"I think you should stop being so mean to me, Zahed."
"Why would I ever do that?"
Aryan grins, a bright, wicked thing.
"Because I kiss you like this."
•
Mira Zahed and Aryan Shankar are at war.
When her best friend and his cousin decide to fall in...
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MY FACE FALLS AS ARYAN, HAVING FOLLOWED my directions to my home, pulls onto the street.
I should have expected this.
It isn't even an unfamiliar sight.
I don't look at him but he's slowing down the car anyway, sensing my shifting hesitation.
Strange how some vodka, one naked girl, one little yellow leaf, a failed exam and a semi-civil conversation— pretty eyes, he'd said and I'd wished I could turn him to stone with a look just for it— could bring us to such a wordless understanding of one another.
I don't unbuckle my seatbelt at all, merely staring out the tinted windows at the flock of cameras. News vans. Gossip channels. Eyes, eyes, eyes. They didn't see Mira Zahed. They saw a news article printed with my father's name.
Didn't they have anything better to do?
But no, they don't. This is their job. His life is theirs to dissect.
And my life— what is my life?
When they'd last flooded the outside of my childhood home like this so many years ago, the subject of their dissection, little, bright-eyed Mira had been very much alive under all their glaring surgical lights and scalpel news articles. They'd dissected the ruins of my family, tearing something apart that had already been torn to begin with.
And now they're back. Prodding at a dead body.
"This fucking city," I hear Aryan murmur under his breath as he brings the car to a halt right before my surrounded front gate.
But no, this wasn't Los Angeles anymore. They'd brought their vans to my front door. A camera flashes.
He's looking at me. I hate it when he looks at me. I especially hate it now.
"What?" I snap impatiently, breaking my staring contest with the nearest camera to glare at him.
Aryan is used to my glare. He doesn't even wince. I want him to wince though. I want to lash out. It's so easy to lash out at him.
I've never been the type to start a fight. I walk away— no, I run away—, I hide, I pretend I don't feel any of it. Yet, since the universe tossed this asshole into my life and told me to deal with, all I've wanted to do was fight.
