threatened to pull her under. She had been cool with Avi recently. Trying to deal with all of the health stuff in her own head, trying to come to terms with it. And because Avi was so good at keeping things light and casual, she’d hurt him unbearably.

“I am terrified of moving,” Avi said, looking at her with his broken heart in his eyes. “I’m terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing because you won’t talk to me anymore. You won’t even look at me. You’re worried that I’ll leave you someday over a disease that you have no control over? I’m worried you’re already gone. That you think I’m not strong enough for you… and I don’t know how to make you stay.”

Meher unfroze from where she’d been standing when she heard Avi’s hopelessness. She ran to Avi and dumped herself on his lap.

“Avi, no!” She held him close, burying her head in that space between his neck and shoulders. Her spot. “Avi, illai .”

Avi didn’t embrace her back. Alarm struck her heart. Avi couldn’t not hug her. He wasn’t like that. He always hugged her.

Finally, she reached behind her and made him hug her. At first, he held her loosely. Lifelessly. Then one finger dug into her back, her spine, feeling the skin there. Then another, and another. Until he was holding her so tight, she melted into him. And it was the best feeling in the world.

The best.

This was heaven.

“I can’t lose you, Meher,” he said it so baldly, a lost little boy her heart broke for him all over again.

“Avi.” She kissed his forehead, holding his beloved face between her hands. Holding her whole world between her hands. “Avi, I’m not going anywhere. I promise. I won’t die on you even if I get cancer.”

Avi was shattered by the notion, she could finally see it. “You don’t know that.”

“No,” she agreed instantly. “I don’t. But I will fight. I’ll fight like hell if something awful happens to me. And I’ll fight like double hell for you. Because you need me to organize your life.”

“I can organize my life,” he muttered.

Meher shook her head and they knocked their heads together. She gave a watery chuckle. “You’ll never have coffee in the morning because you’ll forget to tie the milk bag for the doodhwala bhaiya .”

“I…” He heaved a mighty sigh that disguised his thick throat. “Will. But I can have coffee at work. We have good coffee at work.”

“How long have you been feeling like I’m abandoning you, Avi?” Meher asked him tenderly.

“Ever since you decided on this baby thing. And now…with all this added pressure on you, I just want to focus on you. I want you to be okay. And if that makes me bad father material, so be it. I don’t care,” Avi said stubbornly.

Meher was almost blinded by the love she felt from him. “It doesn’t…I think.” She frowned. Maybe it did. What did she know?

“Well, I don’t care. You’re more important to me.” He squeezed her closer. “You always have been. And if I tease you sometimes, it’s because I think you know you’re everything to me and I respect you so much for leaving your whole life and your home and giving up your last name for mine and I just…”

Meher kissed Avi.

“You talk so much, manaiva .” She smiled against his lips.

“That’s not a real word.” His eyes were his own again. Playful, a little delighted, warm and loving. All for her.

“It is, from now on,” Meher decided.

“I’m sorry if I have shut you out, Avi. The truth is…” she hesitated. But Avi hugged her closer and she felt his knees and his heart and his whole body urging her on so she did. “I feel like I’ve let you down somehow, already. Your parents don’t like me. At best, they tolerate me. No, don’t shake your head. It’s true. I’m okay with it. My parents are no better. But in this one respect I wanted to be a good daughter-in-law to yours. To make them see I was no less than some bitchy Iyer girl they chose for you.”

“Are you calling some nameless woman bitchy, Meher?” Avi smiled slightly.

“Call me manaivi ,” she ordered. “And yes, in this one instance I am.”

“You’ve not let me down, manaivi ,” he said. “This is not you against me. It has to be us against the problem. Whatever it may be, right?”

“Yes.” Meher felt one happy tear roll down. “Yes, it is. I forgot that. I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” Avi ran one hand up and down her back. “I should have just yelled at you days ago. Then I wouldn’t have suffered so much all by myself.”

“Some suffering is good for you.” Meher kissed his nose. And he tried to bite hers playfully. “See, you’re already back to normal.”

Avi instantly sobered up. “I’m not. I just don’t want to waste anymore time fighting with you. Life’s too short and I love you too much.”

Meher smiled tremulously. “I love you too much too. Even more than any baby we will ever have. However we have it.”

Avi kissed her then, as he murmured, “Any child we have is going to be screwed anyway. We might as well teach it to love it with all her heart. Right?”

Meher opened her arms and gave her heart to the man who was her champion all over again.

“Romba right, Avi. Romba romba right.”

They ended up sleeping on the couch.

Together.

The next morning, the doodhwala bhaiya left two milk packets against the safety door because Meher had forgotten to ask Avi to put the milk bag out. So they were having black coffee, gazing into each other’s eyes like they’d done back when they were teenagers ….when the doorbell rang.

“Don’t answer it,” Avi said.

“It could Anu or Shashi. Both of them arent doing too well.”

“So’s Charlie,” Avi said thoughtfully. “Should I talk to him?”

“And say what?”

Avi had no answer to that as Meher went and opened the door. She was a little surprised to see Avi’s parents standing there.

Avi’s Amma narrowed her eyes at Meher. Meher flushed because she was wearing a sleeveless tee shirt and cotton track pants. And the hickey Avi had given her last night was clearly visible on her neck.

For a second she thought of hiding it, but…she’d resolved to herself that she was done hiding. She was done making these people like her when Avi was okay with her parents not liking him. Or at least, doing a better job of not wanting their approval, which was the same thing.

Meher straightened her shoulders and said, “This was your son’s work. Ulla vaango .” Then she left the door open. They could come in if they wanted or not.

Avi’s parents came in and saw the tangled bedsheets and dented pillow on the sofa. They saw Avi sitting in nothing but his shorts drinking black coffee.

“What’s happened here?” Avi’s Amma demanded.

Avi shrugged. “Nothing happened, Amma. I’ll go get breakfast ready, okay? You both can rest and get ready.”

Meher wasn’t going to say anything but Avi’s Amma looked at her in distaste. So she said, “Yes. I make him wear shorts, Amma. I love his legs in shorts. We can get some for Appa also, if you want.”

Avi spewed coffee out and stared in amazement at Meher.

“And today, after I come back from work, we are doing a facial at home,” Meher continued firmly. “We need a girls’ spa day. You have been working very hard on your holiday and you need a break.”

Avi’s Amma looked at his father. But Avippa was in his own world, immersed in the day’s newspaper. So she looked back at Meher, proud and pretty and very much loved in a faded tee shirt and pants. As unlike a nalla mattuponnu as it was possible to be, in that moment.

In a rare display of insight and solidarity, Avi came to stand next to Meher and sipped his coffee while he waited for his mother to respond to Meher’s olive branch.

“Do you have the green clay mask?” Avi’s amma asked finally. “I was seeing this Whatsapp video that the building mami sent me and it said that green clay is very good for Indian skin.”

Meher smiled and said, “Come, Amma. I’ll show you what all I have.”

And it wasn’t much – just green clay mask – but it was everything in the Sreedhar household. And even Avi was smart enough to know that because when Meher turned to look at him as she exited the room he gave her a flying kiss and said, “Thank you. Nandri.”

And Meher kept the kiss close to her heart.