Read Online The One She Was Warned About by Shoma Narayanan - Free Book Online Page A

And the kisses and dinner dates—perhaps he sensed how attracted she was to him and those were his means of keeping her hooked. Unbidden, her thoughts went back to that conversation she’d overheard between members of his team.
    ‘I’ll have another drink, I think,’ she said.
    Her mind was working overtime, she knew—maybe she was imagining things. Nikhil got up and went to the bar to fetch a refill, and she watched him silently.
    ‘I resented you for a long time, you know,’ he said quietly after handing her the glass. ‘That’s why I used to give you a hard time. You were the first person who made me realise that there was something wrong with my family.’
    ‘Me?’ Shweta’s voice was incredulous. ‘What did I do?’
    ‘You asked me who my real mother was,’ he said. ‘I told you that both of them were my moms, but you said, “Whose tummy did you live in before you were born?” Until then I think I’d believed implicitly in the “babies are a gift from God” story. So it was a revelation in more ways than one.’
    ‘I don’t even remember,’ Shweta said remorsefully. ‘But I can quite imagine myself saying that. I went around once telling the whole class that Santa Claus didn’t exist—some of the kids actually started crying.’
    ‘Now, that I don’t remember,’ he said, and the smile was back in his voice. ‘Maybe I got off lightly, then.’
    ‘I thought it was very unfair,’ she said after a brief pause.
    Nikhil raised his eyebrows. ‘What was? No Santa Claus?’
    ‘You having two moms when I didn’t have even one,’ she said.
    There was an awkward pause, and then Nikhil said, ‘I never thought of it that way.’
    The realisation that he was illegitimate had tainted most of his childhood. He’d grown up in a stolidly middle-class neighbourhood and the very fact that most of the rigidly conventional people around him had felt sorry for him had been a constant thorn in his flesh. It had never occurred to him that Shweta had envied him.
    ‘It must have been tough for you, losing your mom when you were so young.’ As soon as the words were out, he wished them unsaid. Shweta’s face had closed up in an instant.
    ‘I hardly remember her,’ she said. ‘And my aunt was there. She took good care of me.’
    She’d always been like that when her mother was mentioned, Nikhil remembered. Something made him look down at her hands and he noticed a familiar mannerism—just like she’d used to in school she was tracing out words on her left palm with the fingers of her right hand. It was something she did when she was tense. Unconsciously he leaned a little closer, to try and make out the words, but her hands clenched into little fists, and when he looked up she was scowling at him.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice gentle.
    ‘You’re so annoying !’ she burst out. ‘You used to do that when we were kids—try and read what I was scribbling into my hand. I hate it! No one else—’
    She broke off, realising that she sounded impossibly petulant and childish. No one else had ever noticed the habit, though she did it all the time. Not her father, or her aunt, or her boss, or Siddhant. Somehow that made her feel even more annoyed with Nikhil.
    ‘Aren’t we getting late for dinner?’ she asked, sounding stiff and ungracious even to herself. ‘I thought you had a reservation for nine o’clock?’
    Nikhil nodded and got to his feet. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
    She didn’t even feel hungry, Shweta realised as she went down the stairs.
    The ground floor of the restaurant was full now—and several people seemed to recognise Nikhil, turning to wave as he escorted her to the outdoor seating area. The women gave her curious looks, and she felt acutely conscious of her off-the-rack dress and casually done hair. Everyone else was dressed far more expensively than she was, and that somehow made her feel worse than ever. The evening was turning out to be a total disaster—the quicker she