thirty-eight

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˗ˏˋbig deals and watery chuckles 'ˎ˗

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˗ˏˋbig deals and watery chuckles 'ˎ˗

Amoli has not been through a crisis of this magnitude since she was nineteen years old, and she saw Mahika for the very first time.

It's not that she didn't already know she was attracted to women back then, really.

She had a busy couple of months back when she was eighteen — full of introspection as she grappled with her sexuality before she had the identity part down. And then it was a little bit like losing a sock during laundry; thinking about it for the rest of the week before the thought was pushed to the back of her head.

She had known of Mahika since Akash and Naina started dating, but she didn't have the chance to meet the girl for a very long time. Naina said something about Mahika's schedule being weird, so the only thing Amoli knew about Mahika back then was:

1.) she grew up with Naina and was probably her favorite person in the world,

2.) she was two years older than Amoli,

3.) and she kept herself very, very busy.

So... needless to say, Amoli did not know a lot.

To say that she was completely unprepared for the day she met Mahika would be the understatement of the century.

She had assumed that it would obviously be fine; this was just another person Naina was friends with. Amoli had already met the rest of them anyway. And she liked Naina's friends. They were warm and welcoming without being pushy.

"Mahi was with Naina when I last called, so you'll probably meet her today," Akash told her, and 'oh, okay' had been her dismissive, distracted response, because she didn't think much of it.

It won't be that big of a deal, she thought.

(It was a very big deal.)

Amoli's first clue that she was about to be thrown into a crisis was when she saw the girl sitting with Naina at the café practically swallowed up in her big shirt, one long, bare leg crossed over the other.

Rationally, Amoli knew it was summer and almost everyone inside the café was wearing shorts, but the rest of them didn't look the way she did. Not to the very, very gay part of her brain, at least.

Amoli's second clue came when the girl in question looked up at their arrival and smiled brightly, pushing her glasses over the bridge of her nose with the tip of her index finger, and oh, no, Amoli thought, almost missing it that her brother was making introductions between them.

"Hi!" said the girl who was about to make the next couple of months very, very hard for Amoli, pink lips still parted in a smile, and eyes twinkling behind her round glasses. "I'm Mahika."

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