Read Online Nights Like This by Divya Sood - Free Book Online Page B

drink?” she asked.
    â€œWhatever you are having.”
    As she walked to the bar, I rest my gaze on the flame that danced in the little candleholder on our table. The ridges in the dome prevented me from seeing the flame clearly, but I could see the movements of yellow behind the glass, like a genie in a lamp asking to be released. Or like puja tea lights set afloat on water. I moved my gaze to the table, splintering wood covered with a sheet of mirror. I leaned forward and looked at my reflection in incandescence.
    I wondered what Vanessa saw when she looked at me. I stared at myself and wondered what about me she liked, what she chose not to notice. My eyes stared into themselves, eyes so black I couldn’t see my pupils against the color if my irises. I knew that the definition and clarity of my nose and jaw made women notice me. Most women even forgave my thin lips and otherwise plain face. Only once had someone told me I was hard to kiss because there was nothing to really hold on to when she kissed my mouth.
    I had fucked her anyway. I had then told her she was a terrible lay and had left while she whimpered behind me that she could do better. I remembered that night clearly because when I had stepped out onto the street, it was so cold I had almost considered turning around and going back to her apartment, mumbling some lie about how I really liked her other than the sex and we could try to work something out. But I hadn’t. I had walked home slowly, declining the idea of a subway and had reached an hour and a half later. Anjali had made me ginger tea and had wrapped a blanket around me before quietly going to bed. I remembered her silence that night as a force so sad, so powerful, I had wanted to do anything to appease her. She had asked for nothing. I had given nothing. It was the way we were. Always. Hadn’t I vowed to try only a day ago?
    Vanessa came back with our beers. We shared a chair as we drank quickly and listened to the noise before us. Vanessa started kissing my ear.
    â€œHow much am I turning you on?” she asked me.
    â€œHere? Not much,” I said.
    â€œI bet before we go home, you’ll be so turned on you’ll be wet.”
    â€œThen why can’t we just go to your place?” I asked.
    If she couldn’t think beyond the lay, then who was I to argue?
    She traced my ear with her tongue and kissed my neck.
    Then she said, “Because I want you to realize how beautiful every situation can be. It’ll open your mind, princess. When is the last time you fell in love?”
    â€œThis coming from somebody who wants to stick to the basics? I don’t want to fall in love. Ever.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI am not looking to fall in love,” I repeated.
    â€œNeither am I,” she said.
    â€œSo why did you ask?”
    â€œLove doesn’t come by invitation, Jess. It just shows up.”
    â€œYou can control what you do with it.”
    She laughed.
    â€œYou try that.”
    I was restless and irritated. The music was too loud. Vanessa, I felt, was talking in riddles that turned into senseless circles. I just wanted to leave.
    â€œWhy can’t we just go?”
    â€œBecause I still have twelve minutes until my half an hour is up and then we can go. And besides, we have to set some ground rules.”
    I smiled at her and touched her face slightly with my palm.
    â€œFine. What rules do we have?” I said.
    As she kissed me, I felt we had conquered this evening and made it our night. As she kissed my neck and my ear and then my mouth, I did get turned on. I would never tell her that she had been right but she had. Somehow, she knew what I had spent a lifetime trying to understand and had never learned. Love and desire do not come by invitation. I wondered for an instant then if love had arrived and seated itself between us as she had shown me the first 5-by-7. What if that were true? If there were anywhere love would have